Our poor chap's been in a bit of a flap lately. More precisely he has been both inside and outside of a flap lately, but not through a flap, which had been what we intended.

What happened, you see, was that we took the great step of mutilating our grotty back door and installing a cat flap, so that with winter coming on again we no longer had to keep the kitchen window open to allow the moggies to get in and out - at the same time praying that the burglars did not also avail themselves of this facility.

Another reason is that we have been squatted by a totally tarty and winsome black and white female stray who has decided that this would be as good a place as any to ply her feminine wiles. Now, whereas our own intellectually challenged ginger ex-tom could be got in at night by just opening the door and calling for him - thus enabling us (well, me actually, nobody else lost a wink of sleep) to batten down the hatches knowing he was safe from cat-nappers, giant moggie-eating foxes, or just the neighbourhood tough guys - she was a different matter. She would sit dolefully outside on the kitchen window ledge all night (or so it seemed) or worse still - if she was indoors at bedtime - she could not settle if she saw all exits being barred and bolted. And - as she had by now managed to get us all well and truly under her spell - her main party trick in the charm offensive being to throw herself on her back and wave her legs enticingly in the air (it doesn't do a lot for our dim and neutered tom, but works a treat on my husband) - and as she is really such a lovely friendly cat, so, we installed a cat flap. Well, you can take a cat to a flap, but you can't necessarily shove him through it. Especially when he's bracing his legs on the frame.

To begin with he thought this was a small window placed thoughtfully low so that he could look out, and a jolly good idea he thought that was. He would sit for ages watching the rain on the drive and the wall of the house next door. When Miss Tart-face elbowed him roughly out of the way and disappeared through his new window, he couldn't believe his eyes. In fact he didn't even bother to try and believe his eyes, and in the following days every time her backside vanished through the perspex flap he obviously thought it was a clever illusion, and watched with the same mildy bemused expression that people have while seeing David Copperfield supposedly walk through the Great Wall of China - "I know it's a trick, but isn't it amazing how they do that ! ".

We tried showing him how the flap went both backwards and forwards, pushing it with our fingers and making encouraging noises, and he watched with polite interest. But any attempt to try and push him through was foiled by an indignant bracing of all four legs on the frame, followed by a dash to the window to escape these people who were trying to thrust him into whatever alien world was through that flap (even though it did look just like our driveway, he wasn't to be fooled).

The Tart even found she could have a wonderful time by sitting outside on the step, waiting until he came to peer through, and then batting the flap with her paw so it swung and hit him right in the face, and still the penny wouldn't drop.

We despaired of him and had given up really - at least she could now go in and out - until one morning when my husband shook me awake at 5.30 a.m and with great excitement cried "He's done it!" Our ginger Captain Kirk had bravely gone where he'd never been before - through the cat flap. True, my husband had been holding it open for him, but it was still a mark of his trust that he'd gone through. Of course, he couldn't seem to get to grips with the idea that it could work both ways, and that he could also get back, so we still had to keep letting him in through the window.

Or, so we thought.

We were sitting at the kitchen table one day remarking what a wally the cat was - when he shot in through the cat flap like a bullet, saw us, and stopped abruptly with an "OOOPS!" expression. He obviously had cracked it. But when? The question now was - did he know that we knew that the flap worked both ways , or was he just trying to make us feel useful by letting us open the window......or was somebody here being given the run around.......and by whom?

 

[Previously published in 'Cat World']

(c) Thelma Mitchell 1995, 2002