I’ve been working on training Sophie. She’s a very smart cat. She is almost as smart as a typical dog. The first two words I taught her were “hungry” and “food.” She probably doesn’t understand exactly what “hungy” means, other than I ask her if she’s hungry before I ask her if she wants food. She definitely understands the word “food.”

Relatedly, I think that she is starting to catch on to the meaning of “can.”

I’ve also been working on teaching her some non-food related words. These are a bit harder because Sophie is very, very, very food-motivated. So far I’ve made the most progress teaching her “petting.”

We’ve reached the point where if I call out to her, “Sophie, do you want petting?” she will run over to where I am sitting, jump on my lap, and expect me to start petting her.

She’s gotten good enough at responding to this that I told Jim that he should try. He was sitting in the good chair and called out to her, “Sophie, do you want petting?”

She ran over to me, jumped on my lap, and waited for me to pet her.