When they make us get up

Every Cat Appreciator knows what I mean: the cat who won’t stop playing with something, until we get up.

Then they pretend they just realized… That’s right! I’m not supposed to be playing with this! and off they go.

Little wiseacres, is what they are.

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Cats are not being nasty, defiant, or stubborn when they do this. They are playing. With us.

It’s the Can I make them get up? game, and yes, they can.

It takes considerable intellectual prowess for any being to pretend. So I try to regard this as a feature, not a bug. However, we do need the proper strategies to counter these cat ploys, and keep the game fair.

Consider their motivation. Sometimes a cat cannot resist a forbidden object, and it shows signs of being played with when we get home. This means the forbidden object needs to be blocked off and put away for a while, or a serious substitute made available.

But sometimes a cat will only play with the object to get us out of our chair, and not other times. This is how we know it’s a strategy to make us get up.

So, if we reliably get up to shoo them away from something, the strategic planner cat will sometimes do a Hey, as long as you’re up! move and ask for something.

To change this particular behavior, the cat needs a new signal. React to something else they do. Make that move the target of us getting up and being willing to get them what they want.

Extend our reach. If we are always sitting in our favorite chair, and they are always across the room messing with the silk flowers or the desk lamp or something, we can put a can of air next to our favorite chair. It can speak for us.

It was fun when we got up. It’s not fun hearing the hiss of the air can. We’ve changed the game, and now that they are not getting the response they want, they will have to change what they are playing with.

We can use this to our advantage, because if they change to playing with something we don’t mind so much, we can use this as a good signal that the cat wants something. Cat plays with something that isn’t harmed by the attention, we say, Oh, what do you want, show me, and the cat happily leads the way to what they want.

Show them the games we won’t play. Olwyn loves breakfast. She has learned that during weekdays, the alarm going off is the signal that gets one of us into the kitchen, and she will play with the alarm to make it go off early. (Fortunately, she hasn’t completely figured out the alarm yet.)

When my clock defeats her, she jumps onto the bureau with a lot of rowdy flourishes. That’s because she’s not sneaking onto the bureau to play with something. The rest of the day she has no interest in the bureau or anything on it.

But she quickly learned that if she doesn’t get down from the bureau, I have to get up. And that’s the goal.

So I moved my more delicate earring box off the bureau (which was making me get up) and put a can of air under the bed. Olwyn will have to come up with something else.

I’m sure she will.

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