Panic, panic, where box flypaper came in? This is 1980s, paper bound to be covered with Polydibitrychloroethylene-345, oh god, cat now immobile with terror inside kitchen towel. Fill huge bowl with warm water, drop cat in, swish it around, cat doesn't protest, oh god, perhaps Polydibitrychloroethylene-345 already coursing through tiny veins. Change water, rinse again, brisk towelling down, put cat on path in sun.

Cat looks up, gives mildly dirty look, turns and walks slowly up garden, lifting each paw one at a time and giving it a shake, like C. Chaplin.

After all that it was a bit of a let-down to find the flypaper box at the bottom of the waste bin and find that, far from being the complex chemical trap we'd feared, it was just some jolly ecological plain sticky paper.

Sitting and hiccupping gently (with the occasional burp)

We've always put this down to voles.

Eating grass

Never been sure that this is a symptom of illness. It probably comes under the heading of Games: (“Hey, I'm being watched, let's eat some grass, that'll worry them, they'll spend half an hour turning the house upside down looking for the cat book, haha.”)

Lorries

Can be fatal. But not always. We knew a cat who regarded motorised vehicles as sort of wheeled mice, and leapt out on them. It had so much scar tissue that its fur grew at all angles, like a gooseberry. Even its stitches had stitches. But it still lived to a ripe old age, terrorising other cats with its one good eye and forever jumping out at lorries in its sleep. It was probably looking for one that squeaked.