THURSDAY morning.

The radio halts my slumber, as it does every day. I tumble out of bed and pad through to the kitchen, exhausted from burning the proverbial candle and struggling with hayfever. I yawn exaggeratedly. Stretch. Blink, then focus on my surroundings. Other than the warmth of the previous night lingering, all is normal. Better feed the cats.

That's when it dawns on me. Morris, the gregarious ginger tom, is circling my feet and slaloming between my legs, persistently mewing for his breakfast. No change there. But Louis - his younger, punier, jet-black brother - is nowhere to be seen. That's odd. As in: never-happened-before odd.

I pivot and trudge back through to the bedroom, looking under side tables and in corners. No sign. On returning to the kitchen I notice the window that opens on to the adjoining flat roof is wide open, the way we leave it when the weather is sufficiently clement for the cats to venture out and bask in the sun. Since the roof is 20 or so feet high, it never occurred to me that either cat could launch himself off it and live to tell the tale even if he wanted to. But maybe, just maybe, that's what happened. The alternative is a very big bird plucked Louis from his perch and had him for dinner, though last time I checked large raptors were as good as absent from the list of urban avians.

After throwing on my jeans and popping outside in the vain hope Louis might be sitting on the step (he's not; having literally and figuratively zero cojones, the chances of him coping with the passing traffic are beyond negligible), his disappearance begins to sink in. Is he dead? How will Morris cope? How long can a house cat survive in the big bad world?

Growing up in a house 50 yards from a busy main road, at a young age I became accustomed to cats going out and not coming home. It got to the point where we named one tomcat Squidge; in a happy irony, he lived to a ripe old age, mainly, it is my belief, because he worshipped the gods of sun and sleep above all others. Take from that what you will.

So if Louis has indeed shot the craw, I will be sad but not inconsolable. As I said to her nibs, if a cat willingly deserts a warm, safe home where he gets free board and lodgings, not to mention a licence to do whatever he pleases whenever he pleases, then good riddance to him.

I don't mean that, of course, which is why we'll be out combing the neighbourhood this weekend, knocking on doors and giving out leaflets. One cat without the other simply doesn't make sense.