Dear Readers, I’ve been keeping a close eye on our toothless, fourteen year-old, recently adopted cat during the many, many heatwaves that we’ve been having. It’s been bad enough being a human when the temperature comes close to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be completely covered in long fur. However, Abbie seems to like the heat for most of the time, seeking out the hottest parts of the house, and only occasionally throwing herself onto the floorboards for a cool-down.

She is a very stately lady for most of the time, but occasionally she takes it into her head to throw around a toy mouse, and then she sometimes falls asleep cuddling it.

She loves to be brushed, which is just as well – she’s had a few episodes of being sick, which I think are largely down to the hair that she’s ingested when she’s been cleaning herself. We’ve been feeding her a half and half mixture of Sheba and Digestive Sensitivity food, but today we’re moving onto just the Sensitivity stuff, which seemed a bit bland for her taste  – the first time we served it, she gave us one of those ‘what on earth is this?’ looks and walked away in disgust. Fortunately she’s eaten it all this morning, so fingers crossed.

‘What the hell is this?’

She also seems to know to the minute when it’s time for her evening feed, and fixes me with a death-stare. If that doesn’t work, she adds in a plaintive miaow, as below. Poor starved cat who nobody feeds!

Anyhow, it’s fair to say that she’s settled in nicely, though she was extremely cross on Tuesday when we shut her in a room for an hour while the cleaner was here with her scary vacuum cleaner. Upon being released, she hissed at my poor husband (who is the one that usually feeds her, by the way), and continued to hiss at him every time she saw him for twenty-four hours. However, they’re back on good terms now, so fingers crossed the rapprochement continues. She really is a very fine cat indeed.