We have a friend staying with us at the moment, and George hears his car door closing, and waits by the door for him to come in. I think he probably wants him to take him walkies.

However, his likeness to a Kliban cat is unmistakable. If you don’t know Kliban, he was the American cartoonist who inspired people like Gary Larson, and among many other things, he produced the book Cat, which was full of drawings that captured the very essence of Cat, as the title suggests, but also, of course, the essence of people. His official website is at www.eatmousies.com - take a look, and you’ll see what I mean. His cats were tabbies, and the photograph of George and the flowers is exactly like a Kliban cartoon, right down to the wicked glint in his eye.

The flowers were just one of the many bouquets of flowers that Una got for her 65th birthday – she had to buy an emergency vase for one lot! Anyway, as the photo suggests, George was more than a little interested in them, and the flowers he is menacing did indeed end up on the floor, with water dripping off (and into) the chess table, a couple of days later.

He hadn’t, however, taken any real notice of any of the others. But one day I got up to find that another vaseful had met its maker. They had been on a small round table which has been in the family for generations. It’s the kind of table with a top that folds down so that it can be kept flat against a wall, and its mechanism was repaired and the table French-polished a few years ago. It’ll have to be polished again now; he must be the most expensive cat we’ve ever had!

He’s still getting bigger – he can now reach the work top when he stands on his hind legs, which he is very given to doing. In fact, as Una observed the other day – he can reach further than he can jump, because jumping isn’t something George is awfully good at. He has something not quite right with one eye, so I think he finds judging distance a bit difficult.

If he starts going out, he’ll produce rumours of the Beast of Corby, I’m sure. At the moment, he says out is literally for the birds. He likes to watch them through the glass door of the conservatory, but if you open the door for him, he just sits there. Maybe when the warm weather’s back, he’ll venture out again. We’ll see.