Are cats reactive or proactive? Do they actively plan ahead, or are they driven by instinct provoked by circumstances?

Taking The Cat as one example, you would have assumed that cats were reactive. She was at one with Nature, following her instincts. When it came to raising her families, this could make her look harsh, for instance when she returned to the garden without all her kittens after a night in the fields, because day was breaking and she wasn’t prepared to wait any longer for them to catch up. Did the kittens suffer? Not from what we saw; in fact it made them become independent both in body and mind at a young age, which was very important for feral kittens.

But if you were to take The Cat’s daughter Sprocket as a second example, you might assume that cats were proactive. Sprocket was highly intelligent – and that’s not to say that The Cat wasn’t, but Sprocket had an analytical mind, and somehow she thought differently.

So when the humans woke one day to find that Sprocket was moving the seven kittens of her and The Cat’s litter to the first floor terrace, it was not some spur-of-the-moment decision as it might have been, had it been The Cat. Sprocket had planned ahead.

After two weeks of being an attentive mother and not going further than a couple of metres away from the kittens’ nest, Sprocket had randomly appeared on the terrace the day before. Except that it wasn’t random. It was planned. Sprocket had deliberately patrolled the terrace, checked out every inch, inspected the pile of olive branches in the corner which were waiting to be dropped down to the garden, and made eye contact with a human (me) indoors to check that we were there.

And then, and only then, knowing that all was in order, her plan was ready to execute at daybreak the following day. The kittens were carried up to the terrace, one by one…

…biggest first, smallest last – this was all part of Sprocket’s plan.

And once there with both the mothers, the kittens were settled in.

And so, although The Cat and Sprocket made an excellent team, this is one example of how they were different in some fundamental respects.