How a bird in the hand led to two in a cage

Many years ago, when my stepson David was barely a teenager, he was coming back into the house from the garden when he glanced up at the roof and stopped, frozen in his tracks. On the edge of the roof was perched a white dove.

He barely had time to think, “oh, how I wish he’d fly down to me,” before the dove granted his wish and came down to settle on his head.

By mutual consent of our family and the bird, he made his home with us for the rest of his life. He received a name, Fotzel. That’s a term of endearment for a mischievous little boy, in the dialect of Alsace, in Eastern France, which was the mother tongue of both David and his mother, my wife Danielle.

Fotzel on the wing

Danielle is good with birds, as she is with animals generally, or with plants, and indeed with us. She decided that what Fotzel needed was a companion. Or, more specifically, a mate.

She found one in a pub that had so many doves in an aviary at the back that they could spare one without noticing her absence. By this time, we’d built an aviary of our own, taller than a tall man and about as long on each side. It was enclosed with strong chicken wire but we’d made a hole in the top, big enough for the doves to fly in and out, but too small for any hawk to try flying in.

The female duly laid a clutch of eggs. But then, however, she decided that life in our garden was nothing like exciting enough. Maybe she’d got too used to the livelier atmosphere of a pub, though I couldn’t say. All I know is that she cleared off, abandoning her eggs in the dovecote we’d built.

Not a problem, it turned out. Fotzel took over, sat of the eggs till they hatched, and then looked after the hatchlings until they turned into healthy and happy adults. Well, I don’t know how to measure dove happiness, but at any rate they ate their feed with apparent enthusiasm and seemed disinclined to clear off, despite the hole in the roof which left them free to make their own choice on the matter.

I don’t, of course, want to condone incest, but I have to admit it worked for our dove community. Within a relatively short time, it had turned into a real colony, busy, lively and cheerful. And, naturally, Fotzel was its patriarch until he took his last flight, off into the unknown, at a ripe old age (as far as we could tell).

Fotzel surveying his domain

Some years later, David had ensconced himself firmly in Scotland, where he lives with his family to this day and their great satisfaction, while we had moved to Strasbourg in Eastern France. On our way to dinner with friends who lived in converted farmhouse in the nearby countryside, Danielle told me, “if they ask us to take a kitten, the answer is no. Got it?”

I got it. But that evening, when each of us in turn had the exquisite pain of having a tiny cat climbing our legs, using his claws for grip, we simply couldn’t resist the temptation – such as is the animal-lover’s perversity – and took him home. So started Misty’s fifteen-year stay with us, ended only by undiagnosable but disabling illness just last year. He followed us from France to Germany to England and finally to a well-deserved and apparently satisfactory retirement in Spain. 

Misty as a young lad
Always keen on choosing inappropriate receptacles to relax in

He did become a little cranky as an adult, something I put down to being dragged from France to Germany to England and finally to Spain. The crankiness left me scars which have now faded, but I clearly remember the scratches on my hands. They were often for unforgivable offences, such as stroking him without paying due attention to the process. I would make the mistake of thinking that I could watch TV and stroke Misty at the same time, a delusion from which he rapidly (and painfully) disabused me.

Still, he stayed with us, never showing any desire to clear off, right to the end of his life, nearly eighteen months ago.

Misty enjoying his retirement in Spain
and still as ready as ever to relax in odd places

Now fast forward to just last week. We had been invited to lunch with our excellent friends Pamela and Ian. When we stepped outside for some hors-d’oeuvre titbits and a glass of wine on their patio, they warned us, “oh, you might have to watch out. A bird showed up this morning and seems not to want to go. It was sitting on the edge of the sofa a short time ago.”

It was sitting there still. It was a budgie. She (for it turns out she was a she) was white with the faintest of faint blue on her back. She was dishevelled, not terribly clean and obviously not in the happiest of states.

Danielle, as I mentioned before, is good with birds. Pamela and Ian did have some seeds. In principle, they were for human consumption, but when Danielle gave her a handful, the bird hoovered them up with every sign of enjoyment. She also had some water. 

