Fetch! At bedtime

Last night Charlotte brought the (electronic) squeaky mouse up to our bed just as we were going to bed.  Tom tossed it out the bedroom door.  She brought it back.  He tossed it again.  She brought it back again.  And again.  And again.  She kept bringing it back, and Tom kept tossing it (and I was guilty a time or two).  It went on for nearly a half hour! 

On the plus side, when she settled down, she settled for the night.  On the minus side, I figure she now knows she has us trained and it will become a part of going to bed most nights.  Like I've said before, we have to be careful how we react to her attempts to train us.  This one might have been a mistake.

Charlotte having breakfast among the herbs

Ding-a-ling!

We created a bit of a monster.  By responding & talking back to her as she meowed in the kitchen, we encouraged her to be more (and more and more) talkative.  Now she goes in the kitchen when we do and just meows.  A lot. 

So, I've been trying to get her to be more specific about what she wants.  In the morning, as we make the first (small) pot of coffee, she meows for either a trip out to the garage or "scoops" (a scoop of kibble).  But it all sounds the same.  So, we ask her to "stretch" (literally stretching along the door frame) to indicate she wants to go out in the garage.  And we've put a bell on the pantry door so she can ring the bell to ask for her scoops.

Last night she had a breakthrough.  She went into the kitchen (we were on the couch), meowed once, then rang the bell twice, then came back to where we could see her and waited for her scoops.  I went and got her scoops for her and she was happy.  I was even happier.

This all goes back to my first cat.  She would meow at the door of my little travel trailer in the middle of the night.  I'd get up, open the door for her to go out and she'd just sit there.  At 2am I don't have a lot of patience.  After several nights of this I pushed her out the door and went back to bed.  It turned out she was thirsty and her water dish was empty.  She quickly learned to push at the dish and meow and not be at the door.  Communication.  It can work wonders.

So, THAT's why she plays with the shower curtain

From her early days with us, Charlotte has had a fascination with the shower curtain.  As soon as we're through showering she's in there.  Most days we can let the curtain get mostly dry before we flip it up over the curtain rod to get it out of her reach. 

This weekend I've been watching ... it's the water drops.  When she pounces the water drops on the upper part roll down to where she is.  So it's a real game for her.  Pounce!  Rolling water drops.  Pounce! Rolling water drops.  The sound of it kinda makes us crazy.  But now I realize it's not the curtain, it's the water she's playing with.

It's so "fun" to have her come straight from the bathtub to our laps.  On a light day she's just got wet feet.  On a heavy play day she's got very wet feet, wet butt, wet tail.  And the more of her that's wet, the more likely she is to sit on us and share the wet.  Yippee!

Other times she'll play in the tub (including licking the tub walls) and go out to the garage and come back muddy from the dirt she gets into on the garage floor.  Most of it started as road grime on the bottom of the car.

One of these days we'll have to see how she does with cruising the edge of the tub while one of us is taking a bath.  (My first cat loved to try to catch the little squirts I'd shoot from my fists.)  We'll have to bathe without the little space heater - she hates it.  There's something about noisy fans - doesn't matter if it's the space heater in the bathroom or the dash vent fan on high in the car.

How you know the training is working

So, how do you know your behavioral training is working?  Have shrimp for dinner.  We don't sit at the kitchen table (too much "pile it" on it), so we're right in a place Charlotte can get at us.  The first time we ate shrimp for dinner we had to keep moving our plates to keep her from stealing our dinner.  Then next time we still had to move them quite a bit, but not quite as much. 

Last night we had shrimp and our plates remained on our laps.  We did have to tell her no, waver her off a few times, etc., but we didn't have to keep picking up our plates and moving them away from her.  It wasn't that she didn't want those shrimp, it was that she's learning the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

As I was serving dinner, I had dropped one shrimp as I was taking them out of the pot.  I peeled it for her, cut it up and put it in her dish.  It was gone in seconds.  I had one of mine that left a bit in the tail and I gave it to her after dinner.  She got no reward while we were eating or even next to our plates.  She got her tidbit in the kitchen, after we were done.

