Always a tricky one, this, for Real cat owners, who tend to be the types to whom parade-ground shouting and the legendary rolled-up newspaper does not come easily (if it did, they would then be one of those people with huge bounding dogs who do whatever they damn well please in a huge, jolly way to distant strains of “Prince! NO! I said NO! PUT IT DOWN! This minute! Prince! NO!” etc). What it really boils down to is the difference between Inside and Outside (cf. “Hygiene”). Most Real cats cotton on to the idea fairly quickly. Most Real cats, after all, are bright enough to know that a dry box in a corner of the kitchen is a better bet than a flower bed when the wind is blowing straight from Siberia. Their mothers apparently educate them, though much attention paid to this has been unable to fathom exactly how this is done, apart from persistently moving them around in a slightly neurotic game of kitten chess. Possibly the kittens are taken to some secret cat school where they are shown diagrams. (it's amazing how self-possessed and intelligent cats turn out to be when brought up by their mothers. We've been brought up by our mothers for millennia, and look at us. If Romulus and Remus had been reared by a cat instead of a wolf, Rome would be a different place today).

It'd have better lavatories, for a start.

Beyond that, you can't teach cats to do anything. No, not a thing. You might think you can, but that is because you've misunderstood what's going on. You think it's the cat turning up obediently at the back door at ten o'clock on the dot for its dinner. From the cat's point, a blob on legs has been trained to take a tin out of the fridge every night.

Discipline—once you get beyond all the blanco and school traditions—means, If You Don't Do What I Want I'll Hit You.