Buddy Holly is sprawled on the back of the sofa, Eddie Cochrane is staring down at me from the top of the wardrobe, and Elvis Presley is lying on the floor with his paws in the air, waiting to be tickled.
‘That’s so Elvis,’ I tell Pat, leaning in.
‘He’s still quite kittenish,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t think he was twelve.’
Elvis grabs my hand with his front paws and rakes me with his back, but keeps his claws retracted. His mouth gapes, his eyes deepen to perfect circles of black, and his ears flatten.
‘He loves that,’ says Pat.
‘He totally looks like Elvis’ I tell her. ‘Maybe in his cape years.’
‘I thought about making him a cape once,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t want him swallowing the rhinestones. He eats most everything else.’
‘Okay. Enough now, Elvis. What about you, Pat? How are you feeling today?’
‘Oh I’m alright,’ says Pat. ‘I’m always alright. I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’
‘I think it was because you fainted and broke your hip.’
‘Yes but – these things happen.’
‘Do they know why you fainted?’
‘I got up too quickly. Eddie and Buddy were fighting and I had to sort them out. Next thing I knew I was staring up at them, and when I tried to get up my hip was agony.’
‘Did you have a carelink button then?’
‘No! It’s only since. No – I had to crawl to the phone. It was only on the hall table but it may as well have been the moon. Luckily Ian across the way has a key, so the ambulance didn’t have to break the door down.’
‘That’s something anyway.’
‘I was in hospital for ages. It was torture. My poor cats. I was worried sick.’
‘Did Ian look after them?’
‘No. He’s allergic. If he sees a cat on the telly he sneezes. No – they had to go to a cat hotel, out in the country.’
‘Sounds lovely.’
‘It wasn’t. It cost me an arm and a leg. And I don’t know what they spend the money on because it certainly isn’t food. They were half starved when I got them back.’

I can’t imagine any of these cats half-starved. I struggle to imagine how Eddie Cochrane makes it up to the top of the wardrobe without a hoist.

I run through the usual observations, blood pressure, temperature, SATS and the rest. Everything checks out. Pat’s blood pressure drops a little when she stands, but not precipitously, and ever since the accident she knows to do things slowly, in stages.

‘I’m guessing you like rock and roll then,’ I say, taking the pressure cuff off her arm and nodding in the direction of Buddy Holly, who’s sitting staring at me from the kitchen with such a fixed expression on his face I feel unaccountably possessed by the urge to walk over and open a tin.
‘Not particularly,’ says Pat. ‘I got them all as kittens, and they were so funny, I could just see them jumping around on stage, playing guitar.’