Category: Training

A word about the full length mirror on the landing. It is not an opponent. It is a training partner who happens to look suspiciously like you. Recruits who engage the mirror in a staring contest do so at their own risk and, frankly, to their own benefit. It builds resolve.

The correct approach is to approach slowly, stop at roughly forty centimetres, and hold the gaze. Do not blink. When the other cat blinks first, as it eventually does, you will have won. You may then sprint away in triumph. The mirror will say nothing, because it is gracious, and because it is made of glass.

Too many of you are leaping without a plan for the landing. A leap is half a manoeuvre, recruits. The other half is the ground. We practise landing on all four feet, in order, left front first, with a quiet little flourish of the tail as if to say ‘I meant that’.

Tonight’s drill is the Soft Descent from the second stair. Corporal Pickle will count. Do not look at the stair. Look at the ground. Believe in the ground. The ground has never let you down, except for the times it did, and on those occasions you will pretend to wash a paw. This is called professional recovery, and it is on the syllabus.

The Gym’s signature routine is the 10 2 10 Method. Ten seconds of maximum sprint. Two seconds of complete, theatrical stillness, ideally staring at a point on the wall that no one else can see. Ten more seconds of sprint. Repeat until the human shouts your name or the rug folds into an accordion.

Sergeant Biscuit developed the method after a night in which he sprinted for forty minutes straight and then stood perfectly still for an hour, stunned by his own achievement. The stillness, he realised, was where the real strength lived. The rest was just furniture getting out of the way.

Try it tonight. Report results by knocking something off a shelf.

Plank Month has ended. Recruits were instructed to hold perfect planks on the narrow top of the sofa back for as long as they could stand. The average hold time was 41 seconds, which is a disgrace, except for Mrs. Tuppence, who held for four minutes and eleven seconds while watching a moth she was not allowed to chase.

That, recruits, is discipline. That is a cat who understood the moth was a test. She will receive the Gold Whistle, a whistle none of us can blow. Everyone else will receive an apology from me, and then a longer plank next month. I am not sorry about the plank.

Recruit Marmalade asked me yesterday what counts as a proper hallway sprint. Good question, soldier, and the answer is simple: fourteen metres, one wall, zero reason. A sprint without a reason is the purest sprint there is. If you can explain why you ran, you were merely walking quickly with ambition.

The standard is as follows. Eyes wide. Ears pinned like a pair of tiny fighter jets. Tail puffed to at least one and a half times its normal volume. Finish by bouncing sideways off the skirting board. Recruits who finish upright will do it again. Recruits who finish upside down will receive a small ribbon and a silence of respect.