Adopted cats learn to adapt

It is four years now since we turned an ex-feral cat and an outdoor cat into house cats. Most of the time it was a fairly straightforward project and just occasionally the situation tried our patience.

Around the world, a few places have actually turned it into a crime to allow cats to run loose outside, citing the apparent depredation of wildlife to marauding domestic cats. Commonsense apart, that is like punishing a lion for hunting its own food - the animals are surviving, not hunting or killing for fun.

Lion numbers drop if there is not enough food, or lion widen their hunting area to keep nature in balance. Domestic cats, however, despite being domesticated for at least 10,000 years, are still at times closer to their original ancestor the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica).

However well fed your cat is, it will still automatically chase down any small moving object. Apparently the hunting instinct is still so hardwired they just have to pounce.

However, as we discovered with Jade, the calico cat, rescued after she had been discarded as a kitten, it is possible to teach a cat to stop hunting.

Within a year of allowing her to come and go as she pleased, we had trained her out of hunting birds and bats. Her presence kept rats away anyway and other free-roaming cats avoided our garden as she is very territorial.

Amber, on the other hand, a rare ginger feral female, was so close to death when we took her in, that she reinvented herself quite happily as a house cat, viewing the world past the home doors as a distinct threat.

Both cats will, at times rush through an open door to the outside world, but Amber rushes back just as fast if she loses sight of her humans and Jade will generally stop on command and wait to be picked up and returned to the safety of home.

Jade has learned to listen to humans the way a dog learns to follow commands. Amber has chosen to become more like a dog and stay close to humans.

Either way, having given the cats the run of the house, we now have to accept that Amber's favorite place is the middle of our bed and Jade's favorite is on the lap of any human not up and moving.

Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays.

gnoyce2009@gmail.com