Weird Cat Tricks

Who has a weird cat? Hands up!

Is there a cat that isn’t weird?

You know how it is. You have this cat. It lives forever. Without you meaning for or wanting it to happen, this cat has somehow trained you to bow to all its commands. You swear—and I mean on a stack of National Geographics or whatever else is handy—that when this cat finally kicks off and you get another one, YOU will train IT. It will not train you!

Slowly, very slowy, the years pass. At about the 4-year point, you realize that, without you meaning for or wanting it to happen, YOU have once more been trained by your cat!

Agh!

I swore I would never teach my cat, Keisha, to drink out of the bathroom tap. Then one day I caught her in the bathtub trying to catch drips (after my bath) with her paw. Aw, that was so cute. So I turned on the tap just a little bit. And, awwww, how cute, she began drinking from the tub faucet.

It was only once. It was not meant to happen again.

Silly human. Of course it happened again.

From there, it was only a matter of time before I was turning on the tap in the bathroom sink so she could have a drink of fresh water. Yes, every morning I refresh her bowl of water on the portable dishwasher (she eats on top of the dishwasher or the beagle would eat all her food). But the BOWL of water isn’t good enough. No, she needs it out of the bathroom tap!

I quickly learned to set the stove timer for a minute or I’d forget the tap was running (because, being a writer, I could not stand to watch while she drank. No, I had to go do a minute of writing. That’s much more efficient. Kind of like deciding to do a bit of writing while you’re cooking dinner. Then, 20 minutes in, you smell dinner burning on the stove, because you forgot all about it. When you’re a writer, leaving a bathroom tap running for a cat is a lot like that.)

Well, I swore this drinking from the sink tap or playing with the dripping tub water after a shower would not progress any farther (further?) (grammar glitch—I haven’t a clue which one it is). Then, one day, I’m noticing that she’s jumped onto the edge of the tub, but doesn’t want to go IN the tub to play catch-the-water-drips. She wants me to turn the water ON. Don’t ask me how I know this. It was a Dr. Doolittle moment.

So I turned on the water. And she stared at it in fascination. And I thought, “What the hey, she’s been rolling in the dirt outside. Maybe she wants a bath.” (Really, I was thinking, I should get this cat wet—that would teach it a lesson). So I filled my palm with water and splashed it on her scruff. She loved it! I splashed more on her scruff. She hopped off and gave herself a bath, aided with my water.

This was 2 years ago. Now, about 4 times a week, she hops onto the side of the tub, and I scoop handfuls of water onto her scruff, under her tummy, onto her back, and sometimes even on her tail and the backs of her haunches. Then she goes off and gives herself a cat bath.

Truly, at this point I thought my cat was a genius.

Still wasn’t impressed with the tap-drinking, though, but I had it under control.

Well. A couple of weeks ago, I was thirsty and in bed reading. Instead of taking a water bottle and sitting it on the nightstand (which is my custom, as I have a nasty habit of knocking over glasses), I didn’t want to open a new bottle of water and I had none saved for refills, so I filled a glass child’s mug with nice and cold filtered water from the fridge and sat it on my nightstand.

Well! Miss Keisha decided it was for her. She drank merrily from it all night. Now, she doesn’t give two hoots for the bathroom sink, but if there’s not a glass child’s mug on my nightstand every single darn night, I hear about it. As in howls and yowls.

And still the water bowl on the dishwasher goes untouched.

I should count myself lucky that she’s not a food cat. Our last cat was obsessed with bacon, ham, tuna, and milk. This cat just wants cat food and water. But not HER water. Oh, no!!

Don’t get me started on how she needs myself or my dh to watch her jump onto the dishwasher so she can eat. She trained him in this area. I got trained by default. She sits on the floor by the dog’s food bowls and meows and meows. Finally, someone comes to watch this fantastic gymnastics routine of Keisha pretending like she can’t possibly jump over the dog food bowls and onto the dishwasher, she takes like 5 practice moves and looks, and then, miracle! She’s up!

My husband says he had to praise her as a kitten to get her to learn how to jump up there at all. And now she wants praise all the time. But heaven forbid she ever touches her own water.

How has your cat trained you?