treating a cat

How to give your cat her treatment for an ear infection:

1. Hunt all over the flat, find cat curled under your bed, dead centre
2. Try and sweet-talk cat out, she ignores you
3. Significant Other goes round other side of the bed and starts moving shoes and backpacks
4. Cat runs into the hall through your legs, you give chase, cat runs back to bedroom to be scooped up by Significant Other
5. Significant Other sits on the sofa, cat held firmly but gently in his arms
6. You approach them sideways, bottle of gunk-clearing liquid in your hands
7. Cat looks at you reproachfully - she never thought you would be the bad guy
8. Your heart breaks a little as you squirt liquid into her ear and "massage" in for 10 seconds
9. Cat shakes her head, liquid lands on Significant Other's lips.
10. Cat and Significant Other both look at you reproachfully
11. You put a bunched-up wad of cotton wool in your cat's ear, gently swirl, withdraw it covered in ear gunk
12. You repeat with the other ear, this time you cat shakes her head and expels the wad of cotton wool with which you were cleaning her.
13. Ear gunk lands on your cream-coloured dress, but still you and Significant Other think she's been very funny and cute
14. Significant Other puts cat down, she stares at you both in outrage and stalks off to the kitchen to await your apologetic offering of a snack
    
15. It's an hour later and time for the second stage - ear drops
16. You search for the cat, she's not under the bed or behind any curtains. She is finally found under the spare room bed, squashed up against the wall behind all those boxes you haven't quite got round to unpacking since you moved in 11 years ago
    
17. Significant Other makes to scoop her out, she cries, Significant Other gets upset, cat senses her advantage and makes a run for it
18. This time you catch her, she struggles, you get a long scratch on one arm
19. Significant Other takes her, she snuggles into his body, you feel both betrayed and betrayer
20. You put in the ear drops and "massage" her ears, and she is free to go
21. She belly-crawls under the bed, you feel dreadful, five minutes later you hear crunching from the kitchen where she is wolfing down the remains of her earlier snack
22. You go to the bathroom to apply S@vlon to your bleeding arm and then -
    
23. What you have been distracted from most of the evening stares at you
24. An HPT all ready and waiting for the morning...
25. And, after 2 weeks of waiting, you suddenly don't want to take it because then you'll know - and you won't be able to pretend to yourself any longer...