How to Train Your Mommy (Finnegan’s Diary)

For the past four months, I’ve been training Mommy without her knowing it. I’m a pretty clever cat.

She has that same sense I have to know when someone is staring at you. So when I want to have my snack, I sit right at her feet and stare at her. No matter what she’s doing, she will look down and see my handsome face staring at her with narrowed eyes, which means “I love you.” She smiles and takes my face in her hands and tells me she loves me too. Then she says, “Do you want a snack?” Of course, I do, and now she understands. I do my little jump in a half circle trick and sit by the big white pantry doors where I know my food is stored. And she gives me those yummy chicken or fish flavored Greenies. I love them. I counted them and she gives me 10 of them.

When it is time for my meals, I will sit in front of those pantry doors and cry. That really gets her. She doesn’t want me to be unhappy. So she’ll say “Are you ready for lunch?” or “Are you ready for dinner?” Of course, I am. That food is kept in one of the cabinets in the kitchen. I know just where it is, but it’s in a can and even if I could open the door, I don’t think I could open the container.

I have also trained her to know when I’m bored and want her to play with me. All I have to do is jump on the kitchen counter and pull all her pretty folded dishrags out of the basket onto the counter! That always gets her attention. Sometimes, if she’s watching television, I will jump on the television stand and try to get behind it to play with the cords which she hides in a basket. Another trick is to knock anything she has placed on the counter to the floor. Yesterday I knocked her phone off and an envelope she said she had to mail. One of my best tricks, is to either sit in the middle of her coloring books, or lay on her pencils in the case. Ha, ha! I also will sit right in front of the computer screen so she can’t see. That’s a good one since she is a writer and spends a lot of time on her computer.

She knows now when I’m bored and will ask me if I want to play. When I’m being annoying like this, she will pick me up, kiss me and say do you want to play? Of course, I do! Then we go to the living room and she will play with me. I like when she will pretend to chase me so I can run really fast from one room to the other. I like to show her she could never catch me if I didn’t want her to.

I’m sure you have learned a few things about how to train your mommy. I hope you’ve learned a lot from my blog this morning. Time for me to take my morning nap. And, yes, sometimes I do hang off of it. I do fit comfortably but sometimes I like to let my legs hang off. Why? Ha, ha, it worries mommy that I’ll fall. At least she thinks about me when I’m too tired to get her attention.

Bye for now! I’ll be back next Wednesday when I’ll talk about how much I have changed from the day mommy brought me home.