And after lunch (ours as well as hers), inevitably, we took her home.

That was something of a feat since we were on bikes. Fortunately, Pamela and Ian lent us a cat carrier. Danielle pulled off the remarkable trick of cycling with one hand on the handlebars while she clutched the carrier’s handle in the other.

By that evening, we had a cage. And as had happened with Fotzel, we even had a companion – or more than likely a mate – for the newcomer to our household. 

Our new resident, delicately attired in tasteful white,
and her new mate, dressed more flamboyantly
Keeping one beady eye each on my doings

I like birdsong, so it’s a pleasure to hear them tweeting in their cage outside our front door. A lot more pleasant than the social media activity that goes by the same name (or is it called X-ing now?) It's equally a pleasure to go out and see how they’re doing in the morning, even before I have my first cup of coffee. 

For the third time, simple serendipity has provided us with a new animal extension to our household which we’re happy about. Another unplanned pleasure, as I was celebrating in my last post.

By the way, since the second arrival’s a male, he’s inherited the name Fotzel. As for the lady in white, Danielle has named her Justine. That’s pronounced the French way, with the ‘u’ roughly rhyming with ‘oo’ in ‘boon’.

Danielle’s not certain how she came up with the name. I reckon it’s because the bird had clearly flown away from her original home and had probably been driven by the heavy winds we’ve been having lately, until she was completely lost. Then we luckily turned up and were able to save her from her difficulties, and Pamela and Ian from the problem of working out what to do with her.

Justine time.

Justine and Fotzel indoors
for a brief cage-cleaning operation

Good combinations

Certain pairings just seem to work, don’t they? Fish and chips, for instance. Or spinach and egg. And, of course, gin and tonic.

The same is true, or ought to be, about kids and dogs. It isn’t always. Our dogs, Luci and Toffee, are toy poodles, which means they’re smaller than our cat. He’s a big cat, admittedly, but hey, he’s a cat. The domestic kind. Not a leopard or anything.

Providing my readers with a sense of scale:
Toffee with our cat, Misty

And yet I saw a child – and not the tiniest but a seven or eight-year-old – burst into tears the other day and rush into his dad’s arms when he was approached by Toffee, the smaller of the two. She thinks that kids were only placed on earth for her entertainment. She balances that apparently egotistical view by the belief that her only purpose in life is to entertain kids. So if she sees one she runs joyfully over and tries to leap all over them.

Leading in some case, most strikingly in the one I mentioned, to deplorable results.

So when three kids came rushing up to us in the park today and asked to play with Luci and Toffee, I explained carefully that Luci was timid and wouldn’t want to play, but that Toffee would be only too pleased.

“If you run away from her,” I told them, “she’ll run after you but she’ll never catch you. Basically, she’ll run with you. She won’t bite you but, if you let her, she might lick you to death.”

The joy of being chased by Toffee
Potentially never-ending as she never catches up

To my delight, and even more to theirs (and I’m including Toffee here), these kids were bolder than some, and quicker on the uptake than most. They took off and let Toffee chase them. They screamed a bit, much like the screaming you get on a school playground at break time – with nerves certainly, but with a lot more pleasure mixed in – which only added to the fun.

One of them even worked out a way to persuade Luci to play a little – by chasing her, rather than expecting Luci to do the chasing.

Go about it right and even Luci can be got to play

And, as I warned them, the only real danger with Toffee was being licked to death. A danger heightened when your big brother (I assume that’s what he was) is egging Toffee on.

Toffee being over-affectionate
And is that a failure of sibling protection?

W C Fields may once have said (or it seems it may have been said about him) that, “a man who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad”. Oh, well. At least children and dogs can get on just fine if they learn to overcome their fear.

And have a lot more fun with each other than Fields ever gave either.

