My kittens have both mastered an important new social skill.

It is sarcastic eating, which is discovering a tiny food scrap on the kitchen floor and spending ages eating it with evident enjoyment.

I have interpreted sarcastic eating as a broad hint that they would like a snack - this usually works ;).

Food is a very big topic for cats.

Today after several decades of cats, I have caved and now give our two a lunch snack. This consists of left over unseasoned chicken, canadian bacon, or salmon. The salmon is greatly consumed ( I just call out "tuna" which is their keyword for fish) and wherever they are during the day, they zoom in and gobble it up from their little snack dishes. We have pouched salmon Chicken of the Sea ( human food) here in US which is easy to handle and not expensive etc.

When Maya was new to us she would pick food bits out of her regular dish and carry it off. So we have a small rug for her to do that. It has become less lately which I appreciate. Weezie will use her paw to snag food bits (mostly chicken bits I cut up for her) and eat it off her paw.

Food is a huge issue.

This is a popular video my husband found the other day. he found an explanation that the man in the video is deaf, so the kitten learned the signs from him:


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I taught Maya a trick when she wants food ( or another favor).
I call it footy dooty up. She raises a paw up to reach for her treat. She seemed likely to do it sometimes so I used the phrase and asked her Footy Dooty UP and after she did that I'd give the treat. She has now generalized the action to asking for help, to open a door and to get our attention to something. But it is the only thing I've had success in teaching her!

I really love this little video of the signing kitten. ;)

That video was great MrsD - cats are pretty amazing at times.
I like cats that have their own unique personalities rather than those that are just sleeping/eating machines. (Have lived with both)

I agree. Weezie refuses to do "footy dooty up" even while watching Maya do it. Weez just gives me a dead pan look as if to say I am NOT doing THAT for my food! LOL Weez also does not like all the lovey dovey greeting Maya gives when she comes in from outside. Maya lets us know that Weez wants to come in sometimes ... and she has to run to her and in general greet Weez every time. (Weez only goes out until 4pm...we do not let Maya out and she seems to accept that still).

Cats do really have personalities. You might like SafariLive. Today Sunrise safari has Thamba which is young male cub of Thandi
which is not commonly seen in Djuma. (S. Africa).

He is gorgeous and hanging around this morning waiting for his mom to bring food.
This is the first half of the 2 part sunrise drive in S. Africa.
Thamba starts around 7 min. mark.

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He is a young cub 11 months old, and very interesting and beautiful. He has a wonderful personality too. So if you like watching cats you'd like the leopards shown on SafariLive.

I've been watching this YouTube of their live digital safari since Dec 2016. For the most part it is fascinating and I take screenshots off the drives for reference photos for my art work.

Maya comes from a farm 400miles away where we adopted her from a rescue on vacation.
Her tail movements are very different as well as some of her habits.

Our vet and I discussed this ... and he agreed with me that the gene pool for cats would be different upNorth as there is water to cross to get to where we are now. Maya is feral, and therefore much different in some ways than a domestically derived house cat. At four years now, she is still afraid of rain and wind, and especially thunderstorms.(we call these "boom booms" and she can even tell they are coming when we have to consult Weather.com)

Thanks mrsD, I really enjoyed watching the video :).