You know it’s been a while when you have to search out your passport for the date of entry stamp to see what year it was when you flew across the ocean to see the last man you had sex with.  It wasn’t quite long enough for my virginity to have grown back, but certainly long enough to show that I was making no effort whatsoever to find a man to bed down with.  I thought I ought to do something about it and looked to the most immediate of resources for those on the look-out for a mate – dating sites.

Handily, there was a statistical study in a weekend supplement.  From a slightly cobbled together newspaper report, I discovered that, in dating site shots, women with cats get 24% fewer hits and women showing cleavage get 43% more. Possibly, you can offset the crazy cat (or rat, in my case) lady image by getting your breasts out.

For men, get a dog and you’ll meet 50% more women. Show your muscles and you’ll meet 45% more. Don’t know if the numbers combine, but maybe sitting a dog on your rock-hard abs will get you 95% more hits than a skinny dogless guy could ever dream of.

It says that women doing something ‘interesting’ are 48% more likely to have an online conversation with a man who contacts them. If you really want your cat in shot, possibly, being pictured trying to wrangle him down your cleavage would count as interesting. I think so, but then I’m not a man so I don’t know how they’d interpret it.

Roughly half the men I know are frightened of rats, but I don’t know whether, if I joined a dating site and had Georgia and Minnie in my picture, I’d get 50% less hits.  (From the picture above, you can see they’re adorable and not at all terrifying or carriers of a bubonic plague.)  Possibly the way in which I described the part they play in my life would influence the statistics.  While they are of intelligent and appealing companionship to me, the only time they’ve ever been involved in an encounter with a man was when I set Georgia on a friend after he’d told me, if I weren’t ‘such a slut and a doormat’, I’d be with The Texan I’d lusted after forever and ever (wrong on all counts, but gin does give you the clarity to pronounce yourself judge, jury, and executioner on all matters of other people’s relationships, don’t you know).  Anyway, Georgia zipped along the sofa and onto his lap; he shrieked and hid in the bathroom until I assured him she was safely back in her cage.  He now calls in advance of any visits to make sure she’s not on the prowl, with nothing better to do but launch herself at his throat, draw and quarter him.

‘Online flirting’ (whatever the hell that is) gets you 7% more hits so maybe a bit of cleavage, fluttering my eyelashes and making Georgia and Minnie look especially fluffy would make me a less terrifying proposition.

If I test it, I’ll let you know.  Any tips on persuading rats to nestle snuggly in a Wonderbra while not obscuring my breasts would be gratefully received.