Cat flaps and tests of intelligence. Plus relaxation

Relaxation. So important. And so far beyond most of us. Though not beyond our non-human friends.

It’s been a pleasure to watch our pets settling in to our new home here. They certainly seem to like being in Valencia.

Valencia: having fun at the beach in December (Luci's the Luci-coloured one)
What’s not to like?

Luci and Toffee, the toy poodles, had been living with us in our flat, inside Valencia itself. That was fine, because we like the flat and we like Valencia; it was also just five minutes’ walk from the Turia river park, seven kilometres of former river bed now turned into an extraordinary park, with sports pitches and cycle tracks and just plain paths people can walk along, with or without their dogs.

Our two loved it, especially the lake at the end of the park, where they could go swimming after ducks. Well, Toffee would paddle, but Luci would duck hunt with serious intent. That was fun to watch, since Luci would put every ounce of her strength into swimming after them, while the ducks glided calmly across the water in a leisurely way, marginally increasing their speed if she ever showed any sign of getting close.

The flat had disadvantages, however. For instance, there were two flights of uneven stairs to reach it. Toffee struggled on them and put her back out. So then we found ourselves carrying both dogs (why risk Luci putting her back out too?) up and down, four times a day, since there was no easy way to let them out to do what pet owners euphemistically refer to as their “business”.

The other downside was that Valencia is the fiesta capital of Spain and walls tend to be thin. Danielle and I value our sleep and it was a relatively rare commodity where we were living.

Misty, our cat, hadn’t joined us. He’d stayed with the friends who bought our house in England. It would have been too painful to him to live in a flat with no easy access to anything like a garden. Everywhere we’d lived, we’d always provided cat flaps to allow him to slip in and out of doors whenever he wanted.

Then, eventually, we moved. The new place, in La Cañada which is away from the town centre, is much quieter, which suits us. The dogs can get out of the back into a garden, and beyond that, into a bit of a park. Which suits them and us. They can get in and out easily and we don’t have to carry them. There’s also woodland beyond the park, and they get a kick out of going there too.

They get a kick out of visiting the woods too

Just as soon as we’d installed cat flaps, I brought Misty over to join us. He made the trip with surprising good grace, only beginning to protest – with loud mewing – during the last couple of hours of a journey that lasted fourteen and included a fllght. And only once did he pee on me, and only on one of my legs. Excellent behaviour for a cat who’d been through so traumatic an experience.

Now, for what I’m going to say next, I have to choose my words with care. Misty once stalked off into the night and didn’t reappear for twelve hours when Danielle and I were so tactless as to comment unfavourably on his weight. So I’ll just say he’s a large cat. We had to put in a large cat flap.

Our dogs are each around half Misty’s weight. Let me hastily add that they’re unusually small, rather than Misty being unusually big. Consequently, they think of cat flaps as dog flaps.

Toffee has completely mastered the technique. These days, if we’ve been out, we’re generally met on our return by the clatter of a flap followed by Toffee jumping up and down as we come in through the gate.

Luci on the other hand, doesn’t seem always to be up to it. If she gets locked out, she’ll come back in through the flaps, but sometimes she doesn’t seem inclined to go out that way. When Toffee greets us home, Luci ends up scratching the front door from the inside. And whimpering pathetically

This is odd because Luci’s not unintelligent. For example, she’s worked out that we’ve left a gap in the front fence for Misty to use if he wants to get right outside the house. He doesn’t, as it happens. A couple of disagreeable incidents have persuaded us to give him a cat litter tray indoors, since Misty has clearly decided that, at fourteen, he’s sufficiently old not to be forced outside to do his ‘business’.

Instead it’s Luci who makes use of the fence gap. 

In Spain, the council doesn’t collect rubbish from individual houses. Instead, we take it down to the end of the road to throw it into large communal bins. This being the 21st century, they’re colour-coded for different categories of waste.