Luci's diary: water – when it's fun and when it isn't

They left me behind again the other day. Went out for the whole evening. And the worst of it was that, when they got back, number 2 smelled of another dog. Another dog! All over his hands. Like he’d been stroking the ghastly thing. I had to lick his fingers for ages just to get the smell off them. It was quite fun, actually, and by the end his hands smelled right again – that is, they smelled of me.

Talking about smell and getting clean, the humans decide every now and then that I need to smell of something else. So they wash me.

“What gets into them?” I ask Misty the cat, “why do they say I smell? I don’t smell.”

“You do smell,” he says, “you smell of dog.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I ask, “what’s a dog supposed to smell of? You wouldn’t want me to smell of cat, would you?”

“I don’t know. Cats smell good. I wouldn’t mind if the whole world smelled of cat. Except for the bits I want to hunt and eat.”

“That’s just silly. You like my smell. That’s why you always want to lie on my blanket. Even when I want to.”

He looked a bit embarrassed then, like I’d caught him out in something he didn’t want to admit to. He just sort of mumbled back at me.

“I just like the feel of the blanket. It’s a good blanket. Nothing to do with you.”

“Anyway,” I went on, “even if I do smell a teensy weeny bit of dog, that’s no reason to clean me is it?”

“I keep telling you. They’re domestics. That’s what they do. Clean things. If you let them. I only let them serve food, but that’s because I’ve shown them who’s boss. You just let them push you around, so you get washed. Serves you right.”

It wasn’t very nice. Hot water and silly soap suds. And it lasted for ever. And left me all wet. So wet that I had to run around and roll everywhere just to get a bit drier. That left the couch quite wet which made it less comfortable to lie. Human number 2 wasn’t pleased.

Me. Wet. Miserable. Getting the couch damp
Why do they keep doing this to me?

“Why’ve you made the couch all wet, you silly dog?” he asked me, all annoyed.

He doesn’t like it when he can’t sit at his end of the couch and play with his dratted computer. It makes him quite irritable. Usually I just give him the sad-eye look and he stops, but this time I was fed up myself, what with being all bedraggled and all that.

“Don’t blame me,” I told him, “it was human number 1 who put me in the bath. Why don’t you get her to stop?”

But it didn’t do any good. He never understands when I talk to him. It’s so sad, isn’t it? They have such limited intelligence, humans.

Talking about water, though, we had a bit of fun when we went to see that other family we visit sometimes and who sometimes visit us. They have the granddaughter, apparently. I don’t understand why they keep her if she’s our granddaughter. We ought to take her home with us so she can play with me a bit more often.

Anyway, near where she lives, there’s this place with loads and loads of water. Believe it or not, it just goes on and on, so you can’t see the end of it. It’s OK, because you can wander in and paddle around a bit in it, and it’s fun: not hot, and it has no soap suds. Tastes odd, though – terribly salty, which makes me feel funny sometimes, but still you can play a lot of games in it – I played that silly game with the humans, where I bring them a stick so they can throw it into the water. They so enjoy that and I think it’s terribly fun to see them with their trouser legs rolled up over their knees…

Only thing I really don’t like about that water is that it’s a bit tricksy. It can be all quiet and flat like, and letting you wander around in it, and then it suddenly gathers itself together in a big lump and throws itself at you. Usually when you’re not watching, so it catches you from behind. Rotten trick. It meant I had to keep an eye on it and sometimes had to belt back to the line to stop it catching me.

Come to think of it, that was quite fun too. Outrunning it, you know. That water, it’s going to have to learn to be bit quicker if it’s going to catch me. At least, when I’m watching out for it.

Loads of water. Fun when it’s behaving itself, like here

When we got back home, Misty was on the couch. At my end. The bit that smells of me. And I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t have the excuse of lying on my blanket because it wasn’t even there: I’d taken it with me.

It’s the blanket he likes, is it? For the feel, not the smell? Yeah, right. 

I reckon everyone likes my smell, even the humans, who keep rubbing their noses on me.

Which just leaves me wondering: why on earth do we have to keep going through that stupid bath business?

