No one told me that being a big brother would be such a source of worry. I’m worn out with the sheer expense of emotional energy.

First of all, last Tuesday morning we didn’t get our milk or our breakfast. Instead, while I was left alone with my neurosis, the Rory and the Mum put Ellie into her plastic cage (held together with a bungee cord, like everything else in this family) and strolled off with her. The Mum came back in half an hour, sans cage, sans cat, sans everything except a loaf of bread, and I didn’t see poor Ell until Wednesday.

And then what a state she was in! Some ferocious creature had obviously launched a violent attack – a great big circle of fur was missing from her side and in the centre of the bald patch was an unmistakable stitched-up wound. Ma pauvre petite soeur! And I wasn’t allowed to chase her.

Then on the Thursday the house-humans executed the type of volte-face they are so irritating liable to perform. After a month of extraordinary doorstop manoeuvres to prevent Ellie from going outside, they suddenly started opening the door for her and letting her wander at will. Inconsistency, thy name is homo sapiens! (Not much sapience about all that carry-on.)

Being Ellie, and grasping, inevitably, the best of both worlds (her breadbin and my bed, her milk up on the counter and mine on the floor, her dinner ditto) she not only wanders off by herself for pointless feline activities like birdwatching (she already looks a bit like Bill Oddie) but also insists on accompanying me on my walks. I don’t mind too much, she’s quite good company, especially in the puddles. (She ran through one by accident, got an awful shock, then decided it was rather good fun and splashed to and fro with an almost canine abandon.) She hasn’t much traffic sense yet though, and does insist on walking along the centre of the road, just as it reaches the blind summit. The Dad and the Mum pick her up when they can, and carry her back to our little road, which is mildly embarrassing when one meets a couple of Dalmatians, but no worse really than being accompanied by a pram.

Anyway, it was all bound to end in tears, and on Monday night, with the rain splooshing down and the wind howling off the hills, Ellie didn’t come home. The Dad and I went out countless times to look for her but to no avail and the family sat around saying, ‘She’ll be all right. Of course she’ll be all right.’ and agreeing with one another, which made the whole conversation somewhat pointless (though now I come to think of it, no more so than most human speech.)

And of course she was all right, waiting at the back door in the morning with a piercing miaow and asleep on the sofa for most of the time from then until now. I hope they know what all this is doing to my blood pressure. I’m not a young dog, you know.