I was baking in the kitchen after coming back from rowing on Sunday morning when I got a telephone call from the vet's up in Yeadon (not our local one). Someone had found Psamme's body on a track near here and taken him up to what was presumably their local vet. No apparent trauma to his body, no obvious cause of death. I'm just very grateful that someone was kind enough to pick him up and take him somewhere where his microchip could be read.

This was a little farther out than he normally roamed, I think, but he was always an outdoor cat and was so cross when he couldn't get someone to open the door. And I know he was often too far away to hear me calling, or get back before I'd given up and gone inside.

Poor little sod. Oh well, better luck next time round the wheel.

I feel particularly dreadful because for the last week and a half I've been driving past a dead cat by the side of the Leeds ring-road, in a place where I couldn't stop and do anything about it. It's gone now, but was a lovely tortoiseshell and white the first morning.