Real stories · The present that finally beat the candle

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The present that finally beat the candle — that's what this odd, wonderful thing turned out to be. I'm 67, and buying presents for friends my age is quietly impossible: everyone has everything, so we hand each other candles and hand cream in an endless polite circle. My friend Lorraine — devoted to her two cats in a way her family has learned to accept — was turning 70, and I refused to buy a fourth candle.

What I wanted was something she'd actually keep out on display, not put in the cupboard with the others.

Then I found the Eleanor from a small boutique called Matilda & Rose — a cat head sculpture in glossy black with green glass eyes, and it looked like nothing I'd ever seen in a gift shop.

In real life it's better than the photographs. The surface is a deep glossy black run through with fine gold veining — each one varies slightly, which the boutique says openly, so no two are quite the same — and the eyes are the real trick: proper glass, a vivid green that catches whatever light the room has, so it seems to follow you rather pleasingly around the room. It's a compact display size, so it sits happily on a shelf, a console or a mantelpiece without demanding the whole room, and it works in an ordinary house like mine, not just some minimalist flat.

Glossy black with fine gold veining and those extraordinary green glass eyes that catch the light — it sits on the shelf looking like it cost five times what it did, and every single visitor picks it up.

Lorraine unwrapped it, went quiet for a second, and then said 'oh, THAT's staying out'. It now sits between her cat photographs on the bookshelf, and she reports that every visitor picks it up. Meanwhile I'd been so taken with it that I ordered a second one for my own hallway table, where it supervises the keys. Even my husband, who notices nothing, asked where 'the cat thing' came from.

It was in the — down from the usual — which is candle money, for something that gets kept forever. I'd checked I could send it back if it looked cheap in real life — you can, within 30 days, and the delivery's free — but it never crossed my mind again. It comes in five eye colours.

If you also have a cat-mad friend with a birthday coming — or a hallway that needs a bit of character — do treat yourself to a look. The Eleanor is rated out of 5 by more than twelve hundred buyers, it's in the Anniversary Sale instead of , and the green eyes seem to be everyone's favourite.