Their plan will be unfurled...
Dec. 19th, 2008 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vettecatFor quite a while now, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sdavido has been referring to the kittens, half-jokingly, as "Pinky and the Brain." You can probably guess which is which, but if not... Leela is very much a Cat of Action (not to say she isn't also intelligent), Minerva is more of an analytical observer. We had a demonstration of that tonight.
SD- picked up a new toy at the supermarket. It's a motorized stuffed mouse; you pull the tail, and the mouse scoots across the floor as the tail retracts. Tonight while we were in the kitchen, he called the kittens over and demonstrated the mouse for them. Then we stood back to watch them react.
At first, Minerva stood back and watched while Leela batted at the mouse. Then SD- wound it up and let it go again. Leela gave it another swat, but it doesn't travel very far (it just kind of wiggles briefly), and she seemed to lose interest. Minerva went over and picked it up in her mouth, then held the mouse between her paws and pulled on the tail with her teeth. She held on and watched while it retracted, swatted it a bit, then grabbed it and pulled on the tail again.
After a few minutes of this (the arc from introducing the mouse to watching Minerva grab it took maybe a minute) both kittens seemed to decide they had better toys, and wandered off. So it didn't get used for very long. But it was really interesting... we had wondered whether one or both of them would figure out the mechanism, but didn't expect it to happen so fast. Wow.
sdavido has been referring to the kittens, half-jokingly, as "Pinky and the Brain." You can probably guess which is which, but if not... Leela is very much a Cat of Action (not to say she isn't also intelligent), Minerva is more of an analytical observer. We had a demonstration of that tonight.SD- picked up a new toy at the supermarket. It's a motorized stuffed mouse; you pull the tail, and the mouse scoots across the floor as the tail retracts. Tonight while we were in the kitchen, he called the kittens over and demonstrated the mouse for them. Then we stood back to watch them react.
At first, Minerva stood back and watched while Leela batted at the mouse. Then SD- wound it up and let it go again. Leela gave it another swat, but it doesn't travel very far (it just kind of wiggles briefly), and she seemed to lose interest. Minerva went over and picked it up in her mouth, then held the mouse between her paws and pulled on the tail with her teeth. She held on and watched while it retracted, swatted it a bit, then grabbed it and pulled on the tail again.
After a few minutes of this (the arc from introducing the mouse to watching Minerva grab it took maybe a minute) both kittens seemed to decide they had better toys, and wandered off. So it didn't get used for very long. But it was really interesting... we had wondered whether one or both of them would figure out the mechanism, but didn't expect it to happen so fast. Wow.