Imagine my shock when I’d finished carefully sorting a load of refuse and, turning around, discovered that Luci had followed me, leadless, the whole way. Which meant she’d walked independently down a road along which people drive like maniacs.

She occasionally seems unable to get from the house into the front yard. But once there, she knows how to go through the fence and into the road. This means she can follow us wherever we go, whatever the danger to which this exposes her.

Curious. One poodle can manage the cat flaps but not the fence gap. The other hangs back from the cat flaps but knows how to get out into the road.

Meanwhile Misty, for whom the whole setup was put in place, disdains to use any of them and instead takes advantage of his cat litter, without so much as a thank you for the unpleasant chore he leaves us.

Still. At least they’ve all three clearly settled in successfully and are enjoying their lives here. Something I observe from their capacity for total relaxation.

A model to emulate
Toffee and Luci show us what relaxation really means

However, when it comes to complete relaxation, nothing outdoes a cat
As Misty shows us

Luci's diary: training and the garden run

Luci’s Diary. This strange activity called training’s such fun, or at least the treats are. And the nightly garden visit. And just who’s being trained. 

June 2015

The number 2 human keeps training me.

It’s wonderful – I just love it. There are about four things he wants me to do. I think I can just about cope with learning four things. He calls on me to do them and, because I can see he wants to feel he’s achieving something, sometimes I look at him as though I’m confused and it’s terribly hard, until he shows me what he wants – lie down, stand up, wait, or whatever. Sometimes I just do them anyway. Either way, I get a treat every time.

Fantastic. Money for old rope. Not that I have any use for money, of course. Or old rope either, come to that, but hey, I didn’t invent the expression.

I have to say that one of the things did take me a while to master: lying down. The word of command sounds like “plotz”. God knows why. “Wait” – well it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? “Stand” – yep, not a big problem either. But “plotz”?

It turns out it’s all down to human number 1. Misty the cat explained it all to me. She’s from a place called Alsace, where he comes from too, apparently, and “plotz” is what you say in Alsatian when you mean “lie down”.

How on Earth was I supposed to know that?

And – do the humans take me for an Alsatian? I’ve met Alsatians and let me tell you, there’s a bit of difference. Mostly in scale.

Anyway, Misty also says I ought to have more pride. Stand aloof from all this training business. Not be pushed around.

“We animals need to lay down some ground rules to the domestics.” That’s what he calls the humans. He reckons that letting them train us is accepting their rules instead. He may be right.

But.. but… there are treats at stake…

OK,  this is the Plotz thing, right?
So where's my treat?

I have to say the other day he got the treats out and I automatically went and did the plotz thing, before he could even ask. Just stronger than me. I thought he’d see through me and realise I was a jump ahead of him, just doing it for the treats, but he didn’t. He was pathetically pleased about it. Told Number 1 when she got home. Got her giggling.

So no harm done.

The other thing I like is the nightly garden run. It’s a little ritual we have now, number 2 and I. He doesn’t like it, but she always makes him do it.

“Does Luci need to be taken out?” he always asks.

“Yes,” she always replies.

Perhaps she ought to give him a treat so he gets it and learns to stop asking.

They seem not to have grasped that I use the cat flap. If I need to do my business, I pop out and do it. So this nightly outing’s just a a bit of fun. Some quality time number 2 and I can spend together before going to bed. I sniff around the flower beds and the vegetables, which is good, and he stands around looking pained and saying “go on, Luci, have a pee.”

He tries to make it sound quite affectionate, even though I can hear the exasperation building in the background.

Sometimes I force one out just to put him out of his misery. Other times I push him to see how long he can stand it, until he finally goes back in. Either way, it’s always amusing, and a good way to wrap up the evening.

Sets me up nicely to go jumping around the bed when they’re trying to get to sleep. They seem to think that’s adorable, which is just a joy. Personally, if someone behaved that way when I was trying to sleep, I’d just bite him. But then – I’ve got them well trained.