Luci's Diary: I'm getting to like the place.

Luci's Diary. In which she seems to be settling in and learning her way round the new place. And its occupants.

March 2015

Well, I seem to have fallen on my four feet. Or at least my new owners’ four feet. 

Things are OK.

These two both have grey tops. I’ve learned that this means they’re incredibly ancient. That has its plusses and its minuses. Not so good for playing, like the little people in my last family, but a lot easier to get your own way with. In fact, I’ve been told I shouldn’t call them owners. I should think of them as domestics. But they like to boss me around and, hey, since they feed me, and don’t expect me to feed them, I play along with it, doing what they say. 

Some of the time.

One of the first things they did when we got here was take me into the garden. Outside, would you believe. Just big open sky above me. Which anything could come out of. 

Still, it’s got fences round it. I suppose that makes it reasonably safe. Took a while, all the same, before I got comfortable. By yesterday, though, when the sun came out, and it was quite warm, I actually got quite glad to lie in it. Till the woman came out and told me to get off the vegetables. No idea what she meant – it was just a patch of brown earth, but she seemed to think it was important. It was no skin off my snout though, so I got out like she asked.

The man keeps giving me orders too, but he’s got the concentration of a goldfish (well, that’s what I’ve been told, though to be honest I don’t really know what a goldfish is). He tells me to do something, or stop doing something, and then gets buried in one of his books or his laptop computer, so I just get on with whatever I was doing anyway.

Silly thing that laptop, by the way. After all, it takes up his lap. The woman keeps saying I’m a lapdog, which is fine with me, but that means the lap’s mine. Walking on his keyboard, I find, is generally a good way of getting his attention. He gets a bit shirty, but he usually makes me some space.

So, yes, I’m settling in. Though there was a bit of an odd thing during the first few days. I had this growing sense that the three of us weren’t alone in the place. There were odd noises from time to time, and a passing scent that certainly wasn’t either of them. They’d say strange things too.

“He must be out in the garden, sulking.”

“Yes, and coming in at night when there’s no chance of meeting Luci, having a bite to eat, sleeping in the front room and getting out again in the morning.”

Imagine my horror when I was confronted one day, inside the house, by this enormous cat. A gigantic beast. I gave him the bark, of course, and then – I really don’t know what came over me – I dashed at him, instead of hiding behind the sofa like I should have done: he must have outweighed me three or four times over.

To my amazement, he made a beeline for the garden door. And ran straight through it! I’ve not yet worked out how he did that. There was a great clattering sound as he went, and the woman pushed me through the door myself later, telling me I’d soon learn how to do it, but it still beats me. How do you get through a solid door? I don’t mind learning, but she’s going to have to show me again.

Later on I met the same cat in the garden. And my natural caution once more abandoned me, as I went after him, dong some of my best barking. He disappeared over the fence.

But a few hours later he was back in the house. One of the owners was saying “I’ve shut the cat flap,” and this time he didn’t decamp. Instead he tried to hide from me, on one of the chairs under the big table. I was dancing around the chair, jumping up at him, until he reached out one of his paws and gave me such a biff on the nose! It suddenly occurred to me that the rumbling sound he’d been making wasn’t to do with playing, it was him growling. 

Weird. No kind of growl I’d have recognised.

And then an even stranger notion began to grow on me. This wasn’t an intruder – he belonged here. The owners were talking to him, trying to stroke him on the chair he seemed rooted to.

“Now, come on Misty, Luci’s nice. You just need to get to know her. She’s not going anywhere, you know.”

Eventually, he came off the chair, and I decided to treat him with a bit more respect. Especially if he’s here to stay. And all the more so since he packs a heck of a wallop in that paw of his. 

Sometimes he feels like playing. And sometimes he just doesn't

Sometimes he doesn’t mind playing, and that’s fun. But sometimes he’s had enough, and boy, does he let me know it. He makes a funny sort of low howling sound and comes after me, both front paws flailing. I find the best thing to do when that happens is to lie somewhere and look unthreatening. That usually makes him stop.

