Ribbon is so much fun! We play together so often that I have to take
Ribbon into the bathroom so Mom will give him a shower. I like Ribbon to be clean, like me.
Well, Mom is finally starting to
realize the beauty of litter, but she’s not quite there yet. Whenever she needs to use the bathroom, she
always sits on the white thing she calls a toilet. I don’t see the point in it, but she always
uses it. Dad sometimes uses it, but
sometimes he uses the place that Mom calls the Squatter. Anyway, these days, when Mom sits on the
white thing, she scratches with her foot in the litter at the same time. Of course, she hasn’t learned to use the box
yet and just scratches at the litter that is on the floor by the toilet, but
she’s learning, and that’s always encouraging.
One day, maybe she will actually use the box, like she did way back in
the summer when we lived one day at a little house. She will be a little big for the box, though,
so maybe she will get a bigger one so that all four of us can use it. I’m not sure that Dad will ever learn, though. He just doesn’t seem to get it.
Mom also recognizes when the litter
box has to be cleaned – not as soon as Miss Patchy and I know it, though. She seems to smell when it is dirty, plus she
sees that Miss Patchy and I refuse to use it after a while. I remember when we had no electricity for a
while, it was very cold and Miss Patchy and I had to go a lot. Mom cleaned it in the dark one day, with the
help of a flashlight. She complained
that it was much too wet and that she had just cleaned it, but we couldn’t help
it. It was the cold that did it.
It’s amazing what humans can learn
if you have patience and show them enough times how to do things. For instance, I have trained Mom to give
Ribbon a shower when he is in the bathroom.
I am also trying to train her to get up during the night and play with
me. However, she seems to be missing the
point. I bang the wardrobe doors
together and, when she doesn’t respond, I bang even louder. She finally gets up, but instead of playing
with me, she goes into the living room and sleeps on the couch. It is no use banging the doors anymore,
because Dad never responds. Anyway, last
night I tried, and Mom got up and went into the living room. However, this time I scratched on the living
room door and meowed, louder and louder, until she finally came out. Unfortunately, she had a trick up her sleeve
and she opened all the wardrobe doors.
Well, I shut one of them and began to bang it. She got up and used her final trick. She put her purse in the way of the double
doors, so I couldn’t close either one of them and I couldn’t bang them,
either. Rats! I’ll have to see what else I can do.
Back in the house called Phoenix,
there was a wonderful, big chain hanging down the wall in Mom and Dad’s bedroom,
and I used to pull on it and let it go back against the wall. That really bothered Mom and Dad, and they
would get up and shut me out of the bedroom.
That made me mad! However, I kept
trying, hoping that they would get the idea and come play with me. I thought that the wardrobe doors would be a
great substitute for the chain, but no luck.
Mom says that I need to be up more during the day, playing, but that
just doesn’t feel right to me.
Well, I will continue with my
training efforts and hope to see some results before long. I am working so hard at it, that it would be
a shame if nothing ever came of it. Miss
Patchy says to just forget about it and go to sleep, because humans are
untrainable. I refuse to give up!
I am feeling as though I need to
play, and I see Ribbon on the hall floor, getting cold. Once I have finished playing, I will start to
keep track of my training attempts and see how long it takes.
Regards,
Mina
