Do As I Say

Alrighty, I reconnoitered the place and found the necessary box, the food and the water. No bed. No prob. I prefer to pick my own place and let the human think it’s her idea.

So now that I had established base camp, it was on with training.

She had to learn to come when called. She spent (still does) time in that room with a chair and a desk, sitting in front of that weird TV and doing things with her fingers. Geesh!

Hmm? Oh hi, Sara. You awake again? Yes, we know it’s a computer, but other senior animals may not. What do you mean, now I’m doing it? You're right; I sit in front of the monitor and do things with my finger—er my paws. I’m intelligent so I learned to how to use it. Hence our blog.

Anyway, my goal—what? Right. Our goal was to get her to come out to the living room when we called her. To begin, I sat in the hallway, just peeking around the corner and meowing in my mother-cat-to-little-kittens cluck.

She ignored me. So I tried louder. Still nothing. Louder.

Finally she said, “What, pretty?” as she looked back over her shoulder at me. I walked into the room, turned around and walked out.

“Okay, I’ll be there in just a minute.” And she went right back to the computer.

I sat down in the hall to wait. And wait. And wait. Whoa! This is so not happening.

Now what, Sara? We don’t talk like that? Well, we hip cats do. I can’t help you’re older and you would rather lie around more and learn less. No, no, I’m not rubbing it in about your age. Our other human and this one are seniors just like you and they sit more. And, I imagine when I get to be that old, I won’t pounce around the house like I do now.

Wait a minute! I said pounce not bounce.

Ignoring the oldster and going on… As I said, her turning back to the computer instead of going out to the recliner was unacceptable. So, I marched right into that room and beg-meowed. Loud.

She took her hands off the keys and spun her chair so she could see me. “What’s your problem, Samantha?”

I put a cute little flip at the end of my tail and whirled away to avoid her petting me. Then I looked back over my shoulder and purr-meowed before walking out the door.

“All right, just give me a minute.” She twisted her chair toward the computer.

Oh no, not again. I uttered a mild distress-type meow.

“Okay, okay, you little beggar. Lead the way.” She followed me down the hall and, sitting in her recliner, said, “Come on.”

I promptly went to the other recliner and started to groom. Sara, bless her pointed head—

No, sister dear, your head isn’t pointed. It’s nice and round—and thick.

Anyway, Sara strolled into the living room about that time. It took her a second, but she finally understood not to sit in the human’s lap. We couldn’t reward her until she learned to come on command the first time we commanded.

But at least we’d lured her away from that computer, and that was good first training session.

Congratulating ourselves, we had settled in to groom when the human had the audacity to say, “If neither of you ladies are joining me, I’m going back to work.”

I nudged Sara. “I’m not tolerating that. Go after her.”

Sister dearest flopped down and said, “NO”.

What? Yeah, a nap sounds pretty good. And we are already in our chair. Okay, we’d have to do another lesson later. Much later…

Getting To Know You—Later

Crawling out of that carrier was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do. I mean, I wasn’t silly-scared like Sara gets. I didn’t slink off like she did, either. She resembled a low-rolling, white-with-gray-patches cloud.

What? Clamp your mouth shut, Sister. I’m telling this, and the way I saw it you were so low to the floor I couldn’t even see your feet. I just knew you were revving up your engine and making dust.

Huh? Oh, it’s something I’ve always wanted to say since I heard it on TV. Well, no, it isn’t very cat-like, but the world can’t think in feline terms. They have to communicate in simpler ideas.

Like I was saying before the oldster interrupted me, we set out to inspect our surroundings, moving in different directions. We may have the same mother but Sara’s older by three months and limited in her ability to face change; I knew she was only sniffing out a place to hide.

The first thing I noticed was, just to get away from the carrier, I had to leap over a pile of books and then worm my way past a box. Right away I knew that was too different. Before, the floor space was completely empty of anything but furniture so that our human could get around with her metal cage. Using my superior intellect, I deduced this human didn’t need those shiny, extra legs.

Okay, good. We wouldn’t have to dodge them to keep from getting whacked, or worse, knocking this person over. Being a senior she could really be hurt, like when our sweet human broke her hip and needed help, and we couldn’t do it.

I knew I needed to get to work on training the new human. You know the old saying: Begin the way you mean to go. But there was a more important aspect: Know your enemy. Since Sara was looking for a hide-y hole, it was up to me to learn all I could. And fast.

