Normally I'm in more serious (as in war / religion etc) area's on ATS but this caught my eye in a good way, my wife, our daughter and I are very very
serious animal / creature lovers, we have always had cats and go the extra length to help creatures be safe, if my daughter sees a worm on the
pavement she will get a bit of paper and transfer it to the grass even though she does not want to touch it. When our cats brought in field mice that
were alive we caught hem and put them away from the house outside, I think you get the drift..
We now only have one cat, others were rehomed to good families as we could not afford all the needed treatments over the year for so many, now Felix
our cat has been like our others, you get the feeling he understands a lot more than he lets on and basically he treats us like we belong to him. Now
my wife talks to him and somewhat to our amazement he started to respond with weird sounding meows, almost sounding like an attempt to say a word,
initially I put it down to wishful thinking on my wife's part but more and more it became clear it was actually happening, not every time but far too
many times for it to be chance. Words with W as a lead seemed his easiest, for example, my wife would put a bit of chicken down in the kitchen, the
room varied and she would say "I've put chicken down Felix" and straight away you got a 'wheeeereeeee' type meow and she would point to the room and
off he trotted and ate the food, I know he must have smelt the food on entry to the house but it became his trademark of laziness by asking for stuff
in a meow way. There's not that many 'meow' words in his vocabulary but enough to make it better than chance or wishful thinking.
He also like a great many cats shows a level of being able to gauge moods and possibly what you are saying,, sometimes when he's shall we say 'looking
for lady cat love' he comes to the back window and meows incessantly but does not want to come in, he just wants attention, now at 4am its annoying
and loud enough to wake the neighbours in the flats we live in so I'll say to him, come in and if he refuses and just rolls on the floor I chase him
away, now on the odd occasion I'm dead tired and I say "come in or I get a cup of water" which is thrown in his direction to make him clear off and
each time that is said I come back to see him way in the distance, I thrown the water down as a sign but the sod has worked out either what the words
represent or maybe reads the mind. Now as I say its random what I do depending on how loud he is and on occasions he will come in (even though there's
a special high window open for him that he can reach but refuses to use normally, Lord Felix!) so its not down to a regular pattern, he just seems to
know when I'm going to get the water rather than coming to the back door to let him in and this is more odd as the timing is the same and he can't see
where I'm going or hear water being used as our taps are behind a fire door that almost seals the room when it closes..
There's other times when he looks at me and I know he wants to jump on the lap, I just say with zero gestures "go on then" and sure enough he runs
over and up on the lap. This happens 100% of the time, there's plenty of times he's in the room and sitting around looking but its only when I get
that feeling he actually does it, I've tried when he's just sitting around and he looks at me like I'm a fool but the second I get that thought he's
up in a jiffy.
Had the same behaviour with totally unknown cats, they come straight over to us with no fear at all and play even allowing to be picked up and laying
in the arms which for a cat is an ultimate act of trust towards a human.
So yeah, I have to say that we have a bond with animals and creatures that is within possibly all of us and them that we rarely even realise we have,
be it spoken or not its there...
Paul...
Old softy at heart...
edit on 10-9-2016 by Mclaneinc because: (no reason given)