When I was standing in the aisle waiting to get off the plane at Arlanda on Tuesday evening, I suddenly heard someone saying “Yes, I emptied a five-kilo bag of cat food on the balcony and she’s been there since Friday.” I turned around; two men in their 30s were sitting just behind me, laughing heartily. “Since Friday?!” said the blond one. “Yeah, I guess she’ll have been okay there. And I put two ten-litre buckets of water out there, too, and emptied a sack of dry feed with liver.” This cracked them both up again; it was 30 seconds before either of them got his voice back. “Can. . . can she drink from a big bucket like that?” the blond one asked, finally, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “I don’t know, perhaps she fell down in it. She’ll just have to drink her way out, then, and then she could eat her liver.”

By this time I was feeling slightly nauseous, picturing the cat on the balcony for five days; five rather cold and wet days from what Johan had told me over the phone. . . with a bucket of water taller than herself. “Well, maybe I’ll find her floating in it,” the dark man said cheerfully.

Just as I was seriously thinking of saying something (no, I know, a complete stranger on a plane isn’t likely to make much impression, but for my own peace of mind) when suddenly the cat’s owner completely changed his tome. “She hurt her paw last week, the poor baby, and I had to wash it every five hours for a couple of days.” “At night, too??” hiccuped his friend, not sensing the changed mood. “Yes, of course—what did you think?” snarled the dark-haired one. And that was the last I heard, for now the plane was emptying. And I left, feeling slightly confused, but rather less uneasy in my mind. And anyway, if he’d really locked the cat out and it was unhappy, the neighbours would have called in the police on Saturday. . . I’m just too soft, is all.