Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The Smart Cat

Hello, world, it's Tuesday.

Today it's raining in Las Cruces. Pumpkin intrepidly followed Doug out the door when he left for class.

A bit later, I went into my office to check some items off my to-do list. For the first time, Pumpkin was on the exterior sill of my office window. She greeted me, and made some questioning noises.

Pumpkin has a lot of control over her voice. She can say a lot of different words. And when vocalizing doesn't work, she's very expressive with the tilt of her ears and the turn of her back, too.

Anyway, I figured she wanted me to let her in out of the rain. So I went to the front door and called her.

"Row-oo-era?" she said.

"Come on, you can jump off the ledge and make it in."

"Row-row?"

"Hey, it's raining out there, and I have my slippers on. Are you going to make me get my feet wet?"

She paced back and forth on the ledge, pretending to be helpless. "Row-row?"

"Oh, alright." I walked across the yard and through the roof's drip line, and offered my arms. She came to them, and I put her on my shoulder, the way she likes.

"You're spoiled, you know."

She purred loudly, snuggling in, and licking my ear.

"OK, forgiven," I said.