Teaching old pets new tricks: Go ahead and try

You can teach an old cat new tricks. Sort of.

Our cat, the one you know as Missy Kitty, is about 7 years old. When we adopted her from Safe Harbor, her age was just a guess. The vet said the guess sounded reasonable.

Age 7 is not ancient for a cat. It might be considered the start of middle age. But by that time in their lives, most cats are firmly fixed in their ways.

Indeed, Missy Kitty has her routine, and no human should try to adjust it to suit folks who only walk on two legs.

But Missy Kitty also is developing some new habits. Sleeping is the big one. I read somewhere that the typical pet cat sleeps about 75 percent of the time. That's a lot, and Missy Kitty now sleeps most of the time she's indoors, and she stays inside more than when she was younger.

For the longest time -- before we moved from one house to another, and since then, too -- Missy Kitty's sleeping spot was the captain's chair that came from King School on Brushy Creek in the Ozarks over yonder. King School is where my mother went to school. One of her teachers, a generation later, was one of my high school teachers. They all used this captain's chair while seated at their teacher desks in front on the blackboard. After consolidation closed King School, my mother actually bought the school building and grounds. That's how we came by the captain's chair.

That's Missy Kitty's chair for the past six years or so.

It wasn't difficult to convince Missy Kitty that the captain's chair was hers. After she settled in, she also managed to let us know that the chair was hers and hers alone. If you want to agitate a cat, mess with its sleeping arrangements. Believe me.

Now that she sleeps most of the time, Missy Kitty has decided that the sofa in the office/guest bedroom is more conducive to a solitary lifestyle. The sofa is upholstered in a light-colored fabric, and my wife worried that Missy Kitty would soon soil the fabric. So she put a folded towel over one of the sofa cushions, and explained to Missy Kitty that she had to be on the towel in order to preserve her sleeping rights on the sofa.

Guess what? Missy Kitty immediately took to the towel for her sleeping. No problem. No fuss. No bother.

So far, so good.

Sunday afternoon we had a Skype call from our younger son. The computer we use for these calls is in the office/guest bedroom. The way the room is arranged gives Skype callers a straight-on view of the sofa. Missy Kitty's sofa.

So we were explaining to our son, also a cat person with an adoptee from the Seattle Animal Shelter, how amenable Missy Kitty had been when we insisted she sleep on a towel on one of the sofa cushions.

As we were talking, our son started laughing. We didn't think what we were saying was all that funny. "Why are you laughing?" we asked. "Look at your cat," he replied.

I am not making this up. Missy Kitty, looking straight at us with defiant eyes, was nesting on a no-towel cushion on the sofa.

Thinking she needed a gentle reminder, I picked her up and put her on the towel. By the time I sat down, she was off the towel and onto a bare cushion.

This went on for a total of seven times. Each time, she would look at us and at our son on the computer screen with that I-dare-you-to-move-me-again look. We were all laughing so hard that I'm sure Missy Kitty was getting a lot of mixed signals.

As I am writing this column, Missy Kitty has jumped up on the sofa. She is looking to see my reaction. She has settled on an accommodation that she hope will satisfy everyone. She is sleeping with her head and front paws on the towel. The rest of her is on a bare cushion.

OK. So we've taught Missy Kitty that the towel is for sleeping.

And she had taught us -- let's say reminded us -- that she is, when it is all said and done, a cat.

Period.

Next lesson, please.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.