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…