They say a dog has the intelligence of a two-year-old child and can understand more than a hundred words.
My old orange cat, Buster, had that beat by miles. Two examples:
As he sat in the window, I remarked to him, “Buster, have you noticed how fat your sister’s getting? She needs more exercise. Why don’t you chase her up the stairs?” He jumped down from the window and did just that.
Another time, while he was recovering from dental surgery and still a little groggy, and slow in getting motivated, I made a suggestion to him, based on the fact that we had his litter box upstairs in the bathroom. “Whattaya say, Buster? How about we go up to the bathroom and have a pee?” And up he went, straight to the litter box: and he was just fine after that.
Another one of our cats, Henry, liked baseball and would argue about it to the best of his ability. I’m sure he understood what I was saying to him, but I was much too dense to understand what he was saying to me. It was either about stealing bases or stealing the runners who were on the bases; I couldn’t figure out which.
All the animals (both dogs and cats) I have ever had speak Jewish. They are able to lay the guilt on you with perfection. I had no idea that all pets were Jewish.
Even parakeets?
Actually, YES! My first parakeet was a regular Yenta!
I’ve had some great conversations with cats, over the years. The cat I lost about a year ago could be very expressive. She varied her sounds and I could tell when she was feeling relaxed, was on alert or just felt like making some sound. I miss that more than you might imagine.
Almost midnight…came home to try to throw in some more hits on your blog!