Louis Catorze returned on Wednesday afternoon from his jolly day out at the vet’s TW3 branch. And he was rather more annoyed with Cat Daddy (as he’s the one who dropped him off and collected him) than with me, so I made the most of the very rare opportunity to be the favourite human, for a change. This lasted a whopping minute and a half before normal service resumed.

Le Roi has had biopsies from 4 areas of his face and is looking very battle-scarred as a result. He has to go back to the vet next week to have the stitches removed. Until then we must be even more vigilant with him than ever before, because we discovered – the hard way – that he can scratch his stitches when we take the front section off Le Cône.

We also have to give him 4ml of Metacam a day with food and, as you are well aware, he wasn’t that bothered about food even when he was fully well. So getting Metacam into a grumpy cat who never liked food very much anyway, who is experiencing post-op appetite loss and who would, most likely, go on hunger strike just to get back at us, is going to be quite some challenge.

We will, of course, update you in 3-5 days’ time when the results come in. In the meantime, to cheer us up a little, here is a picture (taken before Sa Maj’s troubles started) which is my ace of spades in response to anyone who refuses to believe how daft he is. Yes, he did spend 5 whole minutes staring out of a closed shutter: