Last night my son and I went out to celebrate some excellent news in his life. We met at the Carleton Tavern and then went to Absynthe’s for dinner.
While we were celebrating, the subject of cats came up. And while we were talking about cats, I happened to mention that Duncan licked my butt the other day.
As you know, Duncan likes to sit on the edge of the tub and watch me bathe. Well, I was stepping out of the tub and I suddenly felt his sandpaper tongue on my ass. It was weird.
“Maybe you shouldn’t blog that,” said James.
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Anyway, I asked him his opinion about what it is Duncan wants when he pesters me for no apparent reason. He pokes me with his paw, with claws extended, while meowing incessantly. I figure there’s only so many things a cat can want: food, water, a clean litter box, and affection. So what’s up with this poking business when all his needs have been met?
If I follow him so he can show me what he wants, he invariably takes me to the kitchen and sits beside his food dish and wails accusingly.
“But there’s food in your dish,” I say.
“MEOW!!!” says Duncan, “MEOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!”
Then I have to take the dish and point to the food, at which point Duncan will look shocked, stop harrassing me, and chow down.
“So,” I said to James last night, “Why do you think he does that?”
“Hmmm,” said James, “Have you considered the possibility that he’s just not that bright?”
“Duncan?” I exclaimed incredulously, “He’s brilliant!”
“How can you tell?” asked James.
Well, you know, once I got thinking about it, I realized it’s not that easy to tell if your cat is bright or not.
“What about your cats?” I asked, “Are they smart?”
“Zeke and Charles are smart,” he said, “But Alley? Not so much.”
And he couldn’t really say why either. (Although he did say he has to sit with her while she eats and remind her to chew her crunchies, otherwise she just inhales them whole.)
I do have one example of something Duncan has done that would support my belief that he’s brilliant. He watered his own plant!
One of my colleagues gave him a cat grass plant as a gift. I keep it on a counter, and bring it down once in awhile for him to chew on. One day I came home from work and discovered that Duncan, in an act of sheer genius, had removed the plant from its pot, and placed it in his water dish!
TAGS:
My cat did that and eventually I just decided that she wanted company while she ate. So I’d sit and she’d eat and that was that.
Some cats are social eaters, and I think some think they need permission to eat. One of our cats absolutely must wake you up in the morning so that she can go downstairs and eat.
I think the easiest way to tell how smart a cat is may be to watch and see if they learn. I had a cat who would continually try to sniff at a candle flame, and kept losing his whiskers. Eventually he figured it out.
My lil’ furry girl loves company while she eats, too.
Hehe, Ducan putting the cat grass in his own water is hilarious. Alley definitely always knows when there’s food in the dish, she just much prefers to be stroked while she’s eating, to the point where she’ll beg you to follow her to pet her while she’s eating
But yes, the chewing… she’s gotta be told to chew. She coughed up an entire unchewed leaf in the fall too… she was gagging for a while, then up comes this big leaf and that’s it.
Duncan is a Rhodes scholar!
I feel as though I may be passing on potentially dangerous information, but perhaps he’s asking for warm water in his dish? I gave my Jessica warm water one winter and she loved it – so much so that it rapidly began to rule our lives. It had to be the perfect temperature and she needed a fresh dish about 17 times a day…She didn’t even always drink it, but just wanted to know it was there, evidently.
PS Thank goodness you didn’t blog about the cat licking your butt. That would have been embarrassing. 😉
At our place the extended paw is definitely a request, but sometimes we are just not smart enough to work out what Vegemite really wants. You would think we were better trained by this time, because Veg landed on our doorstep, a black-brown 8 weeks old abandoned kit, a bit funny looking but with lots of cattitude. That was, folks, back in January, 1987 – yes, folks, she is 21 years old, and has been with us for half our married life. She is now a handsome Moggie with a silky medium length coat, my best pal insists that Veg is NOT a Moggie, but a Norwegian Forest Cat. Well, it does suit her…….
@Wendy M.: That sounds pretty logical to me…. Duncan was drinking the warm bath water after all.
Also, Alley is the best behaved cat you’ll ever find… even when she was in heat and the back door, which would pop open unexpectedly, would pop open unexpectedly, she wouldn’t go more than a foot out the door. I don’t think she’s ever been on a table or scratched anything she shouldn’t either.
Hi! Let me just say that your blog is hysterical. I’m glad I clicked on The Harlot’s link about the blog awards. It was well worth it!
