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Do cats understand us? Yes, if they want to, if it suits their current needs or desires, they do understand us. Very well. And if it doesn't suits their current need or desire, or interferes in any way with their comfort, they don't.

They don't, for example, understand 'get off the comfy chair' unless it is said with an unshakeable, firmly grounded sense of purpose and determination. You have to speak from the very core of conviction, be as certain about the neccessity of this as you are the need to protect and provide for your children. Nothing less will get the cat off off the chair. Exasperation, pleading, the slightest suggestions or taint of servility or sense of incipient defeat they understand clearly to be an invitation to ignore. Threat of undignified removal they understand to mean they'd better do ...sigh... as the fool wants, or, in the case of my current feline mistress, as the mean-minded, graceless and insenstive sod that I honor with my presence ....

Every cat I have owned has known who I am and what it is I can be made to do. They have all known what is necessary to get from me what it is that he or she, at this moment, requires. Their teaching methods have varied according to the personality of the cat, just as it does with my childrens' school teachers. Some have been excellent teachers, sweet and deceiptively submissive, some have been a mix of gentle and fanged, and some have been outright tyrants.

Mitty, for example, established his position on arrival at our house by immediately getting rid of the semi-wild farm cat we already had. Although the word 'had' is probably an overly optimistic word for the relationship Blacky chose to allow us.

Blacky kept us in constant thrall by requiring much begging and leaving open of doors and careful positioning of delectable foodstuffs to get her to come in or allow the slightest physical contact. We competed to caress her on the very rare ocassions she allowed any one of us close enough to even touch her soft, satiny coat. I think her childhood may have been a little harsh. She was born under a veranda and spent most of her baby days rolling around in the dust under its sheltering overhang. Inside was a bit too much I suspect. But she liked it enough to play to our begging, enough to stay when I think she really wanted to go.

Mitty marched in, took one look, and changed into a snarling, spitting orange fuzzball every time poor Blacky came anywhere near the back door. He glared and stomped angrily towards

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