Merlin is the star of the Cat Empire, the company my wife Robyn and I founded to show the world his extraordinary talents.  Merlin wears 27 different outfits for a series of pictures which Cat Fancy, the world's biggest circulation cat lovers' magazine in America, has described as "fabulous... simply smashing."  His outfits hang in a special wardrobe in our home.

When I first persuaded Merlin to dress up, I would have stopped had not his almost non-stop purring suggested he really was enjoying all the attention.  Merlin was a 100 per cent volunteer in the photo sessions.  I have to admit that the slithers of choice smoked salmon that made up his actor's professional fee had quite a lot to do with it!

The way Merlin entered my life was a fitting prelude to a career that I hope will make him one of the famous cats of history.  He was once a London alley cat.  Soaked and emaciated, he appeared one day at the kitchen window of friends of ours in the middle of a tremendous storm, his mewing punctuated by rolls of Wagnerian thunder.

My friends knew that I was looking for a feline companion.  They always had several cats in residence and said I could choose whichever one I  took a fancy to - or, indeed, took a fancy to me.  I am a born ailurophile, the academics' name for people who love cats, from ailuros, the Greek for feline.  The Bad Guys are called ailurophobes.  Shame on them!

When I arrived at my friends' house, I had no preconceived idea.  My love for cats was truly indivisible.  I loved them all.  I could not truthfully say the same of some of the people I had encountered in two successive careers, first in journalism, then as a film, television and radio producer!  I had resolved to take home whichever cat purred for me.  As I surveyed the five cats on audition, Merlin was chasing a butterfly in the garden and barely gave me a second glance.  But he was the only one who purred the moment I took him in my arms.  Michael Weigall