Although it’s tempting, when you’re good at something, to make sure everyone knows, I do find that keeping it quiet retains that element of surprise. Only once before have I given away that I can jump quite high, if there is sufficient incentive, but on the whole it is a fact I keep to myself. I used it a year or so ago, when I was chasing my old playmate Elvis and he ran round the other side of the settee. I took everyone by surprise with a flying leap across the settee from back to front. Well I’ve done it again. The Elvis incident is now a distant memory. When I was at the kennels, I was in the little office without my lead on. My Mistress was busy talking to the man who does my training and I spotted an opportunity to take the world by storm, or more precisely the cat on the workbench. With one leap, I didn’t just put my paws on the bench, I have launched my whole body up there with no trouble whatsoever. It makes you feel good to hear phrases like “I didn’t think he’d got it in him.” I smiled mischievously and wondered whether I could get away with climbing to the shelf that the cat had retreated to. Sadly, I was hauled down before I could consider my next manoeuvre in detail.
In a less successful jumping, my Mistress needs to take my car to the garage for a service and an MOT. It hasn’t been used for a while and has a flat battery. They got it started and got it to the top of our drive where it stalled across the road. They were just busy working out whether to push it back down the slope when my mate Brian the postman came along and they were able to jump-start it from his van. You don’t get that level of service from the Post Office when you live in a city!