Dodgy dog training

The dog training isn’t going very well.

The Terrible Two come running when I arrive home – but only when I call their names. They don’t seen to understand, or show any willingness to understand “off” and “down” and they will not be bribed with commercial treats.

They are siblings – a male and a female from the same litter.

The boy did manage to go fetch a ball of foil when I rolled it across the kitchen floor for him three times in succession the other day, but he hasn’t repeated it since.

But, as people keep reminding me, this is all because they are not dogs. It’s been put to me quite robustly that I might be expecting a bit much of tabby kittens.

Leo, the male, is a big green-eyed purring machine who is very trusting and partial to having his spotty tum tickled.

Lily, the mutant moggy, is a dwarf, half big brother’s size – with extra toes on each paw, which makes her look as though she’s pattering about wearing mittens or those socks with individual toes. She really does look as though she is four weeks younger than big bro and I suppose, it’s possible, as I was told, that the litter was a result of two matings at two different times so she really might be a lot younger but the jury’s out on that one. I think she’s just a bit runty.

She’s a pocket huntress – inquisitive brave and skittish and too busy for a cuddle except when she feels like it. She surprised me as I sat on the sofa last evening by laying a soft paw on my shoulder, purring in my ear and touching my cheek with a teeny cold nose before slinking down for a lap nap.

So what’s the dog training thing? Well, I Googled “dog-like cats” ages ago but it only came up with Maine Coon cats which are both enormous and enormously expensive and the breeders won’t let you have a kitten unless you promise to never let it out. There are other gorgeous breeds that are lush of coat and withering of eye which seem destined to lie regally in cages at cat shows. But deep down, I have always known that if I’m going to own cats at all, they will be tabbies.

Finding images of alluring tabby kittens on the web, I decided to go for “cat-like cats” but attempt to train them in some useful doggy ways. I don’t need to be told that this will all go badly, that cats are not dogs and I should forget it all right now. It’s an experiment and I’m enjoying learning just how different kittens and puppies actually are.

For a start, you generally know where a young puppy is. Always having had English Springer Spaniels, they are either around your feet waiting for a play, cuddle, food or they are snortling gently in their beds, paws and nose twitching as the dream their puppy dreams.

He greets you with utter joy in the morning “Hey!! It’s YOU!!! Whoooppee! Great! Thank goodness. Now what? Go on then. Go on.. Now what? Whooo! Play? Food? BRILLIANT!!”

This is repeated whenever you return from anywhere – the next room, the loo, outside. This is repeated throughout his life, in fact, unless doggo is lying in the garden with a fresh bone, in which case he stays put and his eyes say “Busy right now. Later.”

Leo certainly comes to greet me first thing in the morning and when I arrive home from work. But he tends to say “Oh there you are” in laconic tone.” nuzzle nuzzle “so…what have you got? Thought about breakfast/lunch/dinner?” and parades around on my lap while Lily skitters around crazily and then does flying Spiderman leap at my calf with all paw crampons extended and climbs agonisingly up my leg leaving small bleeding puncture wounds. Even when reclining on my lap, she keeps a watchful eye on things as if to say “Make a fuss by all means but I’m still On Duty.”

They just started fighting again. Leo has headlocked Lily but she’s kicking him in the face with both back feet. I really need Ken Walton to commentate. She claws him in the eye but he seems not to notice and no damage is done. They part and perform flying ninja jumps at each other, clashing in midair and Leo dashes off to hide in the washing basket, which is full of holes just big enough to stick a teasing paw through and wave about – just in case she hasn’t gathered where he’s hiding. He needn’t bothered. She’s stalking him from above on the kitchen worktop. If this was a cartoon, Lily would even now be dropping a black weight marked “TON” on Leo’s head.

And so it goes on. Fighting like cat and cat, rolling, wrestling, playing, until they find me conveniently situated for a warm snooze. If I’m at the desk, Lily has my lap and Leo is sprawled luxuriously between keyboards, his head on the side of my laptop, purring loudly. Lily purrs too but she is muted – like a geiger counter someone’s concealed beneath a pile of pillows in a wardrobe. Ridiculous, really.

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Author: janh1

Part-time hedonist.

22 thoughts on “Dodgy dog training”

  3. Good evening, Jan. This is all very spooky. I too had dogs for thirty years or more, pure-bred German Shepherds every one apart from the very last which was a properly working springer spaniel (honestly!) who popped off to the Eternal Kennel a few months before we left for Portugal, and now I have Das Fürballen, the equivalent of your ‘Terrible Two’.

    I did write about how this came about on the old MyT, but the short version is that I went down to The Bar one evening, had one cerveja (or six) more than absolutely necessary and was ambushed by the Machievellian wife of the owner who appeared at exactly the opportune moment holding two tiny furballs. They were subsequently named ‘Fogo’ and ‘Fumada’ by MyT bloggers.

