"DGDevin" wrote in message
m...


"George W Frost" wrote in message
ond.com...

No, there is no substitute for a cat
With a dog, you own the dog and tell it what to do
With a cat, now that's a totally different story
the car totally owns you and no matter what you tell, ask, or beg the cat
to do, if it doesn't feel like it, it won't.

There was this feral cat living in our back yard, my wife--being a
woman--insisted on feeding it and even caught it and took it in to be
fixed after it had a litter on our patio. On a good day my wife could
briefly scratch the top of the critter's head when feeding it, that was
about it. I figured if we were going to feed the damn thing we had some
affection payback coming, so I set out to train the cat. It took quite
awhile, but I remember the day my wife came out on the back porch to see
the cat curled up in my lap, she didn't believe me when I'd told her I'd
got the cat to do that. Now the cat mostly lives in our house, rubbing
our ankles, hopping up in our laps, watching TV with us (she likes nature
shows, I suspect she fantasizes about being a lion) and sleeping in the
spot I trained her to sleep--a big reading chair in our office. I realize
food is a big part of this, not to mention a warm place to be in the
winter, but the cat's clear desire to share our company and be near us
suggests a certain affection, I suppose she thinks we are her substitute
litter-mates or something along those lines. So while cats might be more
difficult to train than dogs, it's amazing what you can do if you set your
mind to it.

One cat I had I trained to use the toilet bowl to crap and **** in, saved
on cat litter
The other one, I acquired when he was 12 years old, I tried to train it and
when I took him into the toilet and closed the door, a few minutes later he
was there beside me in the kitchen, thinking that I hadn't closed the door
properly, I let it go, then, the next time, I made sure that I closed the
door properly.
However, a few minutes later, there he was, beside me, rubbing against my
leg.
I began to wonder had Old Timers Disease caught up with me already and I had
not closed the door?
So, I took him into the toilet and closed the door, stood outside and
watched what would happen,
Then, to my surprise, the lever door handle started moving, then the bloody
door opened.
The cat had taught himself to open the door.
Then I did it again, with me inside the room with him and I watched what he
did.
as soon as he wanted to go out, he stood on the toilet, then stretched up to
the handle and moved it enough to open the door, then jumped down and out
the door.
Now, you may say, "so what, he learned that from a kitten"
But, this cat had lived all of his previous 12 years in a house which had
round door handles, he had never seen a lever type door handle before.
Cats are intelligent, this one was white Oriental, the other was a brown
Burmese and they both had no fear of dogs, Chihuahua's or German Shepherds,
one day, I watched the white one send a Bull Mastiff
yelping off into the distance when he jumped onto the dogs back and dug his
claws in as far as they would go, and all because the dog barked at him.