The Delivery Moment Is a Designed Escape Opportunity
Think about what a delivery looks like from a cat's side of the door: a buzzer that startles, a door opened wider and longer than at any other time, a stranger's legs and a trolley creating moving cover, and an owner whose hands and attention are completely occupied with boxes and a signature. In a house, a cat who slips out reaches a garden. In your flat, she reaches a landing, a stairwell, or a lift, and from there the building's ground floor and the street, so the same small mistake carries much bigger consequences. The fix is not vigilance, because vigilance fails exactly when the buzzer goes during cooking or a work call. The fix is a sequence that works even when you are distracted.
Barrier One: The Cat Is Never in the Hall When the Door Opens
Make it a fixed rule with no exceptions for quick parcels: when the buzzer sounds, the cat goes into the bedroom or bathroom with the door shut, a few treats scattered to make the routine pleasant rather than a chase, and only then does the front door open. It takes under a minute and it converts the riskiest moment of flat life into a non-event. If your cat is hard to move quickly, work the other way: keep the hall as the shut-away zone instead, using a door or a tall pressure gate between the hall and the living space, so the cat simply never has access to the entrance side of the flat during the day.
Barrier Two: How You Take the Parcel In
Ask couriers, through a note on the delivery app or a small sign, to leave parcels at the door rather than handing them across the threshold, which keeps the door's open time to seconds. Never prop the flat door open while you make two trips to the lift; bring everything inside in one awkward load or shut the door between trips, because a propped door plus an empty landing is the exact configuration cats leave through. Apply the same discipline to the balcony during deliveries: its door stays latched while people and boxes are moving, since a startled cat bolting away from the hall commotion may hit the balcony rail or an open balcony door as her escape line.
Make the Shut-Away Room a Place the Cat Chooses
The routine only survives if the cat cooperates, and cooperation is trained on ordinary days, not negotiated when the buzzer sounds. Scatter treats in the chosen room several times a week with no delivery following, play there, and let the cat leave freely, so the room predicts good things rather than a chase and a shut door. Practise the exact delivery sequence when a friend visits, buzzer, room, treats, door, praise, until it is boring for everyone. Learn your regular courier's knock and your cat's hiding reflexes too: a cat who bolts under the bed at the buzzer is halfway to the shut-away room already if the bedroom is the chosen room, while a cat who rushes the hall needs the gate arrangement instead. Match the system to the cat you actually have.
If the Ritual Ever Fails, Identification Is the Recovery
Even good systems meet a visitor, a cleaner, or a neighbour's child who does not know the routine, so the planning includes the bad day. Keep your cat's microchip contact details current and a recent photo on your phone, and know which neighbours to knock on first. As a ready-to-show backup, your cat's KinsLe Pet Pass is her verified ID card, holding her identity and your contact details in a form you can present instantly to building staff, a vet, or a finder who has taken her in.