He can be quite nice, then. It was he who explained that the humans weren’t owners, they were domestics. I’m sure he’s right, but I’m happy to pretend otherwise. He also explained about the man having the concentration of a goldfish, and that you can get away with biting him.

That’s proved useful. Usually the woman gets up in the middle of the night and lets me out for a pee. But if she doesn’t, all I have to do is find the man’s elbow and gnaw on it a bit. That wakes him up quite quickly. And instead of batting me with a paw, like Misty would, he takes me downstairs to let me out.

A good arrangement.

It was Misty who told me about keeping a diary too. He’s had one for ages. Long before I was around.

I think I’ll do the same. This is an interesting place where lots of things happen. More than enough to fill a diary.

Though, quite honestly, I don’t need any more mysterious intrusions into the household. OK with Misty: he’s proved great fun, when he’s in a good mood. But that’s quite enough, thanks. The owners do keep letting other people in, which is a pain – they’re all so big. It makes you wonder what the point is of having walls around the place, and fences round the garden, if you don’t stop strangers wandering inside them.

Still, none of them has stayed long. There’s only the man and the woman and – joy and fun! – Misty. If that’s how things remain, I’ll have nothing to complain about. 

And this diary will be a happy place.

Misty's Diary: a bundle of irritation called Lucy

Another entry from Misty’s diary. In which he has to come to terms with an existential shock.

March 2015

He thinks he’s so damned smart, that domestic number 2. And he’s actually so damned dumb. He may find that out later today.

He was off getting thrashed at some silly sport or another this morning, and then number 1 headed out too, so I was left alone. Again. Not that I’m complaining or anything, just that I think when they go on about my unfriendly behaviour and all that, they ought to think what it’s like being left on my own with no idea how long that’s going to last.

Amazing they whinge about my using claws on them so much.

But when number 2 got back, while I was quietly having my late mid-morning snooze, he decided to disturb me with some incomprehensible rambling. 

“You’d better get ready for a shock, Misty my boy,” he announced. “A big shock.” 

Quietly minding my own business
But what were the domestic staff up to?

He delivered this weird pronouncement with some satisfaction. You can imagine, can’t you? As though he was getting something over me, just for once.

Well, I didn’t say anything. Partly because I can’t see any point letting him know I can speak. It’s bad enough he knows I can write. But in any case, I didn’t want to say the only thing that would make any sense.

“You can’t prepare for a shock, you poor fool, can you? If you could, it wouldn’t be a shock, would it? It’s like checking with a friend whether Thursday night would be convenient for his surprise party. The whole point about shocks is that they take you by surprise. And so there’s no preparing for them, except by just being generally alert, but I’m alert all the time anyway.”

Instead, I just gave him my look. You know, the baleful one. Should leave him withering on the floor, but it never does: you can’t imagine how weak on sensitivity he is.

But then, when number 1 got in at last, I realised what he’d been on about. A shock? This was nothing short of majorly infuriating.

She’s foisted on me… this… this smelly, runny-aroundy bundle of fluff. A… a… well, I can’t think of any other way of putting it. An animal of the canine persuasion. A bloody dog.

Now I can imagine people might say to me, “well, you liked Janka, didn’t you?”

First of all, I didn’t like Janka. I just got used to having her around. I thought it would make her feel better if from time to time I walked round her, rubbing myself against her, and purring. Even if her response when I did that was to stand rooted to the spot looking, poor clumsy oaf that she was, a smidgeon uncomfortable. I knew that at heart it mattered to her that she should feel appreciated by the boss, so I’d give her a little appreciation from time to time.

I was used to Janka. A companion, not a dog

And I’ll admit it left a bit of a Janka-shaped hole in our lives when she decided to clear off and not come back. Without a word of goodbye or anything. Just there in the morning, gone in the evening.

So if Domestic number 1 brought Janka home again, I’d not complain. I was used to her. I’d be happy to see her back again.

