I was sitting at home the other night watching television with the balcony window open. I live on the first floor of my apartment block by the way. First floor, not ground floor. With one notable exception, that usually means I’m high enough off the ground not to have to deal with unexpected visitors. I exclude the flying cockroaches of Sydney in that. But the other night, quite unexpectedly, Biscuit The Cat paid me a visit.

Biscuit is owned (as much as a cat can be owned) by a woman who lives on the third floor of my block. Quite how he managed to go from her apartment on the third floor to my balcony on the first floor remains a mystery. There can be only one explanation: he’s a cat with Spiderman-like skills.

It’s not the first time he’s paid me a visit in such circumstances though. Quite often I can be happily sitting at home with the balcony window open and all of a sudden he’ll walk through the door, look up at me and say “feed me”.

Generally, I have a small can or two of sandwich tuna in the house and so will often invite him into the kitchen, open up a can, and give him some of that. As these visits were so regular, I decided I’d buy some cat food to have on hand for such an occasion. And not just your cheapo crappo cat food, but some quite good quality cat food.

The first time I opened up one of the saches and presented it to him, he looked at me as if to say, “You expect me to eat that shit?”. The last couple of times, he has actually eaten a little of it, before moving back onto the balcony with plans, presumably, to visit another apartment with an open window.