Kitty pride

[vettecat]

Scheherazade has learned a new word. For those of you who don't know, our cat is rather high on the cat-intelligence scale; she's frighteningly quick at figuring things out. (The first time I tried teasing her with a laser pointer, she looked at the dot, tracked the beam, and went for my hand instead.)

Anyway, she comes when we call her by name (including via intercom, when I used to live at my parents' house)... she also knows "no" and "down." There haven't been many other words I thought she needed to learn. But recently, we discovered a brand of dental treats at the vet which she actually loves. (This is wonderful because she hates having her teeth cleaned.) She got so excited about them that we thought, hey, this could be useful...

She has now learned the word "treat." It didn't take that long, either... maybe 10 - 12 "language lessons" (as sdavido started calling them) over the past few weeks. This consisted mainly of me repeating "treat!" while holding one out, until she gobbled it up. Last night we decided to run a test... while SD- was holding her, I stood to one side holding the closed bag, and said, "treat!" Her head whipped around, her eyes went wide, and she started squirming to get down. I repeated it after he put her down, and she ran over and stood waiting until I gave her the promised treat.

So it seems that we have successfully expanded her repertoire. I could teach her others, I suppose, but I don't quite know what else would be useful...

Comments

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

That's pretty impressive! I haven't been motivated to teach her that many, but that may be in part because I'm not really talkative in general... She does come running when I show her the brush, though. (She used to squirm and hiss when I tried trimming her nails, but I taught her that if she let me trim them she'd get brushed, and she loves being brushed... so now she allows it.)

As for the cats in the video, some of it's cute, but that last one looks really unhappy...