Get your rosaries off my ovaries

As I deposited sweet little Pounce de Lion into the vet's for the unkindest snip of all, the young receptionist there started hard selling the benefits of inserting a micro-chip into the nape of the poor beast's neck.

A tracking device. In the very spot where her mummy used to pick her up.

I listened, mute, for a full minute. For the first time it struck me how it must feel to be a white tobacco farmer in Zimbabwe. Cow-eyed, I turned to the assembled species in the waiting room. Then I pulled myself together, and placed my hands back on the counter.

"Is it not enough that you'd have me authorise her burgeoning womanhood to the dustbin?!" I railed at this modern-day Mengele. "Now you'd have me sign her very identity away!"

Not on my watch, Pounce!y.