    Aaaaaanyhow, not knowing anything about cats I innocently started training them as I had always done with a new puppy. ‘I’m first through the door’; ‘If I don’t want you to come through the door I’ll tell you’; ‘If I call, you come to my voice’ – the usual stuff.

    Amazingly, it worked. This human mindset about ‘I love my cat – it does not care’ and ‘dogs have owners but cats have staff’ is bolleaux, probably promulgated from the time that cats believed they ruled Egypt. Cats respond to food and affection just like any other sentient being. 🙂

    OZ

  5. Bravo – Screw your courage to the sticking post and all that. Think wot would Christina do – if you stop feeding the little tyrants they will come baxk to you eventually. 🙂

    OZ

  7. Hi Pseu. Not sure I know how old Jake is but the vet was saying today that cats are quite solitary creatures and there are no guarantees that L&L, just because they are siblings, will get on later in life. Hope they will though, obviously!

    Hi Christina – unfortunately I’m not home enough to bring up and train a puppy properly/ Hopefully in future before I get decrepit but not now.

    Oz, a proper working springer spaniel…how fab. That was my first springer! Oodles of field trial champions in his pedigree. Limitless energy, wonderful with the kids, brave and loyal. Though a little brain deficient compared to a Shep!!

    I don’t remember reading about your kits. ‘Fogo’ reminds me irresistibly of Last of the Summer Wine, btw. Brilliant.

    So you have done the dog training and it’s worked!! Fabuloso 🙂 I’m doing exactly the same. Actually Lily’s getting quite good at foil-ball footie on the kitchen floor – passing it with her little mitten paw. She should be in goal really with paws like that. She gets to the point where she carries the ball away and hides it in a shoe, though. I have yellow-carded her, to no avail.

    Yes people have said to me “Oh cats do their own thing” but I think they have possibilities.

    I noticed the Lady Macbeth quote and it reminded me that most productions miss a trick in not including a dog in the cast. Just so that her ladyship could command “Out, damned Spot. Out, I say.”

    Sounds like the training is a bit dodgy in your house too, Bravo 😀

  8. Jake is 16 going on 17 (sorry, Bravo, had to get that one in) and he had a brother Elwood (Blues Brothers, doncha know, being Black and White) who sadly was squashed, not once, but twice by a car, the second time fatally. However the point of this is that as brothers they always curled together to sleep.

    (I’ll say it very quietly, but you can see pictures on my own blog…)

  10. Mornin’ Jan

    I forgot to include a piccy yesterday evening. They are inseperable, having been together since birth.

    Fogo, the tabby male, is ‘Fire’ in Portuguese and Fumada, the mainly white female is ‘Wisp of smoke’. There is always a problem with double names such as with the sad tale of Pseu’s Elwood. A neighbour had four chickens, which she named Morecambe, Wise, Little and Large. Unfortunately a fox had two of them and, sod’s law being what it is, she was left with Morecambe and Large.

    OZ

  12. “…sod’s law being what it is, she was left with Morecambe and Large.”

    (Big smile, with an edge of sadness.) Poor Little and Wise.

  13. Your post reminded me of the poem ‘The Naming of Cats’
    http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15121

    The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot

    The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
    It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
    You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
    When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
    First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
    Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
    Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey–
    All of them sensible everyday names.
    There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
    Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
    Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter–
    But all of them sensible everyday names.
    But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
    A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
    Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
    Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
    Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
    Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
    Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
    Names that never belong to more than one cat.
    But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
    And that is the name that you never will guess;
    The name that no human research can discover–
    But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
    When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
    The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
    His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
    Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
    His ineffable effable
    Effanineffable
    Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

  15. Christina, I think it’s mutual life-enhancing thing. 😀 I could never understand people who didn’t take their dogs on holiday. We did, apart from the very occasional foreign trip. Well-behaved dogs are welcome in loads of places and dogs adapt very quickly to changed circumstances. Staying at the Hilton in Leeds, Roly got used to sitting and waiting for the lift and he’d stand as soon as the door went “ping” announcing lift arrival. 😉

    Hi Pseu – thanks, yes excellent pics! Poor Elwood was very unlucky. Jake’s a fine and distinctive looking fellow. Bet he missed Elwood, especially if they were as close as OZ’s two!

    Pseu thanks also for the poem. I did TS Eliot for A level and I still remember the love song of J Alfred Prufrock (probably my favourite of his) but to my shame, I don’t remember this!

    Lovely pic of Fogo and Fumada, OZ. An image of blissful contentment! Very relaxing.
    Had to laugh at Morecambe and Large. Foxes have no respect for celebrity comedy duos.

  20. Hi Pseu. No I haven’t seen Cats. Not a fan of musicals. Mostly. 😉

    Thanks for the vids. Not loading at the moment due to sluggish broadband. Will try again later.

  21. The book from which Cats was based was ‘Old Possom’s Book of ….’
    not written at all to be a musical they stand alone as fine fun poems and I recommend them to you!

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