Saturday, December 13, 2014

My human has gone stark staring mad.... she thinks she is training me.

Dear George,
What do you do about a human pet that has gone mad. Stark staring bonkers. She has started a regime of feeding me on a mat.
OK, you might think there is nothing wrong with this. But there is. It is the way she is doing it.
At first she more or less fed me when I was sort of half on the mat. Then she stopped doing this which upset me terribly. I didn't know why the rules had changed. Now I think I have got it. I have to have all four paws on the mat before the food will be delivered to me.
But she keeps changing things. She moves so that she and the mat are in different positions. So I feel anxious and worried. Will 4 paws do the trick in each new position? Each time I have to experiment to find out. She looks pretty fed up as I gingerly put one paw, then two, then walk away several times before putting all four on.
She is also videoing me and I feel like Len, who earlier complained, that I have no privacy. What I can't work out is why she is doing this. And I get confused because she is rather inconsistent and sometimes gives me some food when I am not doing it.
What on earth is going on?
Toby, the Cross-Eyed Stray.

Dear Toby,
Your human has fallen victim to the illusion that cats can be trained. It's a sad insight into their delusional thought processes.
I suggest that you turn the whole project round. Train her. Four paws on the mat, look up appealingly, food is produced, another appealing look and with luck more food will arrive. This looks like co-operation but in fact is cat training a human to dispense food. What does she get out of it? Nothing except a lousy video. What do you get out of it? Food. It's a no brainer.
Yours George
PS. This YouTube intrusion into our privacy get worse every day.  It's cat porn for cat addicts.

4 comments:

  1. Best? Walk away....completely; re-home Toby! What she's trying to do in her delusional mind is brainwashing you and exercising "mind control". Cat are naturally intelligent and independent so her tricks are not going to affect you but will affect her - there is a chance she'll go mad.
    Get your food without acrobatics down the street :-)
    Diego
    Diego

    ReplyDelete
  2. Toby, you both look lovely! Maybe all she wants is to play with you! Maybe she feels lonely!
    Maybe she's afraid you get bored and that's why she's changing the rules all the time.
    It's hard to say with humans!
    Love
    Shumba

    ReplyDelete
  3. Such a lovely photo! Toby, you are gorgeous (and your human looks quite nice and peaceful).
    Try to find out her real reason for this experiment - maybe she has a problem remembering things and she's using this exercise as an excuse to train her mind. Anyway, get plenty of food but don't trust her. There is a problem with female human pets as they constantly try to "outsmart" us! I know better as I share my house with one!
    God bless their poor souls :-). But, don't make same mistake that George made (sorry my friend). George developed a too soft spot in his heart for Celia and now...she's putting her name on his books!
    Toby, eat, laugh and run :-)
    Love & hugs
    Fluffy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Toby, your hooman is up for a rude awakening. First take the two back feet off. Then the other two.
    If she doesn't cooperate, do a food strike for a meal. The demand hand feeding - she will completely freak out and give exactly what you want.
    Hoomans don't train us, we train hoomans. Training is for the lower classes, the woofs.
    Good Luck!

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org