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

London Bridge and Borough Market: intelligence in the response to terrorism

There are two fine responses to terrorism, one military and one civilian, and two that are far less intelligent – though far from uncommon.

Shrine to the victims of terrorism on London Bridge

The unintelligent military response is to go to war. For years, we’ve had a “war against terrorism”. It’s a meaningless notion. War can be directed against a territory (which may be a nation) or against its armies: war against Nazi Germany, against the rebel American States, against the Vietcong army or North Vietnam – whatever you think of their justification, these are meaningful concepts one can comprehend.

But war against terrorism? Who or what’s the target? Where do you invade?

The answer to that last question has been Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither war has been won and both have led to a far greater threat of terrorism, indeed a far higher number of outrages. The military action was gesture politics: it showed governments doing something, with no concern as to whether it was the right thing.

The intelligent military approach requires – well, it requires intelligence. Excellent security work has foiled terrorist plot after plot in Britain. As a way to keep us safe, it has proved far more effective than, say, invading Iraq.

Even so, not all outrages can be stopped. Which takes us to the civilian response.

The less intelligent reaction is to start enacting new legislation. This is rather like invading Afghanistan. It shows governments to be doing something, but with no concern as to whether what it’s doing is useful. After all, little that a terrorist does is legal anyway – murder doesn’t need new legislation against it, and conspiracy to commit murder or complicity in murder are also crimes. Collecting the weaponry for a terrorist attack is illegal too, as is incitement to commit a crime, or perversion of the course of justice to cover it up afterwards.

Most legislation proposed in the wake of an attack is concerned with limiting thought, not action. I don’t like the idea of a worldwide caliphate being established and would do everything legal within my power to prevent it. But how can ban people from believing it’s a good thing? Why, there are people who think Trump is a good thing. How can we make it a crim to try to persuade others of their point of view? It’s the very attempt to regiment thought that excites my dislike of the notion of a caliphate.

Let me be clear: trying to persuade people that a Caliphate is desirable should not be a crime; trying to persuade people to take up arms to make it happen is a crime, as it should be.

The biggest problem with attempts to limit thought by legislation is where do you stop? In Russia, for instance, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to speak out in favour of rights for homosexuals. That’s because many – possibly a majority – in the population and certainly in power see homosexuality as an abomination. But then banning belief in a Caliphate would be based on a sense that it too is an abomination.

Limiting freedom of belief opens the door to regressive, and repressive, behaviour which is likely to have far more damaging consequences than its backers imagine. Ill though-out, unintelligent reaction is unlikely to be effective against terrorism, but is highly likely to inflict wounds on ourselves. Let’s not forget that Maggie Thatcher, in my view not maligned anything like enough, made the attempt to ban teaching in schools if it was deemed to “promote” homosexuality. Putin would have been proud.

It’s a slippery slope and it goes a long way downhill.

So how about the intelligent civilian response to terrorism? It’s the reaction that says, “it’s not going to stop me living the life I choose to live”. Fortunately, it’s a widespread attitude and one that reveals an inherent strength in our populations. That makes it probably the best guarantee of our long-term success against the attempts to undermine us by terrorist means.

I was struck forcibly by that truth when I recently wandered through Borough Market, near London Bridge. Not a month ago it was the scene of a vicious and brutal terrorist attack: three men drove a van into a crowd on London Bridge, and then chased victims enjoying the evening in the pubs and restaurants, or just the streets, around the market. They killed eight and injured 48 before being gunned down themselves by police.

There’s still a shrine to the memory of the victims on the bridge. But I was inspired by the activity in Borough Market as I walked through at 8:00 in the morning. Things were only just getting going, with stall holders beginning to open their stands, food beginning to cook, and a few passers-by beginning to appear, to stop and look and occasionally to buy (breakfast, in my case).

Normality reasserted: Borough Market reopening for business as usual

Life was already back to normal. No one had forgotten the attack. But the rights of the living had been reasserted. So the terrorists had failed..

For that I’m profoundly grateful. And hopeful.

Despite the lack of intelligence of so much else of what we do.