Hearing the footsteps of its owner The cat jumped down from the kitchen countertop which word does the particle phrase modify

A sentence basically has a subject, the object of the sentence or doer of the action and predicate, the verb, the adjective, etc. A phrase is a group of words that is also a dependent clause.

In the sentence:

Hearing the footsteps of its owner, the cat jumped down from the kitchen countertop.

The phrase is:

Hearing the footsteps of its owner

The word is:

Cat