I did, however, catch his meerkat impression, prompted by the food you can see being prepared on the worktop. And he was offering the cook some help in the other shot, but I got him on his way down from his full kitchen-assistant height, rather than the position I hoped to capture. I’m sure there is a way to make the camera do what I want it to do, but I haven’t worked it out yet.

George is a great bather, so it was easy to get the ones of him washing. He has a bath every day which seems to go on for hours. Sometimes it’s completed in one place, and others – like the day I took the photographs – it starts off in one room and ends up in another.

He was actually picking that ball out of his basket of toys when I took that particular photograph, and his back view wasn’t what I set out to get in the other one, but a lot can happen between my pressing the shutter and the camera taking the photograph. They’re nice photos, though, so I thought you’d like to see them.

Despite being so big, George is still more of a kitten than a cat, and still finding things out. He has now discovered (rather to his irritation) that cats can’t walk and scratch their chins at the same time. I smugly pointed out to him that people can. Finally! Something we do with more grace than felines.

But it would have to be something as inherently ungraceful as scratching our chins, wouldn’t it?