Meanwhile the Cat

[smokingboot]

Mismatch has had a misadventure.

I barely noticed it under all her white fur, something that looked like a wound from a fight. but R thought it was getting bigger, and her mood was different; she was rather subdued. She came and sat on my lap for a couple of evenings, clearly in need of consolation. I took her to the vet on Friday, and they clipped away the fur. The vet was perplexed, said the skin didn't look like wounded, so much as blistered, dry skin peeling away. The skin itself was ever so slightly tacky.
It could be a pretty severe allergy, so we are keeping an eye on it, but even this is not what the vet thinks. She said it looked like a burn.

But how could Mismatch have burned herself?
The only answer that occurred to me starts with a peculiar habit of hers. When she's freaked (which happens all the time cos she's at least partially deaf) she runs and hides. One of her favourite hiding places is a small gap in the wall behind the bath, absolutely impossible to reach. But there's a big hot water pipe down there, and she's a bit of a pudding these days, if she hid down there, no way could she turn around. She would be lying between the wall and the pipe, and if it got too hot, would have to back out. It's the correct side for her to have been burnt by pressing up against the pipe. The vet nodded.

'Look,' she said, 'you can see a vertical outline. Is it a vertical pipe?'

It is indeed a vertical pipe.

But Mismatch wouldn't just sit there letting her skin burn, surely. Then again, she can be a complete idiot, and all sorts of things scare her. I have known her since she was barely weaned, and she still runs from me on occasion. Maybe she didn't feel it happening through all that fur.
I have blocked access to that space, and she has been lamenting all around the house. We have another appointment tomorrow, just in case what we are looking at is some kind of bizarre allergy after all.

I hope the little dafty is OK.