When Athena was a kitten, she would sometimes scratch the furniture. So as to stop her and put her out of reach of the furniture, we would toss her outside. We thought the lesson we were teaching was "You are not allowed to treat the furniture this way." The lesson she learned, however, was "If you want to go outside, the way to make them open the door is to scratch the furniture." Oh, shoot! We taught her TO scratch, not to NOT scratch. We have struggled with that unintended lesson for years, until last month we moved the upholstered furniture so far away from the door as to make it pointless for her to try scratching to get outside.
So with the new kitten, we were on top of things. Oh, yes, we were! We'd learned a lesson about unintended lessons. But somehow, we're still just as stuck as before.
Twerpy little Rosie is nutso for water. She loves the drips from the water faucet after we brush our teeth. She comes running whenever she hears footsteps in the bathroom. She licks up puddles after we mop the kitchen. She tries to get into the kitchen sink (which involves the major no-no of getting onto the counter first) and is working on perfecting her scheme of drinking out of the toilet without falling into it. (People! Please flush here!) For a couple of months, it worked to shoot her with water from the squirty-bottle. But now she WANTS us to squirt her because it's more water to lick up. Throwing her outside has been an effective punishment for the last couple of days when the temps have been in the negative numbers, but it doesn't work as a punishment when it's 20 or 30°.
So today we tried buying her some pets. Ashes (now deceased) had one of those male kitty diseases that meant he was likely to be very dehydrated and we had to coax him to drink. So we bought him a pet goldfish to make his water more tasty. It worked. Today we bought some feeder goldfish for Rosie, hoping to entice her to drink the fishy water instead of lusting after fresh running water. She's quite enchanted by the little fishies and trying to get her paws on them. But we're not sure if this will alleviate the naughtiness of her going after our water glasses.
And we still don't have a punishment for scratching the furniture (a trick that Athena taught her) or her crazy-love for inside-soles of shoes.
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Whenever we have a bunch of people, Hero stays by the pile of shoes, enchanted by the number of shoes that she can stick her little kitty face into.
ReplyDeleteAnd she has seriously been considering jumping in the bathtub with me while I take baths and showers- she will drink the blisteringly hot water out of a bubble bath!
Once she figures out how to jump on top of the entertainment stand, I may get some feeder goldfish to live there for her drinking enjoyment.