Another entry about my cat...

I am quite happy with Pumpkin's progress at her training. While I was home working on my candidacy, I spent two days teaching her to come when called. This is one of the simplest things to teach a cat, since you just sit somewhere in the house, call them, and give them a treat when they arrive. Pumpkin learned right away to come running to get a treat, however I continued to reinforce the behavior for an extra day or two so she wouldn't forget. Even now after several months, she still remembers that she gets a treat if she comes when called. When she's outside playing in the yard and I need to leave, I can just call her and she comes in to receive her treat. Bingo, easily done.

The other 'trick' that I'm glad she's caught on to, is catching spiders. She started off naturally playing with them when she first saw them around my apartment last year. I encouraged this behavior by giving her a treat when I found her playing with/eating a spider. She's progressed to the point where every evening she seems to go searching for spiders in the nooks and crannies of my apartment. While this does creep me out a little, because it implies my house is spider-ridden, I am impressed with her perseverance to earn a treat by finding spider prey. Sometimes she eats the spiders and sometimes she doesn't, but she does bring them out of the corners and play with them enough so that they aren't crawling all over the place when I pick them up and flush them. Unfortunately, all of the (big!) spiders I've seen this year are of the same variety, making me suspect that a nest hatched somewhere nearby and many of them infested my house. One more reason I'm glad I have a cat - spider removal. Move over, Garrett, Pumpkin's the new spidey-catcher in town!