Currently, we're working on getting her to differentiate between "let me out in the garage" vs. "I want my dry food" vs. "I want my wet food".  She's been crying at the garage door but not wanting the garage.  So, I've been started to tap places for her to reach, while asking if she wants "scoops" or "wet food".  We'll see how that goes.

Years ago, with my first cat, I once pushed her out the door in the middle of the night because she was crying at the door.  Turned out she was out of water.  She did learn to get a bit more specific when she cried in the middle of the night.

The Beast

Sometimes Charlotte becomes The Beast.  Her eyes go all pupil.  Her ears go back.  And she looks for any excuse to grab a human body part and bite.  Not a gentle love bite, but a deep, killing bite. 

She bites Tom more than she bites me.  But, I've popped her on top of her head a time or two when she was in a biting mood.

We've had cats do this in the past, but it was when they were being harassed in a play session and were driven to attack.  These are unprovoked attacks. 

Sometimes she'll be on a lap and you go to pet her and she grabs and is ready to bite.  She usually stops short of doing more than a light press on the skin.  But, I've also seen her just relaxing on Tom's lap, then suddenly the eyes change, the ears go back and he doesn't even need to make any motion for her to reach out and grab, going in for the kill.

Last night she attacked his foot while he was on the phone.  He hadn't been playing with her at all; she just decided it was time to transform into The Beast.

Trying her wings ... or is it a broom?

In the last day or two of our trip to Montana earlier this month Charlotte began to discover she is now big enough and strong enough to jump higher and get into more things.  So, we have new challenges.

First we found her hopping onto a cute box at the end of the kitchen counter, then onto the counter.  We moved the box.  Then ... she tried a little harder and realized she could jump onto the microwave cart (the kind where there's a cupboard, some small counter-top, and the microwave goes on a shelf above that) then walk across the stove and down the counters.  It became an instant battle.

Last night she found a new place to get into trouble - I looked up to see her sitting on top of the satellite receiver box, thinking about touching the TV hanging on the wall behind it.  When I got her to get down, it became the new battle of the day.  She kept going back and preparing to jump up there.  Telling her NO! and trying everything I could to keep her down, it became a game for her.

I expect we'll be having a number of crashes as she explores places that used to be too high for her to reach without some kind of intermediate surface ... oh, boy!

Charlotte on the Road

There is no better way to find out how your cat travels than to jump in the car and go.  We had previously done a couple of things that helped: we'd taken her for some rides around our area (she didn't like them) and we'd kept her travel carrier open in the living room and encouraged her to play in it, sleep in it, etc..

When we had to hit the road on short notice, there was no question of whether we'd take her or board her.  Boarding in our immediate area means taking a cat to the vet to be kept in a cage for the duration.  Not what we want for any of our animals.  We considered trying to find someone to look in on her, but didn't like that idea, either.  And making the decision to leave and being gone within less than 4 hours wouldn't have left much time to find someone. 

So, we made room in the car for a litter box (the covered box from a previous cat), her carrier and some supplies for her.  We also made sure she could get in & out of her litter box, get to her food and water.  Once we'd made a few necessary stops, we let her out of the carrier.

The first hour, she was unhappy.  She doesn't like being in her carrier.  And likes it less each time she's in it.  However, once she realized it had no signs of stopping, she curled up on Tom's lap and slept the day away.  We'd hand her off at the pit/gas/food stops.  Then she'd curl up and sleep again when we got back on the road.  At one stop she sat up and leaned on my shoulder.

The second day she cried a few minutes, explored the car, then hopped into her carrier for the rest of the day.  Except for the last half of the last day of our trip, she settled into a pattern of brief exploration of the car followed by sleeping in her carrier until we'd make a stop.  She'd pop up her head and look around and, most times, curl back up.  The last half of the last day she went back to Tom's lap.

She had no problem with the series of new spaces.  She explored as much space as allowed in each location.  In Trout Creek, rather than try to lock her in the bathroom (not a practice she approves of) we let her roam the whole house.  Some day soon it will be her house anyway.

She doesn't choose to travel, but she tolerates it well ... after a few minutes of complaining.