by Celia Haddon, written from her cat George’s point of view.

Microchip cat flaps are a great idea, but when are we going to get the human version? I fancy something about 7 feet by 4 feet, big enough to let, or keep out, a fairly tall and fat human. That way I could decide who comes into my home.

Of course, we would have to microchip them first. Most of us cats are responsible owners of our human pets, and this would allow us to keep tabs on them when they stray – particularly the males. With a microchip reader in every pub, we could get news of where they are drinking for a start.

Is this really necessary, you ask? Well, from my point of view humans make good pets only when they are under proper control. That means under control not just when they are in the house, but also when they are out. I am a firm believer in training humans to feline requirements  (read my manual One Hundred Ways for a Cat to Train its Human). Microchipping and human flaps would give further control.

Humans have an anti-feline habit of leaving the home five days a week to go to something they call “work.”  They would be better off, in my opinion, if they stayed at home and did their proper work – fixing cat food at all hours, grooming us (if we like that sort of thing), sitting around to provide a warm lap and generally getting on with their domestic duties.

As we all know, keeping staff happy and productive can be difficult. This desire to leave the home is one of the problems of employing live-in humans. OK so they have to go out to buy cat food. I understand that. But we cats just don’t know what sort of mischief they get up to when they are out of the house.

Fitting all our humans with a Biotrack collar (so we could literally track them with a digital reader) would allow us to know exactly where they are. Microchipping, with a SureFlap for humans, would help us decide if we want them back. It would also allow us to keep out intruders.

There are some human types I do not want in my home under any circumstances – vets, vet nurses, doctors (they smell like vets), poachers, gamekeepers, adolescent males with airguns, women smelling of dogs, men smelling of dogs, rat catchers who put down poison. You could all add to that list, I am sure.

Then there are some individual humans I don’t want to come inside. Susie, from down the road, keeps trying to pet me. She won’t leave me alone. She harasses me. I don’t like her. And then there is Adam, the gardener, who is upset by my sensible use of his seedbeds… I could go on.

So, SureFlap, get going on this. I can’t wait to be able to swap the front door with a gigantic human flap, programmed to keep out all human intruders.

About the Author

George, Online Cat, is an agony aunt for cats worried about or irritated by their humans. He has a degree in applied human behaviour and has studied this inferior species for many years. He believes they can make quite agreeable pets if they are correctly trained. Find out more about George on his website: http://george-online.blogspot.com

George belongs to Celia Haddon, a cat behaviourist in Oxfordshire who has published several books on cats and writes for Your Cat magazine.