a genius unappreciated in his own time

Our Lucien-cat is still alive. Ruth and I went to Provincetown for the weekend, and I thought I had just about managed to cat-proof the kitchen before we left, but this turned out not to be the case.

The thing is, Lucien's medical issues mean that he never, ever stops feeling hungry-- his body has literally forgotten what it is like to feel full-- and he is applying all of his considerable intellect and energy to the question of getting more food. It is really very draining to live with. We are already feeding him as much as he can physically process, and have no way to reason with him further. And it's difficult to tell what human food he'll think is food, and what his mobility restrictions actually are at any given moment (I suspect that last one of varying by the day, too).

Therefore, the list of things he has tried to eat in the house recently includes incidents like the time I found him sinking his fangs into the outside plastic of a packet of ramen, just like a little kitty vampire. I told him sternly that he was not a graduate student, but he kept trying, so now everything pasta-like has been added to the long, long list of things that cannot be stored anywhere cat-reachable. The list already included all pastry and bread products, all dairy and cheese products, avocados, and sorbet, as well as, of course, anything meat or meatlike and all forms of fish and shellfish. The problem is that 'stored anywhere' also means, for instance, 'put down on the counter while I get something else out of the fridge', or 'the spoon I have left in the pot between intervals of stirring', and such-like. He is an incentive to work clean in the kitchen in a way the chefs of my acquaintance would envy, because absolutely everything that one is not both holding and looking at has to be washed instantly before it becomes the subject of an Act of Cat.

Spent about an hour one night literally carrying him around everywhere I went, under one arm, as there was no other way to stop him from ninja-ing, and nobody liked that, I tell you what. Rearranging the entire kitchen is problematic due to limited space and the fact that his idea of food seems to keep expanding. He can't be kept out of the kitchen entirely, as he has to pass through it to get to the litterbox, and also it doesn't have any doors. Sigh.

So Ruth and I went away from the weekend, and everything I thought might be remotely of interest to him was either in the fridge, with a child safety lock on it because he can open the fridge, or in a cabinet, that we're duct-taping closed every time we use it because he can open the cabinets.

His actual cat food, the wet food in cans, we buy a flat at a time, still in the plastic, and stack in the kitchen. I'd known for a while that Lucien knows that food comes from cans, because he'll rub up against the flat burbling plaintively; I had vaguely considered moving the entire flat somewhere totally away from him, because I didn't want him to get frustrated having it just sitting right there. But then I figured it would be better to have him focusing on that then on, I don't know, the peanut butter, so I left it.

This was a mistake.

sovay and the cat-medication person we hired to come in and do the high-level cat-medicating while we were away can both corroborate:

Our cat has learned. How. To open. His own. Cans.

ALL BY HIMSELF and with NO OPPOSABLE THUMBS.

This is a multi-step process which involved him

a) digging through the plastic covering of the flat of cans

b) making sure not to pull the can he was after out of the flat entirely, because the other cans had to kind of wedge it in place so he could get some leverage

c) pulling up the pull-tab on the can lid somehow, probably with his teeth

and d) tugging on the pull-tab with his jaws as he pushed the can away from him with his front paws, which was, because the can was as I have mentioned wedged among other cans and the plastic, enough force to get the thing open.

sovay caught him during d), because it was apparently very loud and clangy and it was also four in the morning. After some understandable boggling, she put the open can in the fridge and hauled the flat into a we-hope-cat-inaccessible closet, thus at least temporarily ending his merrie games & tricks.

He has been telling me ever since I got home that I knew he was this intelligent when I left the house, and what did I think he would resort to when we only feed him two-and-a-half entire cans of insanely expensive prescription wet food per day never ever feed him. And I have been saying that there is a difference between knowledge in the abstract and in the, shall we say, concrete, and that if he has to be the Einstein of cats, maybe he could apply himself to more generally socially acceptable goals overall, and here we sit, staring at each other.

HE CAN OPEN A CAN BY HIMSELF.

