Cat Diary 35

Two weeks ago the old woman went to Bunnings on the little bus and got, among a few other doo-dads, a 50 meters of a black twine-like substance.

When she got home she cut off a piece to test it for knots, she said. Making a few of them in this stuff and dragging it along the floor.

A black string dragging along the floor is like a red rag to a bull if you get my meaning… when I see it I have gotto chase it.

It’s been my only interest for two weeks and I still don’t know how to stop it sliding from between my toes when the old woman tugs it.

She’s getting bored with it, she tells me as she put another knot in the end for me to catch hold of. She tells me it’s the easiest form of playing. She means it requires the least output of energy by me. And she’s right, I like to take it easy.

This is me looking at the string draped over my pillow case with catnip in it.

This me starting a game. Except then I heard her starting to video me and I walked away. I hate that little noise. Lucky the corner was right there.

When she started typing, the one-fingered type, I came back and am just sitting here looking at my black string. Hoping it’ll magically start moving itself so I can chase it.

PS she gave the rest of the string to the builder in the family. It’s 100% polyester and too slippery to hold a knot.

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!