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.