The thing about urges is that I'm powerless to resist them. Which is why I ran out of chocolate eggs before Easter Monday. But it also explains why my little cat Chloe (which is Greek for "bloomin' hairy") has now been successfully defurred, and is frolicking about the place like a spring lamb.

← This is how she looked on Thursday, stretched out in the warmth of a late April afternoon, and clearly suffering from heat exhaustion under the weight of all that fur...

And here she is forty-eight hours later, looking... um... slightly cooler. But hey, just because she's wound up in a ball like a hibernating dormouse doesn't necessarily mean she's feeling the cold. She could just be trying to save space. And besides, it's a bank holiday weekend, so I'm sure the weather's about to get hot - she'll be fine.

What you can't see from that photo is that I managed to avoid cutting off her whiskers this time, which is a bit of a triumph, and proves that I learn from my mistakes. Although I did still spray her in the face when I gave her a shower. But as for her ear getting caught in the clippers, that was an accident, and I'm sure there's no lasting damage.

Anyhoo, she's about half her original size now, and takes up so little room that I was able to let her sleep on my bed last night without fear of losing the battle for mattress space. My in-tray is a lot emptier now too, and I could clearly fit two of her in an A4 envelope. Which if nothing else, will save on postage. But on the downside, she's now so small that every time she has a drink from her water bowl, I get worried she'll fall in and drown.