Cat

[telophase]

We’ve taught D.Va to press this large battery-powered button that plays a recording of myrialux saying “Laser” when she wants to play with the laser pointer.

We then had to hide it when myrialux was not down with playing, like during dinner.

(Side note: Sora, at 13, has watched D.Va mess with the button and get the laser. And with no training from us, has picked up that if he messes with the button he might get the laser. Woo!)

Anyway, she’s consistent enough that we decided to introduce a second button into the equation. This one says “Feather stick” when it’s pressed. D.Va has obviously connected the action of pressing the button with the laser, but not the sound, because we’ll put both buttons in front of her, she’ll press the one closest to her, then get disappointed if it’s the feather stick and not the laser. (The laser pointer is the higher-value toy here, obviously.)

Today, she hit Feather Stick—myrialux tried to make them equidistant—and when the stick came out she got so frustrated that she hit the button over and over and over, trying to get the laser to show up. Feather Stick Feather Stick Feather Stick Feather Stick as we were both quietly dying. XD Eventually myrialux pushed Laser closer to her and she switched, hit Laser, and got her laser pointer.

We’ve now put a piece of white electrical tape on top of Feather Stick in case the colors of the base of the buttons are totally meaningless to her. Laser is blue and dark while Feather Stick is green and lighter, but the buttons themselves are black.

Comments

[yhlee]

HA HA HA HA HA awesome.

(owe you an email, getting to it now that I've done the day's writing)

[viridian5]

I follow BilliSpeaks on YouTube, an account about a 12-year-old domestic shorthaired cat and her speech buttons interacting with her human. She's been doing this for a while and has a lot of buttons in her vocabulary. It's fun watching her create sentences, her tail swishing as she thinks. Some of her answers show humor and sarcasm. There's also a video in which she button-says that she's disliking the sound of the Hamiliton her human is playing.

[movingfinger]

Cats have excellent edge and movement detection. Mark the buttons with patterns (a cross and a circle, EG). My recollection is that they're color blind or something like it.

[telophase]

Their eyes are more sensitive to blues and yellows, since they tend to hunt at dusk and dawn, so she should be able to see the difference in the colors between the two buttons. Although whether she realizes she should care is a totally different thing! It took her a long time to realize the SOUND of the button response was what we were after, and she still hasn't fully internalized it, so she'll occasionally hit the button in a way that doesn't set off the recording and start looking around the floor for the laser dot. (Sora hasn't made the connection with the sound yet, and is not helped by D.Va getting territorial over the button...)

But yeah, the tape markings should help her differentiate between the two. I'm now wondering what a third button should say. She likes us to throw her little mousies and stuffed strawberries, so that might be an option, but that means we'd have to keep some on hand in the media room, where the buttons are kept. There's also making one a Catnip or Treat button, which could be hilarious but could also create an even bigger monster.

(We realized when we put the second button out that she hadn't associated the first button with the laser, but with "playing with myrialux". It's slowly getting associated with "laser pointer" now.)

[adafrog]

lol