It’s A Funny Old World: Jane Wenham Jones

Sitting in a waiting room with damp hair and no make-up, in a pair of old tracksuit bottoms and a jumper that’s seen better days, it’s only when I catch sight of myself in the glass doors that I even notice my attire. I wouldn’t venture forth like this to put the bins out!

When I go to the doctor’s, I layer on the slap, even if I feel at death’s door. For a dental check-up, I’ll be in heels.

But today I am at the vet’s. And, as I glance around me, everyone else is also clad on a scale from seriously dressed-down to bag lady.

Our tatty ensembles, I realise, reflect the unspoken acknowledgement that nobody is looking at us. We are here for our animals – and they are more important than statement jewellery, socks that match or anything approaching style.

The attractive woman next to me sports a shapeless skirt, a pair of scruffy trainers and a haunted expression. We exchange sympathetic glances as she peers anxiously into her cat box, and I make encouraging noises at mine.

I’ve only had my own feline, Nuggett, for a few months, but already I greet him first as I walk through the door, kiss him last when I go to bed. Like all soppy cat owners I view him as my baby – my best little boy.

I offended my adult son by confessing I worried more about leaving the new kitten in the early weeks than I used to when I dropped him at the childminder’s. Although, at least when I took my toddler to the doctor’s, I’d wield a comb and apply lipstick, mainly in the vain hope I’d pass for a vaguely competent mother. For at the doctor’s, of course, you frown and tut if a supposedly sick child runs riot (which mine frequently did).

But, when a couple arrive here in what look like their gardening clothes, and their dog keeps up a persistently loud yapping, there is a round of indulgent smiles. If an old boy with a smoker’s cough at the GP’s were hacking like this, we’d be twitching with irritation.

In the humans’ surgery, one avoids eye contact. At the vet’s it is de rigueur to show an interest. ‘Oh dear, what’s wrong?’ I hear myself gush at the small boy and his dishevelled parent, despite having zero investment in gerbils and their potential digestive problems.

‘He’s here for The Op,’ I confide back in lowered tones, noting my chipped nail varnish as I put a reassuring finger through the bars towards a now scowling Nuggett, who takes a last, longing look at a pretty silver tabby.

‘Bless him,’ I say brightly, as an enormous, snarling hound knocks all the leaflets on the floor with his tail. His keeper hasn’t shaved and has mud on his shoes.

We all seem to have arrived early, but for a certain ‘Pooky-choo’, who is clearly late. One feels the ripple of disapproval as the nurse shouts round in vain. After the third call, a woman in wellingtons bursts through the door with a basket in her arms, gasping that she couldn’t park. The entire waiting room murmurs in sympathy beneath the shrill barks of the still-yappy one.

Pooky-choo turns out to be a white rat who’s off his food. His owner hasn’t brushed her hair…

‘‘‘Bless him,” I say brightly, as an enormous, snarling hound knocks all the leaflets on the floor with his tail’