It took him a while to catch on, but after two years of discipleship under his Sensei, Conan the Wonderkitty, Schrodinger is finally, fully, completely a cat.
A bit of background. When we first got Schrodinger, I was pretty sure what I had gotten was a Labrador Retriever in a cat-shaped package. He was big, black, dumb, and just about the most loveable thing ever to be wrapped in fur. Well, he’s still loveable, but…
Conan first had to teach him how to use the pet door. Schro had gotten himself trapped on the balcony, and was pawing the glass door, meowing pitifully. Conan placed his body halfway through the pet door, and meowed at Schro to come on in. That was lesson one.
Lesson two had to do with peas. Conan loves peas, and I think even more than peas, he loves the amusement derived from watching the humans watch him eat peas. Schrodinger would turn his nose up. Conan finally persuaded him that peas are not a thing to be spurned, especially not when that’s what the humans are eating.
Next came refrigerator-top surveillance. Schro for the longest time would not attempt to jump from the dining table to the top of the fridge. Conan eventually successfully explained the advangages of having an aerial view of the most active areas of the apartmet, such as being able to control the humans with a judicious “meow” which is easier to do when you can see exactly where they are.
After that came Alien Chasing 101. Up until a few months ago, all of the invisible alien chasing duties fell to Conan. Schrodinger would sit mutely and watch as Conan would tear through the apartment after some unseen “prey”, finally running it to ground in the front closet. About three months ago, for the first time, I saw Schrodinger tearing across the room, only to stop and sit down in front of the aliens’ front closet base.
Then was the newspaper inhibition. In times past, when one of the humans was reading the newspaper, if it was Schro’s turn to inhibit, he would sit on a section of the paper that wasn’t being read, which, of course, defeated the whole purpose of inhibiting. After much careful coaching from Conan, Schro now sits on the section the human is trying to read, thus successfully inhibiting the human’s newsgathering activities.
Then there was napping with the humans. If a human wants to take an afternoon nap, and a cat wishes to join the human, the human must first be awakened to pet the cat before the cat can curl up beside the human’s legs and go to sleep. Schrodinger used to just hop up on the bed with me or mom, curl up, and commence purring. After a couple of years of observing his Sensei pawing and meowing for attention before settling down to nap with the humans, Schrodinger now outs with a hefty-sounding meow to make sure the human is awake and paying attention to him before he lays down to sleep on the bed.
Just of late, when I’m trying to use the computer, Schrodinger has taken to lying on the keyboard. This is not something Conan taught him- Conan has completely dfferent methods of computer inhibition. Lying on the keyboard is an obvious tactic, but an effective one.
Schrodinger has finally become a Cat.