Welcome the fiendish felines
ROBERT Hodges woke in the middle of the night to hear the theme of the UEFA Champions League blaring out of his office.
He went to investigate and found his brown Burmese, Pepe, and his mate Ziggy, the blue Burmese, perched up watching Liverpool play Chelsea in a high stakes soccer match.
There was no indication which team the cats were supporting.
Welcome to the world of the owners of genius pets.
There was little indication of Pepe's talents when Rob bought him as a kitten from a Sydney cat dealer and flew him to Hervey Bay.
There was the kitten's tendency to destroy things and an irrepressible cheekiness, but little to betray the depth's of Pepe's talents.
Aside from the cat's love of getting on the computer keyboard, and watching late night sporting events, military communications are also a forte.
"Early of a morning - 4am-5am - when Pepe wants to be fed he knows that if he touches the bedside lamp in a certain spot it will come on," Rob said.
"So he will sit there switching the light on and off, like Morse Code, until we get up to feed him."
It's commonplace for animals to co-operate in the wild and Ziggy and Pepe have refined those instincts to adapt to life in Rob's Torquay home.
"Pepe has been opening doors for a while," Rob said.
"If Ziggy wants to go to bed he will go and sit by the door.
"Pepe will get up and open the door and then go and lay back on the lounge."
