Kitten has an Intellectual Disability

Oh hey... I guess I should start Kitten blogging again.


Recently, a topic has been weighing more and more on my mind: Kitten's intellectual abilities.

While Kitten is a cat and cats have been found to have a slightly diminished intelectual capacity as compared to people, I suspect that Kitten might be behind even compared to other cats. Some shortcomings I can write-off as physical inadequacies that are the inevitable consequence of being so furry and flat-faced, such as his inability to stop before hitting a wall (a paw problem) and his frequently laboured breathing; others, I cannot.

Here are just a few examples:
The time Kitten ran into a door so hard that he broke it...
The time Kitten almost died choking on his own neck hair...
The time Kitten literally broke our window with his face because he kept running into it (I don't think I ever blogged about this one.)

Here a a few other telling examples that have led to my diagnosis:

(1) Kitten pretty much spends his days finding the most obscure spots and lying in them in the most uncomfortable ways.

(2) Here, it looks like Kitten is just having a nice little stretch...

Wrong. 

He is stuck to the chair, but instead of trying to detach himself, he just pretends nothing is wrong. 

This happens daily.

 (3) When you cover Kitten with a blanket, he will not try to escape or even move in anyway. Instead, "he accepts that this has become his life" (Boyfriend).

I am becoming more an more convinced that Kitten might be disabled. This may be part of the reason why our second attempt at toilet training him has failed miserably. But I will tell you more about that later.

Sorry again for being a lazy blogger!

Kitten Hates Words

Sometimes, Boyfriend and I like to put on some music, have a glass of wine... and play Scrabble.

Boyfriend isn't the best to play Scrabble with -- he is all about the tiny words that fit in with other words,  getting lots of bang for their buck. This strategy completely closes off the board and makes it very difficult for other plays to put words down. Boyfriend will also get crabby if he starts to lose and will sit, sometimes for 20 minutes, trying to find the perfect word to play.

You know who else isn't the best to play Scrabble with? Kitten.

Kitten is illiterate and it really seems to irk him when the literate members of the house decided to play games that involve words.

The last time Boyfriend and I played Scrabble, Kitten decided to join us on the table. At first he sat beside the board, but slowly -- ever so slowly -- he inched his way over, and on to, to the board.

Until this happened.

Action Shot

Kitten had had enough of our book learnin' and wiped off the entire top of the board. Luckily I had taken so many pictures prior to this moment, that we were able to reconstruct everything. From then on, Kitten was scolded any time he got too close.

He wasn't too happy about it.

POTTY TRAINING UPDATE: Boyfriend and I took a trip to Ottawa last weekend, which meant that the potty training had to be put on hold. Since the training litter needs to be cleaned constantly, we had to put down an actual litter box for the time we were gone. It took me a few days to get the training one set back up after we returned, so basically there is nothing new to say about the potty training, except I am expecting some regression in the days to come.