Circus Kitties

Tried to train the cats today - Oscar and Lucy, the ultimate odd couple.

To better aid in the telling of this story, a couple of mental kitty portraits may help: Oscar is a fluffy, tiger-striped, slightly pudgy boy cat; Lucy is an anxious, tiny girl cat, snow-bunny white from the tops of her ears to the constantly ticking tip of her tail. The two alternate between devastatingly adorable snugglege and tempestuous brawls always consisting of Oscar exerting just enough effort to maintain his dominance over itty bitty Lucy. Lucy-Bitch we call her a lot. But not because she's Oscar's bitch - because she's a bitch. Period.

Anyway, Oscar has this cute habit of balancing up onto his hind legs, circus bear-like, in order to push his head up underneath a tantalizingly dangling hand, the curl of fingers a cat-speak "allioop!" So I attempted this afternoon, rare sunlight streaming the windows of our dead-end street apartment, to train both Lucy and Oscar to perform this feat on command. Miserable failure sounds harsh, but, there it be.

Having no designated cat "treats," I decided to use their usual food as my training tool of choice. Unfortunately, the cats were so excited by the prospect of a possible previously unscheduled feeding, that they wouldn't leave their food dishes, swishing and swirling amongst our cast-off shoes, rubbing up against them and each other. When I'd finally lured them away from their still empty dishes, Lucy seemed to show a thinly-veiled disdain for my high-pitched yippings and jerky hand movements, trying to signal "up, up!" Oscar, who as I said has done the trick on his own before, seemed too stupid to understand what I was trying to do. He sat and stared, blankly, stooping to eat bits of food off the floor whenever my arms movements became enthusiastic enough to let escape any kernels of the fishy smelling stuff.

My circus-ring yips getting fainter, more exasperated, I gave up and threw a bit of food in both their bowls, if only to get their uncooperative behinds out of my sight. Lucy-Bitch indeed.