Sphinx

I’m feeling shamed by one of the cats. Admittedly this isn’t entirely a new experience – they regularly regard me with deep reproach, especially when I’ve abandoned them to go off to some conference or other, and occasionally reinforce the message by pissing on my trouser leg – but this is rather different, as it’s about their mark example. Hector has been with us barely a month; he had an infection as a very small kitten and lost the sight in his right eye, but that didn’t seem to slow him down at all. However, on Saturday night we came home to find his eye was oozing unpleasant stuff, and the vet’s response next morning was to suck in her teeth like the mechanic who’s just been inspecting your car engine to work out why it’s been making funny noises. So, yesterday morning Hector was straight in for a very expensive operation, and now… Trigger Warning: don’t click on ‘read more’ unless you’re prepared for gruesomeness…

And other than looking like he’s at the stage in the supervillain origin story where he vows vengeance on the world and starts constructing a costume, he’s absolutely fine – eating like a horse, charging round the place, jumping on the other cats (whose phase of being pleased to have him back lasted about ten minutes). It puts my current struggle to form joined-up sentences with occasional footnotes into perspective, and I’d be quite inspired to get this bloody chapter finally finished if I wasn’t having to spend time cooking him chicken and generally fussing over him…