How to Choose Your First Pointer: The Advanced Course

In our earlier guide, we explained how to choose your first pointer. Several readers wrote back to say that they had chosen, and that they now had questions. This is the advanced course, for those who have discovered that pointers are not all the same, which is true if you squint.

Lesson one: weight

A heavier pointer is a pointer that feels serious. A lighter pointer is easier for the human hand to hold for an hour, which is how long a cat can play before looking at the clock. If your pointer feels like a pen, it is a pen. We cannot help you with this.

Lesson two: button feel

Some pointers click. Some do not. A click is the audible assurance that the dot is now live, and cats know the sound. We have clients whose cats leave the room at the click, and others who arrive from three floors away. The cat in the first group knows something you do not.

Lesson three: the grip

Your grip decides your wrist, and your wrist decides the dot. A high grip produces a stately, floating dot. A low grip produces what our trade calls a “scurry”. A loose grip produces a dot that wobbles, which cats find insulting, as though you are making fun of their reflexes.

Lesson four: beam colour

We covered this in an earlier FAQ. It is red. Please stop asking.

Lesson five: the case

A good case keeps your pointer clean, safe, and out of reach of a cat who has worked out what is in the drawer. A bad case is a sock. We have seen both. We do not judge, although Pinpoint does, and he has a look he gives.

Your homework

Before your next purchase, please complete the following:

• Hold three pointers in the shop. Say nothing to the cat.
• Switch each one on and ask yourself, honestly, whether you will use it more than twice.
• Buy the one you feel least guilty about.
• Keep the receipt, because you will be back.

Graduation

Upon completing this course you will have the confidence to choose a pointer, and the humility to use it for nine days and then put it on the shelf. This is the circle of life. It is also the reason we are still in business.