Even Misty thinks it’s funny that they put up with it.

Misty's Diary: cat flap treachery and domestic incompetence

Another entry from Misty’s diary. In which he witnesses the curious process of handiwork undertaken by the less satisfactory element of his domestic staff.

January 2015

Well, well. It’s been amusing watching Domestic number 2 at work.

Or what he erroneously imagines to be work.

It all started when my cat flap – MY cat flap – turned treacherous and viciously assaulted me. Oh, yes. You can’t imagine what that feels like.

A cat flap’s a passageway, a means of getting into and out of a place. This one came off the door and ambushed me. There I was, innocently coming through MY entrance to the house, when suddenly it grabbed me around the waist and wouldn’t let go. A plastic frame, like nothing so much as a gaping mouth, with the flap bit still attached, like nothing so much as a ghastly tongue.

I’m not too proud to admit that I was a little anxious for a moment. Not, I repeat not, panic-stricken as some slanderous tongues have suggested. Just worried enough to take appropriate action. What ought to have been a door had turned, without warning, into jaws that had me in their clutches. 

I went straight down on my back and let it have it with all claws drawn. Never been caught in a predator’s maw like that before and, believe you me, it’s no fun. I saw it off fast and made a break for freedom.

Domestic number 1 was quite nice about it.

“Oh, poor Misty!’ she exclaimed. “The cat flap’s come right off the door and he’s stuck in it.”

Domestic number 2 just laughed. Rather distastefully, it seemed to me.

“If he weren’t so bloody fat he’d have got through without difficulty. No wonder he got caught at the waist.”

Honestly, the things he says. And then gets upset when I bite him.

Anyway, he got his comeuppance straight away.

“I’m going to go an buy a new cat flap. I’ll even buy you a jigsaw,” said Number One. “Then you can put it in this afternoon.”

He said something like “Yes, dear,” but the fear in his eyes and his drooping shoulders told a far less positive story.

She turned up with the new cat flap and hour or so later.

“This one will do. It’s for large cats or small dogs,” she announced. As though it were good news. For the record, just because all the other cats round here are feeble little creatures, doesn’t make me a big cat.

You should have seen Domestic number 2 setting to work.

I never tire of watching Domestic number 2
trying to prove he isn't completely inept

“This illustration’s no good. The screws can’t possibly go there.”

“Yes, they can,” she explained in that tone of voice she adopts when he needs something simple clarified for him. You know, each syllable carefully detached from the previous one, all enunciated terribly clearly, and a little slowly. “That’s not an illustration, it’s a template. Cut it out, pin it to the door, mark all the way round, then cut to your markings.”

Well, he didn’t. He cut a bit round the existing opening. And tried to force the cat flap in. Which didn’t work. So he cut some more off. And failed again. 

Every time he cut the saw made an appalling racket. The chap next door works nights and tries to sleep during the day. He must have cursed! The domestics used to say they had a neighbour from hell. She’s gone, but the nice family who took her place must be wondering what sort of neighbours they have. 

Domestic number 1 came to take a look.

“What you’ve cut is far too small,” she said, “just take a look at the template.”

“It’s not a template,” he said, but by then it was just a grumble, without conviction.

“Look,” she said, “let me show you.”

She took a pair of scissors and cut expertly for a few seconds. She then held a perfectly cat flap shaped piece of paper up against the door.

“See? You haven’t cut enough.”

“Oh,” he said, looking abashed. 

Ten minutes more cutting and he’d got it about right. 

He’d cut a bit too much to be honest, so the plastic bit’s a little loose in the hole, but hey, for Domestic Number 2 that’s a triumph of engineering precision.

It had only taken him an hour and a half to do a twenty-minute job. Bending the jigsaw blade beyond repair in the process.

Still, the flap works fine. Much quieter. Smoother.

And it doesn’t try to make me look fat by taking me unawares and grabbing me round the middle.