So I was kinda walking with my sensitive nose to the carpet, sniffing out the possibilities. When, what do you know, I found was an interesting place on the floor. Hmm, another feline?

The scent was so faint I was positive the cat was long gone. Good, good. We wouldn’t have to deal with staking our claim or facing down some old curmudgeon.

“So, Sara,” I meowed loudly—but daintily, “I’ve learned there’s no metal legs and no other animals. What have you found?” I paused. “Sara?”

I panicked! What if she’d been gobbled up by a monster? That would be a cat-ass-trophe beyond the imagination!

“Sara!” I hurried into the room with table and chairs. “Sar-ra.”

I heard a faint mmmph. Up. I looked up at one of the chairs pushed under the table, and then I stomped over, reached out and swatted her on the head. How dare she have the nerve to crawl up there and go to sleep.

How dare I expect anything else. Aren’t I the one who calls her “scaredy cat?” Yeah, and I’m the one who knows sleep is her escape from reality she can’t face. I sighed.

Oh, oh. Footsteps. I leaped gracefully out from under the table and proceeded to wash nonchalantly so I wouldn’t tip off Sara’s hiding place. I might be disgusted with her, but we had to stick together.

After all, it was HER against us.

Senior Citizens Can Be Trained!

We did it and we didn’t even know her at the time. Here’s how:

She came into the shelter and told the receptionist she wanted an adult cat. Singular. And there we sat, two senior felines.

So Sara, who gets so scared her patches quiver, hid behind the basket while I curled inside it, looking pathetic—which is tough to do when you’re adorable.

Eww, Sara, when you snorted just now, you speckled the screen. And you know Mom said it wasn’t dignified to make a dog noise. Now, where was I? Oh yeah.

The human subject made the rounds past all the cages, stopping to cluck at those kittens next door just coming down from the anesthesia. Cat feathers! They can be so obnoxious. But I stray.

She finally stopped in front of our cage and read the tags. I teased her attention by seeming to ignore her. That usually works.

“Hi there, pretty,” she said. “How are you?”

I looked over my shoulder toward the back of the cage. All the better to reel her in.

Sure enough, she walked away. What a minute! Uh, that is, I planned it that way. Let my supposed indifference work on her. When she gets sick of the others going all submissive, she’ll be back.

Yes, I know, Sar-ra. It took her better than 15 minutes, but she did come back. What? Yesss, I know, the attendant had to talk to her another ten minutes before she agreed to take us into the visiting room. Still, we did get in there with her so we had a chance to convince her to take us, now, didn’t we?

What? Yes, you did a good job that time, lolling around front of her and keeping her occupied while I did the important work of making sure there were no strays hiding in the corners.

Whiskers! I about caterwauled at the top of my dainty lungs when she told the attendant she’d take us home. Home. To the cool, peaceful environs of our kittenhood. To the spacious lounging places of our adulthood. Ah, freedom coming up.

Yeah, I know you didn’t like getting into that cardboard carrier. I didn’t, either. If it weren’t the only way to get out of that place and get home, I’d have fought tooth and claw. What? Oh, right. We’re declawed. Well, I still have my teeth. Well, most of them, anyway.

And that car ride. I prayed for it to end. I started getting worried because I didn’t remember it taking us that long to get to the shelter. It was murder not being able to see or touch each other. If I hadn’t heard you whimpering, I would have thought we’d been separated again. Maybe this time for good. After nine years together.

Well, yeah, I did meow a lot. I wanted to let you know I was still there.

But what was that noise she was making. Did it sound like uneducated meowing to you, too? I wish people wouldn’t try to speak a another language without lessons.

When she carried us in separately, I figured she was too old and weak to handle two svelte felines at once. Boy, was I hoping we wouldn't have to live through a repeat of this past year. Well, looking at Sara, otherwise known as Broadsides, maybe together we were too heavy for her.

Sara went first, and by the time I got into the house, she was in distress. I took a deep breath and got queasy myself. The odors weren’t right.

“Okay, sweeties,” she cooed as she opened the boxes, “we’re home.”

Home.

Home?

Nothing, I mean, like not one molecule of air, was the same. Weren’t we supposed to go back to where we’d spent all our lives? To all our familiar things?

I guess this was what that human said on TV. You can’t go home again.

Yawn! Ah, time for a nap. Wait for me. Sar-ra, I said wa— OKAY then, dibs on the divan.

More later, you all!