The Psychology Of The Cat I use a walking stick to get around the place these days. It’s a bamboo affair with a nice double bend hand grip that sits very comfortably and spreads the load evenly across my palm when I’m walking. My wife adopted a cat last year, or rather a kitten as it was then. Now at least eighteen months old, with fangs to match and that attitude cats tend to have, it sits imperiously wherever it wishes with its front paws tucked under itself and head sunk down into its chest. Of course these two items, the cat and the walking stick, may not at first seem to be related. But then you, dear reader, could not possibly know that the cat and I have a relationship that verges on psychological warfare. You see, the cat will, as cats do, sit wherever it sees fit and that for me its most irritating habit. The sofa, the chair, the table, the window sill, a radiator – cool, the cat is not stupid – the ironing, the bed. All these things and more, depending on its whim and the amount of aggravation the cat wishes to cause me. However, the most annoying place the cat has found to place itself, when not sleeping in my wife’s lap, is the middle of the room. And I do mean the middle. It wanders in, decides that this would be a good time to ignore everyone, and gracefully relaxes into the paw-warming position I described earlier, facing west. The cat knows that anyone wishing to traverse the carpeted room will have to either carefully step over or go around its now sleeping lump to avoid the danger of stepping on or tripping over it. But in this it has reckoned without the knowledge that I dearly wish someone would be cruel enough to kick it up the rear end and in so doing teach it a lesson in common sense; that sitting in the middle of the floor is not a good idea and does not engender good feelings toward it on my part. Hence the walking stick. I’m on a winner here. Whenever the cat is stupid enough to plonk itself down on the carpet I creep up behind it – from the east – and reverse my walking sick in the manner of a golf club. Imagining that the cat is sitting on a golf tee, I prepare myself in the same way a golfer might when teeing off at the first hole at St Andrews. The cat knows where I am. I can see it tense its entire body. The noise of my golf…er. ..walking stick swishing through the air as I take several practise swings is unmistakable. The cat sees, as I do, the long fairway before us, the lushness of the grass, the colours of autumnal leaves, the fluffy whiteness of the clouds. It knows, as I do, that in mere seconds it will be airborne, propelled by my walking..er..golf club, sailing high over the trees, in a beautiful curving flight-path that will take it on to the next green, or more accurately, through the glass in the front room window and onto the front garden rockery. It shivers slightly, adrenaline coursing through its veins, its heart accelerating, muscles tensing to breaking point, its mind a hopeless confusion of fear, anticipation, indecision and disbelief. I bring my golf club back as far as I can without upsetting my balance and collapsing in an ungainly heap. This is it, my power swing, the one that’s going to produce the best tee shot St Andrews has ever seen, the one that’s going to show the cat in no uncertain terms just who’s boss. I bring the club back down as hard as I can, the air whistling out of the way, every ounce of my strength concentrated on the club’s business end, only to stop scant millimetres from the cat’s backside. The cat turns its head slowly, its green eyes full of derision, fear and even hatred. It’s considering my actions, inwardly debating my next move. Was that it? Will I swing the walking stick one more time? Is it still possible that I will actually complete the stroke? These thoughts and more have the required psychological effect and as I return to my comfortable chair I know I have won. The cat is unnerved by my inaction. It realises that I could have so easily taken one of its nine lives, and that it is well on the way to becoming a nervous wreck. But more than this, more than the horror of learning just how deadly an irate human male with a walking stick golf club can be, the cat knows there are seventeen more fairways at St Andrews……