Cat Training

Nice to read all previous notes. We've not had a cat for years due to circumstances beyond our control, but now we're dare I say "settled"... we took our eldest grand-daughter to the local cat rescue centre this week to help us choose a cat. We are all so excited but have to wait a couple of weeks as we are away. We went straight to the local pet store to buy all new things. He's going to be so spoiled. He's a handsome tabby with a white bib and white sox and his name is HEINZ, I know, I know, there are 57 varieties! Any tips will be much appreciated.

I think my cats know their names, but they always seem most responsive to them when I yell "Wesley/Albert - it's breakfast/teatime!"

I'm not so sure. My six all know their names so a screeched "Fishpaste" as she claws one of the sofas puts a stop to it. They all know "This way", whether I'm shooing them indoors before locking the back door or Mr absent is shooing them out of the sitting room at bedtime. "Get down" and "Stop that" – or at least the slightly stern tone – works. As far as hunting other creatures is concerned, they're pretty much past that now. The serious hunter used to bring in rabbits, rats and squirrels but he's an old boy now. The others have never managed anything bigger than a frog, which they didn't kill but popped into a pile of washing. (I didn't wash the frog but asked one of my daughter's friends to climb over the back wall of the garden and put it near a neighbour's pond.) A couple are ace at catching – and, disgustingly, eating flies – so I have to watch out for wasps and bees. I haven't trained them and they haven't trained me – we have a mutually acceptable modus operandi – except I think my big black boy and I would have been burned at the stake in the Middle Ages, so close is our understanding of each other.

My daughter has just brought me a souvenir fridge magnet from her holiday. It shows a contented cat, with the verse: "I'm just a cat/and we'll get along fine/as long as you remember/I'm not yours, you're MINE!"

A fairly accurate summary of the actual situation, I thought.

Just realised - Cat training - definitely an oxymoron.

My black cat, Sam, now long deceased, as a kitten was a dab paw at catching daddy long legs which he then crunched with relish. Sadly, as a sober, adult cat, he abandoned this useful task.

I had my first cat in Dubai and he used to have great fun eating cockroaches and leaving their shells under my wooden bath mat!!!!

It's a long time now since I had cats, but after I found my two in Kenya torturing a small rat under my bed in the middle of the night, they were banned from the bedroom, and that applied to my English cats too.

We've always had rescue cats and I'm afraid they tend to train you not the other way round! We've never had cat flaps. When we moved to our current house last year our cat Darcy was very put out as he obviously wasn't used to the new layout of the house and would manage to open our bedroom door (still don't know how he did it) and wake us in the middle of the night. He'd always been used to living in our dining room and kitchen at nights in our previous house (without a cap flap) so we never had a problem. Now, we have to make sure that the kitchen door is clicked tight shut (he was able to open that as well (!) and now he's as happy as Larry, as are we. However, during the summer months he wants to be outside at night and sits by the front door until he's let out and if it doesn't happen quickly enough he lets us know in no uncertain terms - we are very firmly put in our place and the glare we get when we finally open the door has to be seen to be believed.