Home is where the cat is...

Please don't ask me where home is. It's a question I just don't know how to answer.

For the last 18 years I've lived happily in London. But this year, for some reason, I'm feeling confused. London is a home but is it home?

Maybe home is where my Mum and Dad, brother, cousins, nieces and grandparents live in Australia. Maybe home is Germany; where I was born, where my family come from. Maybe home is the UK, where almost all my friends live, where I work, where I feel connected. Maybe home is somewhere else completely, with someone I haven't discovered yet? I don't know. I only know I'm confused.

In a bid to find out what home means and where I belong I'm taking a year out. I'm going back to all my homes. I'm going to talk to friends and strangers about home and what it means to them. I want to find my space in the world.

So I rent out my London apartment. I put my furniture, my paintings, my favourite bits and pieces, everything that makes a house a home, into storage. I pack some clothes into my backpack and I'm ready to go. Everything is sorted, everything except my cat Guinness who has lived with me for 14 years and who is sitting in my nearly empty flat, watching me pack with suspicion in his eyes.

Three days before I'm due to leave my ex-husband comes round with a cat basket and a promise to look after Guinness for better and for worse, in sickness and in health and this time round I believe him.

I put the cat in the basket. 'A lovely new home, my sweet,' I tell him. 'You're going to a lovely new home.' And in the blink of an eye he's gone.

The next day I come home from work and put thekey in the door. I'm looking for Guinness waiting for him to come purring around my legs, ready to be picked up, be petted and fed. But of course he's not here.

The evening draws to night. I potter about but all I'm conscious of is the fact that the cat isn't where he's supposed to be: round my legs while I'm cooking dinner; on my lap while I'm watching TV, on the edge of the sofa looking wide-eyed into the night as I'm getting ready for bed.

And it dawns on me, slowly, that home, at least in part, is where the cat is.