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12:59am August 4, 2015

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

I’m trying to teach Lovette to put things in my hand if he wants me to throw them

So far he’s tried batting at my hand, then batting at the hair band he wants me to throw, and now he just clasps my hand between his paws

Eeeeeee!

Fey does a thing when she wants me to move things, rather than throw them.

For instance, she likes lying on this backpack my dad made, that I got sent after he died.  It mostly lives on my bed.  So does a whole lot of yarn.  Sometimes the yarn ends up on top of the backpack.

So the other day, there was yarn on the backpack.  She stood on the backpack and sniffed each piece of yarn.  But it was not ordinary sniffing.  It was not to gain information about the yarn.  It had a quality to it almost like nudging, except she wasn’t nudging it – it was a movement that was implied rather than actual.

I’d seen her do this before, so I knew what it meant.  I moved the ball of yarn out of her way.

She sniffed the next ball of yarn in the same manner.  I moved it.

This continued until she had the entire backpack uncovered, at which point she turned around in place a few times and then curled up in a contented ball and went to sleep.  But she totally was telling me “Move this, it’s not supposed to be here.”

When she wants me to throw things or play with them (she doesn’t differentiate), she will generally touch the thing with her paw, and then touch me with her paw, both in a playful manner, although sometimes when she touches me there’s a bit of a threat involved, like “Use this to help me play Or Else I will probably bite you.”  But then that’s what her personality is like sometimes.

I’m not sure how I would go about teaching her to bring me things if she wanted me to throw them.  I’m not sure I could, honestly.  Generally, when either of us learns something like that, it’s pretty spontaneous.  I’d have no idea how to make that happen on purpose.

I do find it interesting that she has so many different ways of smelling/nosing things, all of which mean something totally different.