Peeping Tom

Monty Cat is not God's gift to feline intellect. He's not even a moderately bright cat. At this stage, we don't see him going to university. When he was little, he would repeatedly jump up onto the counter by the sink, obsessed with running water. He would then stick his head under the tap to get closer to the water... but could never work out how or why he was getting wet.

Here is Monty Cat at Mr and Mrs Nunn's house, being filmed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJn9eDtBEbQ Apologies for the title of the clip. Believe it or not, that is Mr Nunn's doing.

Still, it wasn't until last weekend we genuinely started to wonder if he had learning difficulties, that he might have been dropped on his head as a kitten. Repeatedly.

We have been unable to fit a proper cat flap to the house as we have a conservatory at the back, and it's really difficult to fit a flap into glass. Monty Cat does enjoy going outside whilst we're at work, so we decided in order for him to have shelter if it starts raining, we'd put a cat flap on the shed. Last weekend TheBloke (TM) diligently beavered away, like a diligent beaver and fitted a Monty Cat flap to the shed.

Monty Cat was not interested. We sat on one side and tempted him through with treats. He didn't understand. We posted him through physically a few times, to help him get the hang of it. We shut him in the shed and called him encouragingly from the other side. No joy. Eventually, out of desperation, we removed the flap part of the cat flap so it was just a hole in the shed.

The neighbourhood cats came to play. In and out of the shed they went. In and out and out and in. Monty Cat would look at them with wonderment. You could see on his little cat face, as they disappeared into the shed, the question, "Well where did that cat go? What witchcraft is this?"

"Never mind," we thought. As soon as it rains, instinct will take over and he'll head for the shelter. I came home on Thursday after work. It had been raining. I went to let Monty Cat in for his dinner, and in sprinted a soggy, soggy moggy.

Next door's cat )Monty Cat's girlfriend) popped her head out of our shed to see what was going on.

Monty Cat is stupid. Luckily we have a special needs school at the top of the road.