MY STRESS LEVELS HAD GONE THROUGH THE ROOF

Julia BRaMBle, 56, runs her own social media consultancy and lives in devon with her husband simon, a 57-year-old retired civil servant. They have six children and many animals including cat smudge, 12. she says:

SHORTLY after lockdown last year, I noticed that Smudge was being a bit more vocal and having little accidents around the house. Then I spotted some blood in her urine and that worried me, so I took her to the vet.

He told me it was cystitis brought on by stress and asked if anyone in the house felt anxious as it can be passed on to cats. Well, my home had gone from hosting our fairly controllable threechild family, with three more living away, to suddenly having two of the older ones back home during lockdown. I was under a huge amount of pressure, wondering if I would be able to buy enough food.

We had to home-school and I was worried about the children — would they graduate, how would Covid affect their end-of-term shows — not to mention the effect of the pandemic in general.

In addition, I was working on an NHS project and had to be on social media all the time listening to horror stories about health care and as a chair of governors at a school that had just had Ofsted in, I realise now the burden of stress had gone through the roof. I hadn’t known that humans can pass on their anxiety to their pets and felt bad about it, although I was more concerned that I wouldn’t be able to give Smudge the calm environment she was used to and needed.

The vet gave her some antibiotics, antiinflammatory pills and pain relief to make her more comfortable, and I created a space for her on the landing upstairs with a new scratching post with a seat on it and water fountain for her — which she looked at but never used.

Thankfully, after about three weeks she was back to her normal, loving self.