Cat Diary 34

See this?

That’s the chair I like to scrapple. My efforts obviously not appreciated. The old woman saw this supposed cure in a few video clips, I understand.

She laughed herself silly at my poor brothers and sisters negotiating kitchen benches and other furniture draped with this stuff. Next time she went shopping she came back with a roll of it.

I’m not happy. It’s another foreign element to negotiate. If she thinks it’ll stop me scrappling the other chair she has got another think coming.

I’m sitting under the table, in the centre. Like I can lash out in three hundred and sixty three directions at least ninety of them covered in that disgusting shiny stuff.

It’s a stand off.

Cat Diary 33

Did I tell you I’ve been learning under? As in a kibble under a piece of paper. Too easy. Then a kibble under a little plastic dome. Not so easy.

Now it’s all about a kibble in a thing too small to get my nose into. Or my tongue.

See the kibble in that thing? It’s harder than it looks. Harder than the kibble under the little dome. That one you just shove along with your nose and eventually the kibble gets left behind and you can eat it.

The black thing took me ages to work out coz it isn’t slippery. It just sat there when I pushed it with my nose.

Did it!

Cat Diary 32

This is the fifth day training with a piece of paper. I don’t know the aim, but I aim to please. More kibbles that way.

I know there’s someting under there …

Ah! Got it. A kibble of course! Yum.

I can’t see it. She’s trying to trick me …

Well, of course I see it now. To see is to eat.

What? Where is it?

Oh! OK! Got it! Oh no, it slipped.

I’m learning ‘under’ …

Cat Diary 31

Training again, I believe. A new thing, and the old woman hopes to tempt me to touch it with a round of kibbles? Huh.

As if that’s going to work. I showed her what I thought by eating the goods and walking away, out of sight out of mind. If only humans were so normal.

But of course she can’t leave well alone. She lay out another round of kibbles and because I was peckish—it is nearly lunchtime—I soon snaffled them up.

And would you believe the old woman put the next round inside the object, whatever you call it? I had a go. She video’d me, 38 seconds worth. Will take you forever to load. Worth it for me. Got most of them out.

Tired then. Time for a nap.

Cat Diary 30

I’ve been in training. The first new habit I’m supposed to pick up is to scratch either one of the three objects she got into the house for that purpose—to be scratched!

I really don’t know why she bothers? I scratch the uprights of the couch and after she told me NO! a few too many times, I graduated onto the vinyl chairs.

Look at me, I’m thinking. This after the old woman said NO! about the couch. I want her to see my expression which says I am not pleased to hear NO! when I’m trying to get her attention.

She didn’t stop and I switched to the vinyl chairs. Too bad the vinyl is so strong I can only make holes. She said a blind woman could read these, and she’d be saying NO! just as many times.

She also said, this is the last straw. Whatever that means. She collected the three things to be scratched and lay them out …

The cardboardy thing is in the middle, it’s useless because I get my claws stuck. The thing with rope around it is just too weird for me. The thing on the left is the board the old woman found on the riverbank after a flood.

That’s the one we settled on for training. She lays it beside her on the couch. The first session she dragged a cord over it and every time I touched the cord, she’d go all gooey, slathering me with praise.

But more importantly she gave me a kibble everytime I touched the cord. After about twenty toes worth of kibbles, she said that’s enough today. We both relaxed then.

Cat Diary 29

My favourite way of gathering kibbles is from this thing that the old woman built from toy bricks.

This is already the third version. It’s getting higher and today there are three things with moving parts.

This thing with the bits looking like wings took me ages to work out how to shift and she’s just added the crossbar but I think I’ll handle it. She leaves kibbles under the crossbar, or under the grey thing.

There are three sides … the front, the back and the top and I do them in that order. The front is my favourite.

The back is harder as the kibbles are always on the tiniest ledges where I need to grapple them from with my tongue.

The top is the highest it’s been yet, but not a problem. I can still reach with all four paws on the ground.

My Duplo puzzle board is my favourite kibble hunting ground!

The Blue Tumbler

Calling it that for want of knowing what its proper name is.

The theory is that filled with kibbles, a smart cat will be able to get them out by pushing or tweaking or pawing at the tumbler.

Moggy is far too smart, or shall we call that wily, to do this work herself. She waits, sitting there looking interested, until the human loses her patience and does it herself, and the tumbler spills its load. Then she doesn’t hesitate, then she steps forward and eats whatever kibble in sight.

It’s a stand-off. We’ve been doing this daily for a week and there appears to be no breakthrough yet.

Although, I shouldn’t forget that this morning she stared piercingly at the tumbler sitting innocent and half-empty nearby. That’s a miniscule bit of interest, what do you think?

So come training time, I had the idea of putting kibbles under the tumbler. See if she’d engage. And that’s as far as we’ve got today, she’ll push it with her nose to be able to grab the kibbles from under it.

I carefully arrange the holes and the tumbler so if she pushes hard enough one time, the thing will tip and spill a few kibbles.

That hasn’t happened yet.