I’ve learned Come and Sit, both of them easy, but does the old woman think I am a dog?
She keeps saying “Look.”
I look everywhere she might send a kibble.
Have I told you I’ve graduated onto grain-free kibbles? That’s mornings, anyhow. She persists feeding me the lesser kibbles from lunch time onward.
Everytime I think I’ve trained the old woman to send a kibble into the direction where I’m looking she screws the lid back onto the jar and that’s that.
Here’s me looking everywhere …
We’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks, I might’ve cracked it 20% of the time and she keeps wanting me to look at her while she throws the kibble.
That’s so labour intensive. I want to be looking into the field when the kibble sails overhead and I can see where it lands.
She started to teach me Look because she kept finding kibbles where I hadn’t found them. What does she expect? That I should sniff them out??
I want to skip Look and go to Lie Down, should be easy to pick up a bunch of food mid morning.
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.
Things are not so good between Moggy and me. I’ve been put on antibiotics, the deepest scratch is not closed yet. But my whole hand is not swollen any more.
This all happened on Saturday evening, it’s now Wednesday. Monday Tuesday Wednesday I was out of the house for hours at the time and it’s hard to ‘read’ a cat the best of times, let alone a cat who seems determined to stay a stranger.
In all that time, three and a half days, I have not tried to touch her. I’ve got admit I’m more hesitant now. She does lay in wait round the corner sometimes and lash at my ankles. Most recently, I gave her big voice and she looked shocked.
Various people in my immediate and not so immediate circles are saying I should trade her in, and that animals from Rescue Centres do not always transplant well into a home situation. Moggy was a stray rescued from the streets and was in the cattery for 100 days.
This afternoon she seemed ill at ease and down in the dumps. Is it possible cats can get depressed? I don’t know. But I thought to try to cheer her up. Got some kibbles, and spread the towel over my knees.
She jumped onto the couch without needing encouragement. Took kibbles from off my knees and from my hand, though she did flinch away a couple of times when I moved too fast and unexpectedly.
And I flinched when she moved fast. Looks like we’ve got to rebuild trust. And I have to put a few expectations out of my mind. I have a wilder animal than I had expected to get.
Of course I regret that I can’t expect cat cuddles. Or that she’ll probably never want to have anything to do with the kids. Even just stroking her is a no no at the moment. How we will get her to the vet will be traumatic. See? She does need training.
I thought at about three years old, as the cattery said she is, I thought be able to train her to accept a harness and take her outside to sit in the sun. Since we don’t have any coming into the apartment. I might get a sun lamp instead.
I thought I could train her to climb a cat tree to the new shelf I had installed, to sleep there. She barely jumps up. I’ve offered her the patio table, and I often put kibbles on a high stool on the way to the tabletop. No go. She leaves them.
Right now because of that little training session getting her to eat out of my hand, she made the tiniest purr of approval and jumped onto the back of the couch there to doze. Probably 30 cm/12 inches distance. I have to take that as a plus on the way to better things. She’s been with me for four full months.
Rita de Heer 