Just be glad they stay on the floor. Every weekend when I visit my mom’s house both of her cats will spend the entire time I am in the kitchen on counter. The best I have been able to do is train them to stay on the part of the counter behind the sink, so I have room to prepare food on the other side of the kitchen.
It’s not the cats that need to be trained . . . it’s your mom. You need to talk with her about the kind of things their paws transfer from the litter box to the kitchen counter. :eek:
Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how cats view us? Do they view us as being part of the pact? Others cats? Might they on some cat level understand that we are sort of dominate and provide for them?
Heck, my perfectly healthy, fairly young cat does this. He requires that the freshness of the food in his bowl be updated at every possible opportunity, i.e. whenever someone walks in the vague direction of the laundry room where his bowls are kept.
We don’t have regularly scheduled feeding times, at least ideally–he wants the entire supply of food replaced whenever it’s mealtime for the dogs, who eat next to him, just so he can have the novelty of being one of the gang.
We’ve known a few cats that were pretty damned smart. One of Pepper Mill’s friends had a cat who woke up her mistress, Lassie-like, whecn there was a mishap in the oven and the food caught fire, in time for her to get up and fix it. She (the cat) also used to play elaborate pranks on her dim-witted brother.
our own Midnight used her paws almost like hands in a way I’ve never seen another cat do. If she had had opposable thumbs she would have been a terror, As it was, she knew how doorknobs worked, and used to tap on them with her paw (if she could reach them) when she wanted us to open the door.
Heh, my cat does what the OP’s cats do exactly – and he’s the same exact color as the kitchen rugs!
He could be laying on the nice cool ceramic tile; but no, he lays on the orange-tabby-colored rugs instead.
Why yes, he is a little skittish.
You can do what my mom does and go bat-shit-insane whenever the cat jumps on the counter. She’ll just start screaming as if a bunch of rats ran across the counter.
My cat got the hint after a few attempts.
I think what’s happening is that cats feel pretty safe around humans because we generally do a pretty good job of working around them and not stepping on them.
It’s only when we are distracted, busy, or not inclined to look down that we bump into our cats, who have no idea that we are in such a state. I’m sure their immediate thought is ‘Holy S**t! What the hell are you doing?’
Originally Posted by Chris Moise:
Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how cats view us? Do they view us as being part of the pact? Others cats? Might they on some cat level understand that we are sort of dominate and provide for them?
It’s a given, IMO. Cats are on this plane to eat, sleep, play, and attend to physical needs. We, their servants, are here to simplify their lives.
Love, Phil
We are the opposable thumbs emergency back up units.
‘It seems this vessel contain food, and yet I cannot penetrate its exterior’
looks back
“Thumbs! Get on it!!”
They think we’re large, not very bright cats who are given to occasionally bullying them given our superior size, but able to be bullied the rest of the time ourselves.
Similar sort of thing with me and Tybalt, the fuzzy black land shark who lives in my house: once a week or so, I punch him in the head.
Hey, it’s not my fault he sneaks up onto the back of the couch behind me and curls up to sleep without making any noise or warning me he’s there and that I will need to adjust the way I stretch out my arms.
oOOoooo! Details?
I grew up with a cat who learned how to paw the door in such a way that it sounded exactly like a child knocking–that’s how I got attention, so he tried it too, and, of course, it worked every time. Which is the dumber species, then, eh?*
- Them. But it’s an interesting idea: would they come out on top if we used some sort of non-traditional criteria for evaluating intelligence? Of course, if we did, wouldn’t it just be biased to cats? Fuggit…
The problem you write about does not originate with your cats. It begins and ends with their hired help.
Pouncer (the smart cat) would get near the top of a curtain and make little mewing noises as if she was in trouble. Her brother, ever protective, would claw up the curtain as fast as he could and bonk his head on the ceiling. She pulled this one more than once.