NOT a Chicago fan

Last night when I got back from dinner (I'd met Tom & the guys he'd been riding with at a local restaurant for dinner) Charlotte felt a bit neglected, of course.  She scooted right out into the garage.  I'd been longer getting back than the guys because I'd seen the groomer working in town and stopped for some photos and video.

I thought since the guys were in the second garage (Tom's working garage) I'd take her in to introduce her.  As soon as I opened the door she fled for the kitchen door.  The same door she so often want OUT of, she wanted IN.  (We have a double garage, but it started as a single garage, then had another added on to the side of it, leaving the wall between them, with a door allowing access from one to the other.)

Not being sure if it was the strangers or something about the garage, I got her again, calmed her a bit and opened the door to the second garage again.  This time she wasn't as frantic to get away, but she still wanted nothing to do with Tom's garage.

We'll never know for sure if it was the strangers (I doubt it based on a past encounter), the smell of the chemicals stored & used out there (she does seem to have a keen sense of smell, often following her nose) or the Chicago music playing (loudly) on the stereo.  Regardless, she wanted nothing to do with anything in that garage.  We'll always think it was Chicago.

Cats are carnivores?

Everybody knows cats are carnivores.  But Charlotte is the second kitten I've had that seems determined to disprove that common knowledge.  If she follows the same kind of development as my first cat (Sarah, a strikingly colored calico), she'll settle into "proper" carnivorous eating as she approaches adulthood.

Sarah tasted a lot of starchy foods during her first year; Charlotte eats starchy foods.  As you can see in this video, she treats many starchy foods the same as her kitten chow.  These are multi-grain Cheerios - I gave her a few at a time to keep her out of mine.  (I eat most cereals dry, so no milk here.)

Don't get me wrong, she loves meat.  Last night she had a bit of our London broil instead of wet cat food.  She comes to the kitchen whenever she can tell I'm cooking in the hope I'll provide handouts.  Sometimes she gets lucky, depending on what I'm doing.

Charlotte is a smart kitty

I keep seeing many signs of how smart Charlotte is.  I know everyone knows their cat, dog, bird, kid, etc. is the smartest one.  But, having had a few cats before, I'm seeing something different with her.

When I had Sarah (my first cat) and second cat (Booboo), laser pointers were not in every check-out line.  Lasers were still the size of a shoe box.  I think either of them would have been unable to resist.  Charlie, the last cat we had, would look straight at the source - right at the pointer - and that was that.  He would not follow the dot.  No way, no how.

Charlotte is a different story.  She loves to chase the dot.  She knows the red dot on the floor comes from the pointer.  How do I know she knows?  When I get the pointer out (any of the 3 we have) she looks right at the pointer, then looks to the floor for the red dot.  Then she chases it.  If she hears me pick it up or turn it on (there is a faint click) she looks for the dot.

She learned to sit on command very quickly.  It only took a couple of days.  She has a "thing" about going out into the garage.  It started with escapes at every opportunity.  Now it's part of the morning routine.  I started enticing her into the house by asking her if she wanted some "crunchies".  Then I started asking her to sit to receive them.  As long as I give her some head scratches first, she's happy to sit for her crunchies.  She will even (sometimes) sit for the crunchies without me saying a word.  And with little coaxing, she'll remain sitting to eat the crunchies.  After I find a way to edit out the TV in the background I'll post a video of "sit".  (Update - I didn't figure out how to filter out the TV, but posted the video anyway).

Next step, building on her existing actions, is telling her to "stretch" at the garage door before we open it for her.  Now, on to more challenging training.  Last night I started with a training clicker and chicken liver.  I'm trying to get her to "shake".  It's going to take a while since it's not something she's already doing.  I'll keep you posted.

