Is it just me, or do vets not know their arses from their elbows these days? There I was, right, sat on the vet’s examination table – not a happy pussy, I tell you – and he’s banging on about how I’ve got furballs and wotnot. Furballs? Does NOBODY understand me? I’m bulemic, for the love of God. I eat, I puke, I stay slim. How else do you think I’ve got myself into this fine, slimline state? Furballs, indeed.

And what do my stupid owners do? They’re calling me “poor tiddles” and other such nonsense, and asking the vet if there’s anything he can give me. What next? Suppositories? What a joke. So apparently I’m on a prescription that they’re going to hide in my food that will break down the furballs and make them easier to expel. A prescription that I will eat, and oh yes I will eat it – looking happy as Larry – I might purr a bit – rub my face up against their legs to make them think they’ve done right by me, and then I’ll go and puke it up in the back garden.

You see, I’m a slimline cat. I’m not like those fat cats that loll around the back garden barely able to shift their huge girths so that they can catch a bird or a mouse or something. Nup, those fat cats get fed shitloads of sachet food whereas I’m a biscuits kinda guy. Or at least, I was a guy until they chopped my nads off. Now I’m a biscuits kinda eunech-cat. But I’m slimline and I’m staying that way. The girls like me that way, too. Not that I can do anything about it, but hey.

That’s why, whenever I eat something, I make sure that most of it comes right back up. And I’ve been doing it for months – nobody suspected a thing until my stupid owner’s five-year-old stupid child overheard me the other day. There I was, having a good old retch behind the bins, and she runs back in, yelling “Mr Tiddles is being sick! Mr Tiddles is being sick!”

So, naturally, I pegged it. Well what else does a cat do when its owners are coming for it? You run, don’t you. After all, being a slimline cat isn’t all vomiting and bulemia – there’s a lot of exercise involved too. So there I was, hiding out in the neighbours’ garage for a couple of days, and I thought to myself – hey, I can’t go vomming because they might hear me. So I had to hold back on the old bulemia – found myself putting on a few pounds, so I thought – what the heck, let’s have a puke. That’s when they caught me.

Oh, and they were all nice about it, too, stroking my head (God I hate that, you’d think that a wagging tail might be an indicator) and telling me that they’ve missed me. But what happened then? Straight to the man in white for a thermometer up the arse and the rather wild diagnosis that I have furballs.

Furballs, my arse.