My hands and arms are lacerated. I have masses of scratches all down them and they are sore and itch like mad. Why? Pickle is on a course of antibiotics.

I feel a little embarrassed to admit such difficulty in giving her such medication because I learnt how to put pills quickly and easily down cats’ throats when I was in my late teens and up to now that method has worked without any problems. But, of course, this is the first time I’ve tried to put a pill down Pickle’s throat. It was only after she and her brother became members of our family that the two of them developed completely different personalities. This didn’t surprise me excessively: every cat I’ve ever known has been their own “person” and with a personality to match. So when it became clear that Pickle is grumpy, demands to be stroked and then when she decides she’s had enough then bites the person stroking them and is the very opposite of a lap cat I thought it was just the sort of cat she is. She is also very intelligent – the usual methods to trick a cat don’t work on her. (The rest of the family calls her Bin Laden, after Osama…. .) I’ve seen her send off a much larger fox that had the temerity to stray into our garden while she was sunning herself outside. But at a routine visit to the vet for her annual vaccinations there was a conversation about how grumpy she was – I think she was trying to attack the vet at the time – and I was surprised when the vet said that she was like this because she is a tortoise-shell. Up to then it had never occurred to me that the colour and pattern of a cat’s coat could have any influence on their personality but he says that he has never known a pleasant tortie, that they are very all very difficult to deal with and bad tempered. Certainly she is a completely different personality from her laid back but lethal (to the local bird, rodent and squirrel population only) brother, Nimrod the Mighty Hunter. He has always treated her with respect but it is obvious seeing them together that she is the boss of the two.

Dealing with Pickle up to now has been easy because she has never been ill and so the only trouble has been catching her and battling to thrust her into the cat basket for her annual vaccinations at the vet’s surgery. However, she is almost 14 years old and it became clear to me recently that she was not well. Pickle has always been a very large cat, not in terms of her body size – she has a much smaller frame than her brother or, indeed most other adult cats – but because of the vast amount of cat food she eats: she’s always been fat. But about four weeks ago she began to lose weight and she has continued to do so. Now she is almost skeletal. So a visit to the vets became necessary and we went on Monday. Blood and urine samples were taken from her and tests taken. At the moment the vet is convinced there is something the matter but he isn’t quite sure what and so as a start she is on a 10 day course of antibiotics, one pill twice a day at that, to get rid of the infection in her system before he investigates further.

What hadn’t occurred to me was that despite her clearly not being well she has more then enough spirit to fight me off. I work on the principle that I am bigger than her and am doing something that is necessary for her health. But all the usual methods of getting pills down a normal cat’s throat don’t work on her. Now I am swathing her in a towel to try to keep her claws under control, wedging her bottom into the back of the sofa so she can’t run away and trying to force open jaws that she is doing her best to force shut.

I wish I could say that great fun is being had by all but, of course, it is not. I have to do this, she is part of our family and this is necessary medication to try to make her better. I just wish she would realise it’s for her own benefit. However as a result I am a mass of scratches, something that is likely to continue for the next 8 days until the course of antibiotics is finished.