But, and I can’t stress this too much, she wasn’t a dog. She might have smelled like a dog, and barked like a dog, and behaved a bit goofily like a dog, but that didn’t mean she was a dog, it meant she was Janka.

This new arrival? This thing that’s just been dumped on me? They call her Lucy to make it sound like she has a personality, but in reality she’s just all dog, through and through. The little variety, I think, a puppy, but honestly, I can’t really tell one dog from another. Either way, she means I have a chore ahead I wasn’t planning for.

Interloper. Imposition. In my house.
The so-called Lucy

I’ve got to start out on my training work all over again. Breaking her spirit. Cowing her pride. Cutting the crap, basically, sorry for the language.

Hard work, and not what I want to start off on at my time of life.

What an imposition. They really have no idea. I think I’ll pop out. You never know, if I stay out long enough, things may be back to normal when I get back in.

And if they’re not, then it’ll be time for Domestic Number 2’s lesson.

Misty meets his match

It's been exciting to be spectators to a life and death struggle going on just across the street from us, between land and air power, fought out with bitter deliberation.

It all started a couple of weeks ago. Danielle called me to witness a strange sight. On the roof of one of the garages behind our garden was Misty, our cat, flat on his belly between two crows. He was in his habitual hunting stance, crouched, ready to pounce, birds after all being no more to him than conveniently air-delivered parcels of meat.

Not these two. In turn, each would move in closer to Misty, tempting him, provoking him to attack; if he moved, off the bird would fly, and the partner would immediately take over, distracting his attention, teasing and provoking him too.

The message seemed clear. ‘You want to catch those fat lazy pigeons? Go right ahead. They’re easy game. You want to catch us? You’d better learn some new tricks. You’re nothing like quick enough or cunning enough.’

Why were they behaving that way? It seemed extraordinary to court such danger.

We found out the answer at the weekend when we were woken at 5:00 in the morning by a pandemonium of cawing from across the road. One of the crows’ fledglings was on the ground. It was out of its nest far too soon and couldn’t begin to fly. Easy prey for a powerful cat undeterred by any sense of compassion.

That’s Misty through and through. He’s one of the biggest cats I know, in his prime, quick and strong. Neighbours of ours have complained to us that he’s an exceptionally vicious cat and that we ought to do something about him. I’m not sure what I could actually do – I’ve tried reasoning – ‘help yourself to the pigeons, carriers of disease as they are and more than plentiful enough, but please draw the line at blackbirds’ – but does he listen? I might as well be talking to myself.

Ruthless predator

Inevitably, in that fateful dawn, he’d caught the crow fledgling and caused all the commotion.

Danielle rushed out to try to save the bird, but she needn’t have bothered. The wildly cawing parents had set about Misty with resolution and single-mindedness that fully matched his. Pecking and clawing at him, they quickly showed him the error of his ways.

So clearly in their garage roof dance they had been giving him a warning and a chance. ‘Fancy our young, do you?’ they had been saying. ‘Think again, sonny, think again. You may be biting off more than you can chew.’

It didn’t take Danielle’s intervention to get him drop the young bird, the parents had seen to that. The fledgling was apparently unhurt, though presumably shaken by his brush with death. And Misty’s lesson seems, at least for now, to have sunk in.

A morsel not on his menu today

The next morning there was cawing from across the road again, but in a much more restrained way. When I got downstairs, Misty was outside the door, keen to get inside. The crows had seen him and their cawing was just a further warning, to remind him of his lesson.

He was beating a hasty retreat, thoroughly cowed. Or perhaps thoroughly cawed.

Feline conduct, Free Schools and the Football League

When a tomcat arrives in a new territory, he walks round and sprays the boundary. The result probably smells familiar and comfortable to him, though to the rest of us it’s pretty vile.

New governments behave in the same way. In their case, they mark their authority with a series of bright new initiatives establishing how innovative and clever they are. Our nice new government here in Britain has come up with several of these, one of which is the introduction of ‘free schools’.

