Paddy: what happened next
Paddy the kitten has been re-homed. It was a difficult decision for us, but one that had to be made. His relationship with Pepper worsened last week. She started attacking him. As we'd only got him in the first place to cheer Pepper up after Chilli, it started to feel counterproductive, especially as he was such a bundle of optimistic, friendly joy. To see his advances knocked back, literally, so often and with such repetition, was becoming painful to witness. We started to worry that Pepper's aggression was not only damaging to his spirit and joie de vivre but was actually becoming physically dangerous to him. We worried that we might come home and find him badly injured, and decided that something had to be done before a) he got too old to re-home (we all know that a ten-week-old kitten is easier to place than, say, a six-month-old young cat), and b) before Pepper left home and didn't come back, feeling usurped and unloved. Paddy's demands for lap-time of an evening, pushing Pepper out of her rightful throne without meaning to, only served to heighten her aggression. We couldn't very well confine him to his room again after showing him the freedom of the house. So we made that call.

He went to a lovely re-homing charity near us, where he was immediately among other boisterous, jolly kittens (two of them) and puppies. Much more like the house he was born into than ours. We agreed that if we kept him any longer we would get too attached and would be unable to let him go. It was hard saying goodbye, but having only had him for a couple of weeks, it was bearable for the greater good. Pepper cheered up as soon as she was convinced he wasn't coming back. We missed Paddy, but it was heartwarming to see (and hear) Pepper being her old self. And I mean her old self before Chilli. She quickly reclaimed her old stamping grounds, and her tail was back up, like a dodgem car. She moved about the house like she owned it, which she does, and always did. It sounds harsh, but our experiment had failed. We did what we did in the best of faith. We wanted to stop her from being lonely. (Even though we enjoyed Paddy, he was never a vanity project for us. We missed Chilli, and still do, but his role was not to fill a gap in our lives, but to improve the vibes of a ten-year-old cat who'd never lived alone, in cat terms.)

The tale becomes even more cautionary though, and on a different level. We gave a donation to the re-homing place, and passed on all of Paddy's paraphernalia and spare food - "posh pouches" as the lady at the charity called them! - and, having spent a happy first night there with his new, responsive pals, he was chosen by a family with young children, looking for a kitten. Paddy was re-homed in record time! This made us feel much better about the upheaval we had inadvertantly caused him. But . . . we had a call the following day from the cat charity lady that was unwelcome. The family had taken Paddy home, but he had become listless and wouldn't eat. They took him to the vet, who found an ulcer on his tongue (hence the lack of appetite). The vet panicked, worried that it might be a rare but recurrent virus, and his new family started to talk about returning him. He was put on a drip to make up for the food he wasn't eating (poor lad!) and was to be given tests for these crazy-named viruses, one of which was a cat flu. All of a sudden, it looked as if Paddy had gone downhill.

Our considered guess (and one of us is a qualified nutritionist) was that the ulcer was simply a reaction to the stress of moving house, aggravated by a change in food. We had fed him on "posh pouches", which are 70 per cent meat, and no cereal. At the re-homing place, for reasons of economy and practicality, he will have been put onto regular, cereal-heavy cat food. Not a problem if that's all he'd ever eaten, but a shock to the system after nearly all meat, sufficient to give him a reaction. (I don't eat wheat. If I do, I can guarantee I'll get a mouth ulcer. It doesn't take a professional to join the dots.) Also, and this is a real bugbear in our house, the minute he arrived at the re-homing place, he was given a worming tablet and vaccinated. Imagine all of that, combined with the dietary switch from good to bad, on the system of a tiny, ten-week-old boy. No wonder his immune system went into freefall. Obviously, it's indiscreet to say any of this to the nice re-homing lady, as she is a saint in many ways, like all who work for animal charities, and her heart is in the right place, but unless you question conventional medicine - the medicine of intervention - you might not see the potential pitfalls. He was given antibiotics as well, which destroy infections, but only in the same way that a mallet destroys grapes in a fruit salad.

Luckily, there is a happy ending, just like the chaffinch story. Paddy improved. His mouth got better. His appetite returned. No blood tests were required. The family, realising he didn't have a scary virus whose name the vet couldn't even spell (calici), kept him. He is now living - we must assume happily - with a new family, and with no grumpy older cats who whack him in the head because they don't appreciate his overtures.

There is peace again in our house. Pepper has lost the cross, narrowed-eyes look she had for the whole time Paddy was here, and she's stopped sitting in the box, looking out. She's back on the lap and her favourite chairs. She seems as happy as she was in March. This makes us happy. If there is a moral, it's don't risk bringing a new kitten into a house with an older cat unless you're sure the older cat will be able to deal with it. And think hard about vaccination. I know it's a radical stance to take, but I can't help thinking, from all the literature I've read, that introducing disease into a small body, when a small body should be building up its immune system naturally, is counterintuitive. If Paddy had stayed with us, he wouldn't have been fed wheaty food and he wouldn't have been vaccinated. Sometimes nature must take its course. (Our reason for taking this course is that both our cats were plagued by skin conditions which surfaced a day after they were vaccinated as kittens. Pepper's ears are still not right.) To really understand about vaccinations, follow the money.

Thank you for all your helpful comments about Paddy and Pepper. I hope you understand why we let him go.