Shocking Cock Up, The Mice Were Furious.

I have been attempting to teach my cats, Bingley and Lucrezia, to use the cat flap. For months now. Unsuccessfully.

Millions of years of human evolution and decades of personal education combine in me so that in approaching a problem like this I try to make out the pattern behind every failure. I try to work out how cats learn, how they think, why they don't seem able to grasp this concept when they are able to grasp others, but of course I missed the most obvious thing about the way cats think.

In Bingley, it became clear pretty early on, I had simply taken on a lost cause. Bingley really is loving and warn and heart on sleeve and very stupid.

But Lucrezia, Lucrezia knows how to get out through the cat flap and given her love of independence I was sure I could teach her to come in by it too. But no, she would sit by the back door waiting for me to notice her and let her in. Ever the diadact, I would take these opportunities to demonstrate the utility of the cat flap and she would look at me with her mesmeric eyes behind her most innocent sorry-Hannah-I-no-speak-English expression until I let her in by the door.

But last night she got caught out in the storm. There was the creak of the cat flap and then the drenched Lucrezia was by the fire.

I don't speak English indeed.

I suspect she has been able all along but was caught up investigating my capacity to learn and think and also that she has not been overly impressed with the results.