Sit - update

I recently reported that Charlotte has learned "sit".  It didn't take her long at all to learn it.  Yesterday she took it a step further.  She loves her "crunchies".  That word is enough to help bring her in from the garage.  Yesterday, as I was getting ready to tell her to sit for her crunchies ... she sat on her own.  She has connected the dozen or so crunchies (Temptations Treats) in the flat of my fingers with "sit" to the point that she just sat to receive them.

Having mastered sit, we're ready to move on to the next behavior.  I think it will be "stretch" or something similar.  She already stands and stretches at door frames, and especially at the garage door when she wants out - I just need to decide what to call it . . .

Then I think we'll need to try "shake" and "high 5". 

The big challenge is going to be getting her used to a harness, then the leash, so we can take her for walks outside.

Sympathy? And sit.

The day after we had to put down our old timer dog, Charlotte showed some empathy.  We'll never know if it was because of Max being gone or because Tom was ill enough to go to bed really early.  He's been fighting a bad cold.  Friday, he went to bed about 7:30.  Charlotte followed him up to bed within a few minutes and between then and when I went to bed around 10 she spent almost the whole time tucked up against his leg.

Normally, she would have spent much of that time sleeping, but somewhere in the living room, most likely on the top level of the cat tree, followed by a spell of frantic activity just before we went to bed.

In the past, I've experienced a cat coming and spending time with me when I was under the weather.  In this case, the house has been full of sadness and illness, so we'll never know which it is.


A lot of people say cats can't be trained.  As I mentioned a few days back, Charlotte has been trying to train us and now we're aware of it, we're making sure we only cooperate with her training efforts when it is acceptable to us.  It can be hard to ignore some of her scratching at a plastic bag ... that is one of her requests for us to play with her.  "Distract me!"  So, we'll do the laser or the thing-on-a-string-on-a-stick toy when she stops scratching at the bag, not distract her in the middle of it.

A couple of days ago I started working on "sit".  She loves her "crunchies" (Temptations treats).  This morning, after her second tour of the garage, I offered her crunchies, but told her to sit.  She stood up to reach for them & I pulled them out of reach.  She sat.  After a few bites I moved my hand so we could repeat it.  She stood up; I told her to sit.  She sat.  When there is something she wants badly enough and the behavior I want is easy enough, she learns very quickly.  There is no longer any doubt about it.  Sitting to eat from my hand is not something she would be doing on her own.  I look forward to teaching her lots of things, both useful and for show.

Charlotte's Training Program

Charlotte is a very smart kitten.  Over the last few days I've come to realize that Charlotte has begun a training program.  There are certain behaviors we've repeatedly discouraged.  She has started doing them to get one of us to distract her by offering the toy-on-string-on-a-stick or the laser pointer. 

Her training program we going well until I started seeing the pattern and stopped responding as she wanted me to.  Now, we're watching for those behaviors (or similar patterns) so we can reward her when she is NOT doing them, or when she stops them.  The idea is for us to train her, not for her to train us.

In her case it means taking a few seconds to analyze what she's doing & what she wants to accomplish to make sure we only cooperate with training efforts we can live with.

One of her favorites has been to pluck at a plastic bag.  She loves the crinkly noise almost as much as the jingle bell noise.  The first time or two I would grab the laser toy to get her to stop.  Then she realized she could use it as a request.  Then it went a bit further.  Once I had the "ah ha moment", I decided to get it back on our terms, not hers. 

Living with a really smart kitten presents a different kind of challenge than living with a really smart dog.  The dog wants to please you, but needs stimulation.  The kitten (and eventually the cat) wants to please itself more than you, so the rewards and behaviors have to be much different.

So, we're training each other - it's an ever changing landscape ... stay tuned!

Free Mouse!

Charlotte has been working at the second (of two) jingle mouse hanging from the cat tree.  The first one went into one of her stashes ... somewhere in the house ... and hasn't come back out.  She's been working at liberating the second one and this afternoon she finally got it free.  I was lucky enough to be in the room and notice what she was doing and caught her ... on cell phone video.

She has been persistent, and it has paid off.