Pets Taught Each Other to Get More Treats!

I hear and read a lot about human-pet interactions, but today I’d like to talk about pet-to-pet interactions. They’ve been teaching each other new things – better ways to manipulate me! Of course, I oblige them, so this only reinforces their lessons.

The dogs and I have time together in the morning as I get dressed and go through my morning routine. This happens to be next to the cabinet where I keep the treats that I give the dogs with their medicines. One morning, Tribble watched me intently, and I winked at her. After a few days of this, she winked back at me. I laughed and gave her a treat. Then, since the other dogs didn’t know what was going on, I gave them treats, too. I had to be fair, after all. Tribble is very food-motivated, and she did this fairly frequently, and all the dogs approved.

Then one day, River walked over and sat right in front of me, looked me in the eye, and winked at me! Out came the treats. Garnet has even winked at me once or twice and gotten treats! I didn’t even think she could see far enough to observe what was going on. Since the non-winking dogs were several feet away off to the side, I was surprised that they saw what caused me to pass out treats, but I accepted that they all learned from Tribble.

I about fell over laughing the day that Gracie winked at me! She is very food motivated and clearly wanted a treat. I was not obliging her, so she decided to try out the winking trick. It worked like a charm!  It makes me smile, too. I see cats blink all the time; it’s their signature move. But wink? Never. Until now.

When we got Gracie three years ago, she was four months old. She was born to a feral mother and taken to a shelter as soon as she was weaned. When we got her, she was eerily silent. I have heard that cats only meow or verbalize once they have lived with humans. They don’t meow at each other, just at the humans. Eventually, we heard a few little squeaks and mews from her. She often used a sweet one-syllable commanding mew that I thought meant “give me another treat!” Then I heard her use it when I was petting her, and she wanted more pets. Clearly, the word was a command for simply “more.”

My senior kitty, Nami, will be 18 in February. She has an extensive vocabulary, including several cuss words; she is quite vocal when she is angry or demanding. This morning while she was sitting in my lap, I idly petted her. Lost in my thoughts, the petting slowed and stopped. That’s when she turned her head toward me a little, and I heard it. The one-syllable mew for more! She said it just like Gracie would, but I had never heard it from Nami before. I suppose that she watched me petting or feeding Gracie tidbits of salmon and heard Gracie use the word to successfully coax me to give her more pets or more food. It was effective. I resumed petting Nami this morning, scratching her jaw in that one place that seemed to always need it. She was satisfied, and I suspect I’ll hear that word from her again.

I’m wondering what they’ll teach each other next. I expect them to pick up the house customs and routines from each other, but this seemed a bit different. What have your pets taught each other?