Catching up with the papers after my holiday I spotted a bit about Kate Adie bemoaning the fact that television news bosses now choose female reporters for their 'cute bottoms' rather than their news gathering and presentation expertise.

Now that, to me, possibly explains why I have never managed to fulfil my ambition to be a war correspondent. My bottom may have been described as many things but cute aint one of them. In fact I very much doubt that it was described as cute even when I was in nappies. It was probably called 'chubby' until that was changed overnight to 'big' and there it stayed, so to speak.

Kate was being a bit of an old grump because she feels that television reporters and presenters are often chosen for their looks and not because they sound fairly convincing when giving out the bad news.

It is, she feels, a sexist thing and she's probably right. You rarely see anyone these days who might kindly be described as 'homely', as the Americans say rather delicately, doing anything on television unless they're appearing on a Jeremy Beadle video clips programme.

Mind you Kate, there's always Ann Robinson isn't there? She's hardly an oil painting, or at least not one you'd hang in the Louvre.

I hadn't seen Kate Adie recently, until I turned on the British Forces Network television on holiday (which for those of you who haven't seen it is the one network the forces abroad can get and which consists of someone's idea of what people living in a foreign country might like to see and consists almost entirely of soaps and sport and has almost certainly been chosen by an all male group of people who think women should stay at home and knit). Anyway, there was Kate, reporting from somewhere dark and dusty in the desert. Actually, I have a theory that Kate carries around a cloud of dust for the occasions. You rarely see her without it. Is it the same dust each time? Does a minion have to gather it up at the end of each broadcast?

She's also taken to wearing military outfits, rather strange safari suits which were all the rage in the seventies but rarely fitted very well, so that we all went out looking like a distressed Sanders of the River. I'm sure I remember her wearing a camouflage outfit once, or was that a dream? Or was it Yasser Arafat?

I'm being mean. She's a good reporter, with loads of experience. I'm only sorry that she seems to be within picking distance of sour grapes. We all have to accept that somewhere out there are many a cuter bottom than ours. All we can do, as mere females, is to become wise old grannies and wear bigger trousers.

Now to turn to something serious. The RSPCA reports, and so do other animal welfare groups, that there is a bit of a crisis in the cat department.

Too many cats are producing kittens which in turn is producing unwanted cats.

This is because there are still a lot of people who won't get their animals 'seen to'.

Despite years of publicity urging people to get those parts which cause all the problems in the cat world attended to, it isn't necessarily getting through. Animals organisations are still overloaded with poor pussies who need re-homing.

The simple answer is a simple operation, and the Cat Protection League, among others, offers those who can't afford to go to a vet a reduced price. But still owners don't bother.

I remember hearing of one person who had five female cats and one tom cat getting all the females spayed but not bothering with the tom because he wasn't going to be causing any more trouble at home. It didn't occur to her that having five useless brides at home was going to send him out on a hunt for far more interesting females.

The husband of one of my colleagues doesn't want their tom cat done because the very thought of it makes him all cringe. In fact a lot of men feel this way. Do they think that the next time they glance at a girl in a short skirt and tight jumper their wives are going to grab them by the scruff of the neck and march them down to the doctor?

The most outlandish bit of sexism a la felines came from a male friend whose logic went like this. 'If everyone with a female got it attended to then you wouldn't need to bother with any of the toms and they could be left in peace .' I think he was talking about cats.

We know the solution but that still leaves a lot of nice cats who need homes.

Cats don't usually end up in care, so to speak, because they've done anything wrong.

They haven't taken chunks out of the postman, eaten the sofa or nipped every child in the neighbourhood.

They may be shy, nervous or withdrawn, but they are unlikely to go for your throat. So even if the cat place tells you they don't like children it doesn't mean they spit bits of them out.

Some dogs which need re-homing have to be treated with caution (and I know there are hundreds of lovely lovable dogs who need homes but some care is needed to find out about their characters before you take them on).

When you get a cat home it may hide under the sofa, try to run away or, as one friend found when she took a tabby female in, spend the first two weeks up a tree forcing my friend to dangle tasty bits of steak on the branches to tempt her new pet to eat. It will, however, eventually settle down and rarely pine for a former owner. Cats know a good thing when they find it.

By the way, I had to laugh the other day when someone said that to stop a cat running away from its new home you put butter on its paws. She thought this was because the cat would slip on the pavement and be easily caught rather than that it would be so busy licking the butter off that it wouldn't run away.

These days, I suppose, it would have to be low fat margarine to be politically healthily correct.