I’m certain my pets are full of big ideas.
It’s obvious in the way my dog will perk up her ears and trot suddenly out of the room like she just remembered she has an important meeting to attend. Or maybe she was struck by a brilliant thought about the best method for removing fuzz from her tennis ball.
Alas, I’ll never know. I can’t read animal minds, which is a damn shame. Maybe there’s a perfectly good reason for snacking out of the litter box.
It’s not just my dog who has big ideas. My three cats seem to have a complex array of thought patterns and plans that I can’t possibly decipher.
Take naptime, for example.
Well, in a cat’s world, that’s pretty much all the time.
There’s a complicated schedule for napping that my three whiskered beasts have obviously put a great deal of thought into. How do they decide, for instance, that Blue Cat will take the foot of the bed for the first half of the night while Matt the Cat makes himself at home on the edge of my pillow?
Then at 3 a.m. they’ll communicate a thoughtfully-crafted plan that involves Blue Cat relocating to the dog’s bed, Matt shifting to the foot of my bed, and the crazy feral cat, Ivy, appearing from her hiding spot under the bed and hacking up a hairball in my sneaker.
How do they arrive at their agreement on sleep scheduling? Is it based on seniority, weight, or on who performed best in the evening’s Scrabble tournament? I’d give anything to have them walk me through the thought process.
I’d also love to know what’s so terrifying about the vacuum cleaner.
Do your pets have big ideas? Do you sometimes suspect they might even be smarter than you? Please share!
I’ll be trying to figure out what prompted Matt to drag a roll of toilet paper through the cat door.
Awww. Your pets are so cute! And, of course, brilliant.
Our part-time cat’s* big ideas all involve getting into our house and finagling treats. She comes to the kitchen window first, then the back door. If she fails to get our attention, she’ll run around to the front window and meow plaintively. If we still haven’t given in (rare), she’ll return to the back door and start flinging herself against it. This always works. I mean, who can resist that?
*She officially belongs to the people who live catty corner (ha! appropriate) behind us, but she likes us better. She’s not underfed at home, so I suspect it’s our sparkling personalities she can’t resist. Either that or the tuna. Really, it’s a tossup.
We don’t have any pets – it’s best that way for now. But I’m fond of books where the pets play an active role and are usually much smarter than their human friends. Reading Susan Wittig Albert’s Beatrix Potter series now – the animals are more interesting than the humans!
That’s great, Tawna! I just finished Fourth Grade Fairy by Eileen Cook–and that’s the magic power of Willow–to be able to talk to animal,who are hilarious!
I have seen the communication between by two dogs. They’ll touch noses and I can tell they’re discussing. Best discussion times is when they go after a squirrel. They’ll bounce at the door unable to wait while I open it. Then they’ll bound out…usually Boo going one direction and Bear going another…. neither of which are in the direction the squirrel is. By this time the squirrel has fallen off the fence laughing. The boys will meat up and do the nose thing almost as if Bear is saying “DUDE! I told you go to the left!” and Boo’s like “Yes but, with the declination of the sun and the current wind speed I felt it was more advantageous to try Titus’ Feint.”
Then they’ll both look rather sheepish and trot inside.
Riley has one big idea, over and over:
“I see food. I shall devise an ingenious plan to get it. This plan will involve either 1) look exceptionally cute, ideally resting my snout on the diner’s knee in that way he can’t resist (the diner in this case being my husband, sitting cross-legged on the floor), or 2) wait for everyone to into another room, then leap nimbly onto the table and snag the food. Then 3) look innocent.”
His other big idea is waiting for my husband or I to get up in the night to use the bathroom, at which point he settles into our warm spot by the pillow and falls fast asleep. When we come back, he blearily raises his head and looks at us as if to say, “Really? Must you interrupt me? I’ve been sleeping here all night!”
I have one cat, Bernie. Bernie has a bit of a complex because for a few months in the beginning he was known as Bonnie. (We had a cat named Clyde and we thought Bernie was a girl.) After we discovered he was a Bernie, he makes his masculinity known in various macho looking postures. Bernie is a great mouser. Unfortunately he’s one of those cats who walk in front of you so one day he will be responsible for killing or maiming me through a fall but I still love him.
Echoing Dee’s comment, your next big idea — become a cat whisperer!
I like to watch animals plot out their Big Ideas. ‘I can jump from the counter to the refrigerator, and then onto the cabinets, and from there I can leap onto the light fixture and have a good swing!’
And then I really like it when it goes awry.