Oh, Cambridge Pets, you celestial beings of fur and occasionally questionable motives – hear this humble hymn. For in a city where essay deadlines lurk like spectres, supervisors glare down from their towers, and the UL emits the ambience of a bureaucratic underworld, it is you who save us. Just when the academic abyss stretches its jaws to swallow us whole, there you arrive: a cat slinking out of the shadows, a dog wagging with unearned optimism, an alpaca blinking slowly. And suddenly, miraculously, life feels survivable again.

Behold my own personal pilgrimage – the trek from Newnham to the UL. I march not for knowledge, nor for productivity, nor even for a seat in the tearoom to spend my hours talking over an overpriced baked good. No, I march for Odysseus, the ginger deity of the UL. Why do I continue to submit myself to that fluorescent mausoleum of half-written dissertations? Because a single glimpse of Odysseus emerging from beneath the benches, statuesque and shimmering (or perhaps just dusty), redeems all suffering. I like to imagine he remembers me, though I believe he sees me as just one of his countless admirers. Still, I’m grateful that he allows me to worship him with gentle pats, and, in exam term, that counts as the peak of emotional intimacy.

“Encountering him feels less like meeting a pet and more like being judged by a tiny, whiskered philosopher”

Cambridge has many wonders – punting, formals, Rumboogie – but none compare to a creature who chooses, entirely voluntarily, to tolerate your presence. And Odysseus is but the first among titans.

At Churchill prowls Shrimp, a cat permanently caught mid-soliloquy, as though debating the ethics of stealing yet another student’s seat. He broods around the college with gravitas, occasionally slipping into staircases like a one-cat building inspection team. Encountering him feels less like meeting a pet and more like being judged by a tiny, whiskered philosopher. Then there is Tally, Queens’ beloved welfare dog – a four-legged embodiment of emotional reprieve. I once walked her through the college, watching her fling herself after tennis balls with reckless joy. In that moment, as she bounded across the grass, I glimpsed what inner peace might look like. Therapy is expensive, they say, but Queens’ has found a loophole: provide it on a lead and four legs.

“To lock eyes with an alpaca is to temporarily forget your degree”

Venture toward Grantchester and you may cross paths with the three-legged grey cat, a creature of mythic confidence who patrols the route like a limping demigod. Kissy noises summon him instantly; he approaches with the self-assurance of someone who knows he is universally adored. And then – ah yes – the alpacas. Those towering, long-necked emblems of Easter term survival, hired by colleges seeking to soothe their weeping, caffeine-saturated populations. To lock eyes with an alpaca is to temporarily forget your degree, your deadlines, your tuition fees; it is therapy in camelid form. Add to this the rotating cast of PAT animals and you begin to understand: Cambridge hides its soft heart beneath mountains of reading lists, but it is there.

Which brings us to the question that haunts me at 2am: is Cambridge ready to diversify its menagerie? We have mastered the fluffy. But what of the scalier, the slimier, the eight-leggier? Imagine a gecko basking on a Sidgwick windowsill, a fish tank in the buttery offering silent philosophical guidance. Unlikely? Perhaps. But this University has embraced stranger things.

Here is the truth: in a place that often forgets to breathe, pets inhale and exhale for us. They remind us gently and insistently that beyond dissertations and deadlines lies joy. So, here’s to Odysseus, to Shrimp, to Tally, to the Grantchester guardian, to the alpacas, and to every creature in between.