And the winners are....

Monette has been described as a chic Parisian cat, but the truth is that while she is fairly chic, she is - or was - Parisian in the sense that de Valera was Irish or I am a Durham lad.

Monette's home for a few days
Picture: bigskyred

In other words, she was born far from the land she called her own. Not quite as far as de Valera from Ireland (New York) or Randall from the North East (Hove), but far enough for a cat.

A few days into her life as one of a litter born at a restaurant at Giverny, where the house and gardens of Monet are on public view (and well worth the drive weat of Paris), this scrap snapped at the heels of a table where two couples were rounding off their visit.

One couple fell in love with the kitten and were promptly told they could take her. Since this was a girl, she couldn't be Monet, so she became Monette.

Several readers of Salut! were able to identify her with ease. No one, I am sorry to say, came up with that 50,000 hits home page from the blog.

But then, my web man Craig McGintywas always iffy about the idea and somone else was kind enough to send me an image of the Stat Counter on my site stuck on 60,000 to show how easy it was to fiddle.

I chose not to withdraw thatvpart of the competition, since you'd have to be especially odd to sit there making the counter say 50,000 just to win a book on curries.

There was the risk, of course, because I had only to receive more than one saved image to know that one, both or all were cheating. But what the heck....

So, the witching hour having been reached, I apologise to those who sent in correct answers to the cat question and do not now see their names.

But I found a use for a pile of pristine Daily Telegraph visiting cards, wrote the names of each correct respondent on them and asked Mme Salut! - Monette being unavailable - to draw two of them.

And the winners are: Mason Norton and Steve Bushnell. Both sent charming e-mails with their correct responses.

Neither, however, supplied a postal address and should do so, once again by writing to colinrandall2001@yahoo.fr

The prizes will then be dispatched in the next few days.

Otherwise, one or both may end up going elsewhere - perhaps even to Louise, whose name went into the hat despite her lack of affection for Indian cuisine and would go into it again if a re-draw were necessary.