Consider a used or refurbished Mac.
You can run Catalina natively on any late 2012 or later Mac.
If you shop on the open market, look to see if any warranty comes with it.
Ask your credit card company if they offer any warranty.
Consider Apple's same as cash financing of 6-12 months with Barclay Visa.
dvwarehouse.com and Macsales.com have many refurbished Macs for sale and are both reputable vendors.
Consider getting Paypal credit which you can pay off in six months as well.
Be mindful that emails from Paypal are not necessarily legit. It is better to check your Paypal website with your own secure login to ensure that the messages are genuinely from Paypal.
There are older Macs that can "run" Catalina as documented on:
http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
However, this hack is not supported by Apple, and has for some left machines that have weird graphics card anomalies trying to keep up with the new drawing routines. If you go any route, a good solid backup program is recommended.
Note: Microsoft does allow running any version of Windows on a Mac. It is Mac OS X which will only run on Apple made hardware.