A friend of mine once told me that orange tabbies are just strange cats and I have to admit after observing my own (in comparison to his black and white sister) that I think she’s right. They make wonderful pets, but they are a bit odd; like they’re wired just a bit differently to other cats. Fearghal was always completely illogical to my mind, but I wouldn’t have given him up for the world. Unfortunately he got run over a couple of years ago, but I still dream of him coming back. Love the cat, love his oddities.
I don’t know about ‘smart’ but zorro is definitely duplicitious. he pretends to be trying to make friends with pablo in front of us but he bites and claws him when he thinks we’re not watching. he also has taken to hiding in my closet because it’s the one room of the house he has been barred from and it’s where pablo mostly stays. then he jumps out and bites him.
then today I put him outside so pablo could eat in peace and he THREW himself at the aviary (both cats usually stay away from the aviary) and clawed around two sides of it in a fit of pique! the birds were terrified
Cats in general are supposed to have the brain capacity of an 18 month-old human, but obviously Duncan is some sort of savant. If you HAD blogged about him licking your butt, I would have just mentioned he was probably just licking the water off. Mine likes to lick my legs right after I’ve put lotion on — fortunately it’s organic.
Again thank you for a marvelous start to my day! The story and comments are so worth it. I am now reading to my cat! Dare I say he doesn’t read….yet.
I don’t know about cats, but I do know that my dog is VERY smart. She began proving it when she was 6 months old and wearing one of those vet collars to prevent her from pulling out the stitches from her spaying. She caught a mouse using the collar as a tool.
Does Duncan use tools?
You’re right – this proves to me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Duncan is one amazing cat. And undoubtedly brilliant.
I am sorry, but orange cats don’t have all of their marbles. Over my life I have had 1) a white cat, grey cat, brown tabby, two orange cats (at different times) and known very well two black cats and a white and black (cow cat). I rate the tabby as the smartest fallowed by the grey, the black, the white, the cow cat and the orange at the bottom. My current orange cat is the only cat I know that can fall off of something and NOT land on his paws. Think about it, this cat falls off of things!?!
Yes, it’s true. Orange cats are, in the main, a bit dim. I’ve had two and SIL has two now plus I’ve known a few others over the years and they have all been handsome and cuddlesome but dim. A batch of himbos really.
Current ginger-mog is frightened of his own shadow and dead leaves, he plummets bum first out of trees and he plunges his paw into the bath only to be shocked that it is wet. His sister – a clever, feisty tortie – looks at him with contempt at times whilst he just watches her with confusion spreading over his face. But he snuggles up to me every night purring loudly and nothing else matters!
Ok, so let me synthesize all this: cats like company while they eat; they also like constantly refreshed warm water; orange cats tend to be a little dim, but Duncan is brilliant. Right?
And nursemyra has an AVIARY! Nursemyra, do you have any Gouldian finches in your aviary?
This is something I wonder on a daily basis. My boyfriend thinks Peno is “mentally challenged” though I prefer to think she’s “special”. Tux is smart.. he’s one of those evil calculating cats who’s constantly plotting world domination… fortunately he’s too lazy to carry out most of his diabolical plots. The only ones he seems to follow through on are “Shed all over Dave’s black clothes”, “Cough up hair balls on soft absorbant surfaces” and “Stare at the other cats malevolently until they cower at my sheer evilness”. Rocky is a whole other box of wool… either he’s really, really smart or really, really dumb… doesn’t matter how many times I discipline him (for eating plants, stealing wool and making wool salad, jumping on the fish tank etc.) he just keeps doing it. Spraying him with a water bottle doesn’t even work. He just sits there doing what ever he was doing wrong and gets wet….
no I don’t have any of those gorgeous finches, but I have a lesbian crimson rosella who behaves like a sheepdog. she rounds up the hooded parrot, the two bourke parrots and the lone diamond dove and marshalls them around the aviary and gets extremely pissed off when I talk to the hooded parrot.
the rosella’s name is Woody, the hooded parrot is Hilary and the bourkes are Daisy and Digby. the diamond dove is Rosemary West because she murdered her own babies and unspeakable things happened with her mate.
our birds could have their own soap opera.
I know I’m late for this discussion, but there is a website where you can give your cat (or dog) a smarts test. I kept the address so I can administer this SAT to my puddies, but for some reason I just don’t want to know.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/pets/testyourpet/new_owner.shtml