What’s the matter Mr Swinney, cat got your tongue?

So, we meet again Mr Vet

We have two cats. Well, technically, we work for two cats. One is a dignified old lady, once entirely black, but now sports a white whisker or two.

She looks and walks like an elderly Edwardian aunt still mourning Victoria. She can’t jump up on the bed anymore for her morning chin-scratch and so waits patiently for a member of staff to lift her.

Old age, I told her, doesn’t come by itself. Like most indoor cats getting on in years, her claws have thickened and are hard for her to groom. One had curled under and cut into the pad of her paw. Painful.

This meant a visit to the vet.

Like I say, she is old, cranky and not as agile as she used to be. Until she spots the cat carrier. And then she turns into a tiny Black Panther.

It took all three of us working together in our specially rigged No-Cat-Hiding-Place living room, before I managed to gently lift her while my son manoeuvred the carrier into position.

In a new move that she had clearly been working on, she then deployed her anti-vet countermeasure and peed all over me. I had to go upstairs anyway. That’s where we keep the Elastoplast.

By the time we got to the vet we looked like we’d been battling Nightmare Freddy from Elm Street and smelled distinctly whiffy.

Of course, she behaved like a bloody princess for the vet. Practically flirted with him.

You are not telling me that the Scottish Government has the cash for a national cat hunt unit. Anyway, it would go over budget and we’d probably wind up with more moggies.

Of course, the story was hokum and dismissed by Mr Swinney in a manner described as ‘exasperated’. I like that.

The world is going nuts. I think more proper old-school politicians should get exasperated. It's a good look. Clawed and stinking of cat pee isn’t. Trust me, I know.