At the risk of encouraging another inside /outdoor debate

Today we introduced Milly to the big wide world.

She had her last injection early afternoon and vet said she was ready to be let outside.

No pictures as we needed our wits to herd Milly but I'll get some next time we let her out.

First we trained her to use the catflap. That consists of me standing on the inside and PaysForIt outside, encouraging her. She ran over to the cat flap and I pushed open the clear plastic door and her eyes widened and she jumped out. PayForIt praised her and popped her back inside again. We repeated this a couple of times.

I think Milly has been used to catflaps before, as she has been headbutting the catflap since we adopted her.

Then as our back door is actually on the side of our house. We had opened our garden gate and carried Milly into the back garden. She sniffed around a little bit and ran back into the house and straight back to the back garden !!!

This is common behaviour in indoor/outdoor cats. Cats map their world in relation to their home. Milly explores a garden and then returns to the back door to get her bearing . Then she turns around and heads out again.

As this was her first visit outside we monitored her at all times. I had to go into a neighbours garden, to show her the gap in the hedge, she had used to get there in the first place.

She is now sleeping on the sofa looking happy but tired