Steph Bee's Honey Pit

I haven't had a pet for years. When I was younger, we had cats, as did the neighbours - for some reason dogs were seriously outnumbered in our neck of the woods. I don't really have much to say about our cats - one was quite bright, but the others were pretty dim. But a couple of doors along the neighbours had a cat which must have been way out there in the high tails of the cat IQ distribution.

It used to visit and had ways and means of getting into our house that defied logic. We used to joke with the neighbours' young kids that it had its own key. It used to like lying up on top of a wardrobe in my parents' room, as it has an ornamental door so that no-one could see it was up there. It would then descend from on high at 3 in the morning demanding to be let out, accompanied by much parental cursing. Another trick was to lie under the double bed on its back, grab the base with its claws, and then pull itself around. We figured this was an elaborate back-scratching tactic. We eventually got into the habit of doing a sweep of the house last thing at night in case it was lurking around.

It had a different technique in its own house if it wanted out in the middle of the night. It would be ignored if it went upstairs to pester them, so downstairs the front window was fitted with venetian blinds, and it would put its head between the slats and swing from side to side, banging them against the window frame. That usually was enough to get someone out of bed.

One day we got a new doorbell for the front door. Rectangular, it was. For some reason it came with a second one - circular - that didn't match the first one in any way. We had no used for it, but we installed it at the back door. No-one ever came to the back door, so it was pretty much an ornament. But this little &*#@$!! figured out the pattern just by watching the front door - people press that button, door opens, people go in...sorted - so it would go round the back to put the theory into practice. As I said, no-one ever used the back door, so it couldn't have seen that one in use. And so it began:

1/ ding-dong
2/ one of us opens the front door to...no-one
3/ check the back door...and there in a kitchen window, head framed by a distant street light like the bloody bat-logo in Gotham City, was this little chancer looking to get in.

After a couple of months of this nonsense we had to take the back door bell away. Then it would revert to coming round the front and banging the door knocker (which was absurdly low for some reason, so well within cat range). Honestly, it would have been easier just to install a flap and leave it to get on with it.