‘Let them eat cake.’

Have you ever collected a sample for a urine test – from a cat? I have – twice.

I’m sure Dusty, our previous cat, although a feisty little madam, did the deed with little fuss. Mr Perkins made a whole song and dance about it.

I cleaned the litter tray – one of those enclosed ones, more of a box, to limit the mess – thoroughly, and set it up for him last night with the special environmentally unfriendly plastic cat litter and locked and blocked the cat flap. Then I waited.

At about half past eight this morning, Mr Pandammonium informed me that Mr Perkins was in the litter box.

There was no weeing, though.

He came back out and went to go behind the telly. He was retrieved from behind the telly and put back in the kitchen.

His face when I shut the door!

After thirty to forty minutes of pushing encouraging Mr Perkins into the litter box, him digging then coming out and trying to get past the litter box to the cat flap, we shut him in the kitchen (with food and water) and left him to it.

That’s when the miaowing started. Oh, the miaowing!

When I finally couldn’t bear the miaowing any longer, I went back in and repeated the my process. He repeated his process. When there seemed to be more cat litter on the floor than in the tray, I left him to it again.

More miaowing.

Then silence.

Then digging. Lots of digging. Or clattering and scraping. What was he doing in there?

Mr Pandammonium came out from the den and went in the kitchen.

Mr Perkins had pushed the enclosed cat litter tray out of the way of the cat flap, and was trying to get out of the locked cat flap.

I put the litter tray end-on in front of the flap and left the boys to it.

‘He’s weeing!’

I went back in. He must have been bursting. I’m not surprised: this was nearly three hours later.

I used the pipette to transfer a sample into the test tube. The instructions say to take the sample to the vet as soon as possible, so I left, leaving Mr Pandammonium to clean up the litter tray.

Mr Perkins’ timing doesn’t coincide with the vet’s opening hours, so I had to go to the other branch, further away.

Sample deposited, I went to Ely to treat myself to a nice lunch in Prosper. They had an electrical fault in the kitchen.

‘We can only serve drinks and cakes.’

I had a slice of sticky maple and pecan pie; later some crisps; later still, some carrot cake.

I faffed about with stuff for my writing group, then had a scribble chat with one of my characters. I’d been in the middle of a crucial conversation. One character asked the other something about themself, but I didn’t know the answer. Hence the chat to get to know this character better, so I can answer any question thrown at them.

When I got to a natural lull in the conversation, I went to a shop I wanted to look at earrings in. I was a couple of yards away when I remembered it was shut on Mondays. I remembered about an Asian grocery shop I wanted to visit, back the other way. Shut on Mondays.

I went home.

Mr Perkins was happy to see me, despite this morning’s traumas, and is now curled up on my knee. I am to write around him.

Pilates tonight: the leisure centre is open on Mondays (except bank holiday Mondays).