I just. I don't even.

a genius unappreciated in his own time

Our Lucien-cat is still alive. Ruth and I went to Provincetown for the weekend, and I thought I had just about managed to cat-proof the kitchen before we left, but this turned out not to be the case.

The thing is, Lucien's medical issues mean that he never, ever stops feeling hungry-- his body has literally forgotten what it is like to feel full-- and he is applying all of his considerable intellect and energy to the question of getting more food. It is really very draining to live with. We are already feeding him as much as he can physically process, and have no way to reason with him further. And it's difficult to tell what human food he'll think is food, and what his mobility restrictions actually are at any given moment (I suspect that last one of varying by the day, too).

Therefore, the list of things he has tried to eat in the house recently includes incidents like the time I found him sinking his fangs into the outside plastic of a packet of ramen, just like a little kitty vampire. I told him sternly that he was not a graduate student, but he kept trying, so now everything pasta-like has been added to the long, long list of things that cannot be stored anywhere cat-reachable. The list already included all pastry and bread products, all dairy and cheese products, avocados, and sorbet, as well as, of course, anything meat or meatlike and all forms of fish and shellfish. The problem is that 'stored anywhere' also means, for instance, 'put down on the counter while I get something else out of the fridge', or 'the spoon I have left in the pot between intervals of stirring', and such-like. He is an incentive to work clean in the kitchen in a way the chefs of my acquaintance would envy, because absolutely everything that one is not both holding and looking at has to be washed instantly before it becomes the subject of an Act of Cat.

Spent about an hour one night literally carrying him around everywhere I went, under one arm, as there was no other way to stop him from ninja-ing, and nobody liked that, I tell you what. Rearranging the entire kitchen is problematic due to limited space and the fact that his idea of food seems to keep expanding. He can't be kept out of the kitchen entirely, as he has to pass through it to get to the litterbox, and also it doesn't have any doors. Sigh.

So Ruth and I went away from the weekend, and everything I thought might be remotely of interest to him was either in the fridge, with a child safety lock on it because he can open the fridge, or in a cabinet, that we're duct-taping closed every time we use it because he can open the cabinets.

His actual cat food, the wet food in cans, we buy a flat at a time, still in the plastic, and stack in the kitchen. I'd known for a while that Lucien knows that food comes from cans, because he'll rub up against the flat burbling plaintively; I had vaguely considered moving the entire flat somewhere totally away from him, because I didn't want him to get frustrated having it just sitting right there. But then I figured it would be better to have him focusing on that then on, I don't know, the peanut butter, so I left it.

This was a mistake.

sovay and the cat-medication person we hired to come in and do the high-level cat-medicating while we were away can both corroborate:

Our cat has learned. How. To open. His own. Cans.

ALL BY HIMSELF and with NO OPPOSABLE THUMBS.

This is a multi-step process which involved him

a) digging through the plastic covering of the flat of cans

b) making sure not to pull the can he was after out of the flat entirely, because the other cans had to kind of wedge it in place so he could get some leverage

c) pulling up the pull-tab on the can lid somehow, probably with his teeth

and d) tugging on the pull-tab with his jaws as he pushed the can away from him with his front paws, which was, because the can was as I have mentioned wedged among other cans and the plastic, enough force to get the thing open.

sovay caught him during d), because it was apparently very loud and clangy and it was also four in the morning. After some understandable boggling, she put the open can in the fridge and hauled the flat into a we-hope-cat-inaccessible closet, thus at least temporarily ending his merrie games & tricks.

He has been telling me ever since I got home that I knew he was this intelligent when I left the house, and what did I think he would resort to when we only feed him two-and-a-half entire cans of insanely expensive prescription wet food per day never ever feed him. And I have been saying that there is a difference between knowledge in the abstract and in the, shall we say, concrete, and that if he has to be the Einstein of cats, maybe he could apply himself to more generally socially acceptable goals overall, and here we sit, staring at each other.

HE CAN OPEN A CAN BY HIMSELF.

I just. I don't even.

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