My mum's cat jumped up on the benches a few times, we made sangas filled with hot english mustard inside fish paste and after one afternoon and a little mess of spat out sangas, he didn't jump up any more.

Ages? Well, my cats were 8 and 9 when my first son was born, and they are both fine. My youngest cat would sit on my belly and purr against the bump, he's the one that now sleeps with my eldest and lets my youngest chew his ear. however if you have a 4-y-old, i'd more likely get a juvenile cat, not a kitten just for the fragility of a kitten.

We leave ours alone for a weekend with a couple of food & drink dispensers. As for being an inside/outside cat, it's similar to being a city or country person .... my cats were outside cats but are now inside and even if they get out, they come back inside within an hour. If we go away for a month, our neighbour just feeds them for us once a day, they get a bit of a cuddle when he's in the mood. Or I just throw them in the chook run for a week and he feeds them at the same time as the chooks. One of my cats will travel well and we've driven up to Qld and back with him in the car, he just looks out the back parcel shelf as we drive along.

Cats are so playful - this same cat will whenever I make the bed appear and wrestle with the sheets as I fluuffff them over the bed, he has fun with that Plus they can hide in small places if needed to escape kids!