THE TAP-DANCING TABBY

NADINE SHEPHERD, 43, is a retired croupier who lives in Greenwich, South-East London. She has two cats, Socks and Pickle. Nadine says: The first time I saw my three-yearold cat Pickle sitting by the kitchen sink, drinking straight from the tap, I didn’t turn a hair.

every cat I’ve ever had has been able to nudge on the tap with a nose or paw and help themselves — and Pickle had learned the trick from his sister, Socks.

But other people are amazed by it. I’ll be sitting in the lounge having a cup of tea with a friend and hear Pickle leaping up onto the worktop and getting a drink.

I can see my friend thinking ‘What’s that noise?’ as we hear the water dripping.

But when I tell them, I don’t think they believe me until they see it for themselves.

Pickle and Socks have always been clever. I only wanted one cat when I went to see them as kittens, but the home they were in was so unsuitable — lots of noisy children pulling them around — that I came home with both.

From the very start, they were into everything. Socks soon learned how to open the kitchen cupboard with her treats in.

She puts her paw behind the handle and pulls — she has to do it five times to get the momentum for it to swing open. Then she nabs a sachet of food, runs into my bedroom and claws it open — leaving a nice mess for me to clean up.

When I began to stop her, she learned how to open my sliding wardrobe doors — which are so big you’d never think a little cat had the strength — and hide in there with the sachet.

So, the kitchen cupboard is now kept locked. But it’s impossible to lock my chest of drawers, which she can also open, so I regularly come home to find my underwear strewn about the bedroom.

I must admit, the first time she did it, I came home and thought I’d been burgled.

her brother’s no less intelligent. One of his favourite things to do is play a special ‘cat app’ I’ve downloaded on to my tablet computer. Spiders and bugs crawl across the screen and, if he taps one, it explodes. he absolutely loves it.

But it’s the water trick that people find the most remarkable.

It started with Socks, who learned how to nudge the tap on with her paw or her nose, despite always having a bowl of fresh water down on the floor to drink from.

Pickle saw her doing it and joined in. They only turn it on just a little — they don’t like more than a trickle or they get their fur wet.

I think it’s a great trick, except for when they do it at 3am. Not only do they wake me up, I have to get up to turn it off. They’ve yet to learn how to do that!