Couple early to Ed Sheeran concert kill time by visiting animal shelter and end up adopting a ginger cat

It’s not uncommon to go to a concert and end up buying knockoff band tees, merchandise, and whatever other memorabilia you can find.

A cat is probably not one of the things you can take away.

But when Tiffany McClure and her husband David from Iowa, U.S, went to see an Ed Sheeran concert in Chicago, they ended up taking home a beautiful ginger cat.

The couple was early to their dinner reservation before the gig and wandered the streets, walking past the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society, an animal adoption fixture in downtown Chicago for over 100 years.

With large clear windows that revealed the dozens of kitties lounging around, it’s hard for anyone to not get enamoured by them.

‘We just intended to see some cats and then eat dinner,’ Tiffany explained to Metro.co.uk.

‘We walked into the Senior Cat Room, where all their cats over age ten were wandering around and when I say wandering, I mean sleeping. They’re cats.

‘Several cats opened their eyes to look us up and down in judgment (again—cats), and then this orange cat curled up in a bed got up, stretched, and waltzed up to my husband and demanded in no uncertain terms to be picked up.

‘So my husband scooped him up (he’s very obedient—my husband, not the cat), and the aforementioned cat wound himself around his neck and literally refused all efforts to remove himself.’

Coincidently, there was also a pet supply store across the road. So naturally, Tiffanny and David decided to adopt the 10-year-old cat, naming him Ferdinand.

The couple was then able to enjoy the concert, content with the knowledge that a cat could accompany them home.

Tiffany said: ‘We enjoyed dinner and Ed Sheeran, a ginger, in concert and departed Chicago for home with our own ginger in our car.

‘The cat spent the entire three-hour ride home shedding on my lap and meowing loudly at the cornfields.’

But Ferdinand was going to have to share his new mum and dad’s affection, for there was already a kitty at home, Princess Petunia Snowblossom Buttercup (a grey cat who is ‘a wee bit spoiled)

They also have a dog.

Tiffany’s 13-year-old daughter Alyssa and Ferdinand are BFFs now and are inseparable from one other.

‘He will never ever sit beside her,’ explained Tiffany.

‘It has to be on her, or nothing. If she is absent (such as tonight when she had the unmitigated gall to go to a sleepover), he reluctantly will accept me as a poor substitute, as long as it is with the understanding that when the 13-year old teenage girl returns, I am nothing to him.’

The family now can’t imagine life without Ferdinand who loves bacon, sleeps folded up, and has even become quite the hit at church.

Tiffany now urges others to care for elderly cats who are just as cute and loving as kittens.

‘I’ve had several cats in my life from kittens on up. And Ferdi is my first senior adoption and I can tell you right now: I will never adopt a kitten again.

‘This is the most loving, laid back, purring, hilarious floof I’ve ever met—and multiple people who have met him have admitted to wanting to steal him (one actually had him in a coat pocket and tried to sneak out the door).’

Good thing they didn’t go through with it.