All I can say is – help!

My husband is well, ready to come home and complete the current course of oral antibiotics here. Everything was going smoothly yesterday – when someone phoned social services, to re-start the care they provide, and found that they have cancelled it on the grounds that my husband had been 72 hours in hospital which wasn't even true. The whole process has to start again.

The hospital is as angry and frustrated as we are. They were going to try a phone call from a senior consultant. I don't know if that has been attempted yet, but I can't see even a senior consultant getting very far where Ketki has failed.

So the only thing to do is to see if the private company which has been providing us with some extra care all along, can cover getting-up-in-the-morning and going-to-bed, which is what social services had been doing. I'll phone them as soon as the office opens.

However, that is trivial compared to my other problem. I was sitting at the kitchen table just now, pulling myself together to face a difficult day, and Perdita was wandering around the room looking for mischief to get into. She got onto the refrigerator and then onto a high shelf and knocked off an old bean pot. It fell with a considerable crash and some breakage.

And the cat is gone.

I can understand her cowering somewhere to recover for a moment. But she's gone. She isn't responding to my calls, as she always does, especially at meal times and even if she's asleep somewhere. She isn't still up on the high shelf. She isn't lying dead behind the refrigerator – I moved it to look, and now can't get it back. She's not a cuddly cat, but she's a very social one and always prefers to be where people are. And of people, I think, prefers me.

There's no knitting to report anyway. If I am mortally ill, the first thing I've got to do is finish the Dunfallandy blankie so I'd better get back to that today.

Oh, pussy! Where are you?