Nysse gets breakfast when the first person in the house wakes up, lunch at noon, and dinner at six in the evening. Except when we’re out of the house, or he’s out of the house, or he’s asleep, or something else happens to disrupt the schedule… Asking around whether anyone had fed Nysse yet got old fast, so we started keeping track. There’s a notepad in the kitchen close to his food tin, and we draw a line for every meal served.

You might think that this shouldn’t be necessary on the weeks when I’m the only human feeding him, but you’d be wrong. I can easily lose track even when it’s just me. The feeding is so routine that the occasions melt together, and I lose count. I remember putting food in his bowl, but was that actually today, or was it yesterday?

Nysse himself is an added source of chaos and uncertainty. He has a way of piteously meowing and crying for attention, especially just after coming inside, as if he’s starving and nobody has fed him for days. If it wasn’t for the notes, I’m sure he’d occasionally fool me.

I can even, apparently, lose count of entire cats. With Nysse I have a signal: I leave the door handle at an angle when I let him out, and straighten it when he comes back in. I have no such routine for Morris, who still comes by now and again. He can hide away in a bedroom and sleep for a few hours, and then I’m unsure whether he’s in or out. This morning he came in and snuck away upstairs and I forgot about him – and was met by two cats instead of one when I came home from the office.