Wave Fronts

Howerrow

In 1991 my wife and I passed Dillon, Colorado on I70 on the last leg of a car-camping vacation. A few months later we picked a male kitten from a litter on the basis of it climbing up and into a filled watering can and having a quick dip. Dillon is now 15 and seems to have responded to the challenge of the young (and I just typed "jung" and had to fix it) upstart male cats nearing their third birthday: Magic and Moon Pie.

I accidently taught Dillon to say a passable approximation of "hello." My wife and daughter have both started to notice it (and reinforce Dillon) and if the rate gets up much higher I should consider teaching Dillon a discriminable stimulus to use as a prompt. Maybe an innocuous sound, like a certain kind of cough. But that Dillon can say "Howerrow" is a fun start.

My wife was skeptical until Dillon came to my side of the bed as we were reading one night and meyowed several times with no reaction from us. Then he said "howerrow" and I said "Hello Dillon! Come up and let me pet you" while patting the bed invitingly. He jumped up instantly and got a lot of cuddles. At about this time my wife and I both realized what had happened and how Dillon is training me to reward him for saying hello. My reward is of course hearing human language coming out of a cat's mouth. But this was completely accidently until a couple weeks ago when we became conscious of it and the rate seemed to go up. We'll see where this goes. NO, it will not go to Letterman, as Dillon isn't stupid!

Posted at 11:50PM Jul 14, 2006 by microwaves in Learning  |  Comments[0]