Depending on your point of view, these are schools that are being freed from the dead hand of bureaucracy applied by local government, to be run instead by groups who really care about education, like parents or teachers. Alternatively, they’re schools that are being removed from the control of elected local representatives working for the good of the entire community, and handed over to groups of individuals answerable to no-one and working to their own agendas.

Interesting the effect of including or excluding the word 'elected', isn't it?

The reality is that the free schools will be both of those things, but which you choose to emphasise marks pretty clearly where you stand in the political spectrum.

Now the most fascinating recent development on this front has been the announcement that the English Football League wants to run a number of these schools. It's my firm aim to avoid cynicism, so don't expect any cheap crack from me about the remedial effect that going back to school might have on the level of intellectual attainment of some of our footballers.

No, the League is thinking of running schools in which tomorrow’s footballers would be trained. Again, I’m not going to pass comment on whether there is anything to be done for today’s. Instead let’s concentrate on the central question of whether the Football League is a fit organisation to run schools at all.

I’ve thought about this deeply. It occurs to me that it is an inescapable fact of our schools today that they measure children against fixed standards. Some will succeed, some will fail. Inevitably therefore success and failure – the same impostor, as Kipling wrote – are built into the fabric of our schools.

As the England football team in South Africa recently showed, the League is clearly well acquainted with one of those two terrible alternatives. Who knows: they may be dimly aware of what the other one feels like. So maybe they have what it takes to run schools.

Whether the outcome of all this will be fragrant or pungent has yet to be seen. It will probably depend on our individual point of view in any case: are we tomcats invigorated by the scent of spray or are we exasperated pet owners deciding that it may be time to cut someone’s balls off?

Misty outlook for Darwin

It’s time to look again at some of the underlying principles of Darwinian thought, particularly the concept of survival of the fittest. My cat, Misty, is challenging the fundamental principles of the theory by undertaking rapid evolution within a single lifetime, without the pressure of natural selection.

Cats are proverbially untrainable. Not for nothing when faced with the thankless task of trying to get a particularly obdurate group to do something – people who combine dogmatism with ignorance, like fourteen-year old boys or merchant bankers – we talk of it as ‘like herding cats.’

Now my cat is as untrainable as the best of them. His strength is in training others.

I’ve mentioned before his techniques for bending me to his will. To get my attention when I’m in bed, he starts by pushing my belongings off the bedside table, and if that doesn’t work, switches to biting my fingers, toes or, most recently, my nose. If he’s outside the house, he’s learned how to locate our dog Janka inside it, get as close to her as he can and then put up a plaintive mewing. That gets her barking, which is a highly effective way of persuading us to respond, particularly at 2:00 in the morning.

All this is ingenious and impressive. But recently he’s evolved a whole new dimension of skill. He’s learned that sometimes he has to move away from his goal in order to attain it more surely. That’s abstract thinking and it’s a quality I’ve not previously noticed in cats. Furthermore, he’s used it to widen the circle of trained resources he can call on to cater to his needs.

Because our neighbours Melanie, Darren, Jenny and George looked after him while we were away at Christmas, Misty now knows that they have a key to our house. So if he can’t get into our place, he goes round and mews miserably at the back door to theirs.

Not to be let into their place. To be let into ours. He knows that eventually, despite the cold, the rain or the snow they’ll go round to our house and open the door for him.

Now going to one place in order to be let into another is what tells me he’s evolved a capacity for abstract thought. That feels like a small pawprint for him, but a huge pounce forward for catkind.

And he's learned to influence not just me but a whole new family. Where does he go from here? All mankind? World domination? Will the next major conflict be over access to sardine-flavoured treats?

Even if we just assume that all he’s done is identify someone who’s as soft a touch for cats as I am, it’s still pretty remarkable. That’s targeted psychological profiling. Not something we generally associate with common or garden cats.

Forget Nietzsche and man evolving into superman. We are now in the presence of supercat.

Tremble and despair.