I knocked The Cat that boasts two genders off the second floor window

The Cat has been on antibiotics for the past two weeks — of which, more anon — which means that I’m back to night feeds (small portions being the only way to ensure the hidden pills get scoffed) and the sort of tetchy, broken sleep pattern that you no longer wear so well in the wrong half of your fifties. So when she knocks on my bedroom window seeking admission to the house and a square meal for the third time that night, my fuse is a few inches shorter than it should be. Which is probably why I open the window a split second too early. And knock her off the second storey window sill and onto the driveway below. It takes less than a moment to play out but the expression of shock on her face and the tiny, alarmed yelp that escapes her as she falls will honestly stay with me forever.

A fortnight earlier, the drama was more feature length. It was The Youngest who first notices it, the slight swelling on one side of The Cat’s face coupled with a general reluctance to go outside. We keep an eye on her for a couple of days and then, on Sunday morning, we both notice the smell. An unmistakable infection. I phone the veterinary ED at UCD and as soon as I mention a fight and a bite, they tell me to bring her in straight away.

She doesn’t travel well, The Cat. I thought they were all a bit that way inclined but as we sit in the waiting room, The Cat crying plaintively from within her carrier, a young woman bounces in with another (silent) cat carrier and informs the receptionist she’s been called in because her superior cat is a blood donor. I am so impressed in that moment, and also embarrassed at the absolute state of my cat and the rackety giving out coming out of her.

Eventually, they take her in to the examination rooms and I am briefly grateful for the silence. Then she is back, and a very disappointed vet is telling me that The Cat behaved appallingly throughout the process and was essentially un-examinable. She describes the special harness they had to put her in, and how even that didn’t prevent her from putting up the sort of spirited fight no vet wants to encounter on a Sunday afternoon. But they have managed to pump her full of drugs and shave half her face, so the experience is not without its comedy value. ‘You should probably get your own vet to check him in a week,’ the angry vet concludes, ‘because we couldn’t examine him at all.’ Sensing she believes The Cat’s behaviour to be a failing on my part, I apologise. ‘He’s semi-feral,’ I explain. ‘Semi?!’ she snorts like a healthy horse.

A week later, our vet checks her over and she behaves like a, well, a pussycat. The vet has had an email from UCD — ‘I hear he behaved very badly’ — which I assume had the subject line, ‘horrible cat.’ Our own vet knows about the gender fluidity of The Cat, but he does remind me that for all that we spend most of our days reminding The Cat in a stupid voice that she is the best girl and the cutest baby in the world, she is in fact a semi-wild adult male cat who has ended lives and, unmistakably, started this particular fight. Flash forward to me looking at the empty window sill for a split second, absolute horror and nausea flooding my body, and then I run. Down the stairs, out the front door, muttering ‘no, no’ as I go. I am terrified of what I will find but there is no sign of her. I start calling her, trying to see under bushes in the dark to see if she’s dragged her broken body off to die away from the light now flooding the front garden. The Youngest has heard the commotion and joins me and through stricken sobs I tell her what I’ve done. Suddenly the grown up, The Youngest takes me inside and we sit on the sofa, she consoling me until we hear a familiar thump from the downstairs toilet and The Cat wanders in to see what all the fuss is about. And I hold her tight and soak her half-shaved face and give thanks that sometimes the cutest little baby girl in the world is a robust adult male who might be working his way through his nine lives like billyo, but still has one or two up his furry sleeve. And at least one of us doesn’t seem any worse for wear.