• chaogomu@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      When I was a kid, I had a 90% success rate for getting my cat to come to me and hop up onto my lap.

      Now, it would only work if my cat was in the same room, but it did work. Most of the time.

      • flicker@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        As my (comes 100% of the time when called) cat gets older, I suspect the amount of energy he’s willing to expend when I call will change his willingness to do so, and I’m prepared for and even welcoming of that day.

        “I would like to pet you” does not necessarily override his comfort once he’s old enough that coming running might make his bones ache or interrupt a particularly nice nap.

        I do have a little song I sing when he’s “missing” and I’m worried, which I trained him to come to (with wet food) when he was a teensy kitty and I would worry he had gotten lost in my home or wedged under furniture. I do it every once in a while as an “emergency” song, and I give him all the treats and affection and play fetch when he answers that one.

        For your entertainment reader, the lyrics, which are nonsense (first thought up in a panic):

        “I wish I had my kitty man,
        So I could pet my kitty man!
        And if I had a kitty man,
        Then I would pet that kitty man!”

        He usually arrives during the beginning of the third line.

        This was also helpful the one time I accidentally shut him in a closet. I guess he got shut in and just decided that was a cue for a nap, but once I started singing he started howling and pawing loudly at the door.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      50% percent of the secret to calling a cat is calling them when they want to come.

      “I’d like to see a sunset… Do me a favor, your majesty… Command the sun to set…”

      “If I commanded a general to fly from one flower to the next like a butterfly, or to write a tragedy, or to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not carry out my command, which of us would be in the wrong, the general or me?”

      “You would be,” said the little prince, quite firmly.

      “Exactly. One must command from each what each can perform,” the king went on. “Authority is based first of all upon reason. If you command your subjects to jump in the ocean, there will be a revolution. I am entitled to command obedience because my orders are reasonable.”

      “Then my sunset?” insisted the little prince, who never let go of a question once he had asked it.

      “You shall have your sunset. I shall command it. But I shall wait, according to my science of government, until conditions are favorable.”

      • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        My cat comes 40% of the time I call him, the other 60% he hears me and is all: nahhhh, not feeling it pops…

    • coffeewithalex@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I had a cat which responded vocally with “mrrr” when hearing his name. Saying the name repeatedly had an 80% chance of summoning my cat, and a 20% chance that he would come running and jumping up into my hug. I loved that cat so much. Smart loving bastard who liked to also chew on my wife’s foot on her way to the bathroom at night, and lovingly hump his towel when he was bored.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        We had a cat that if you said “what’s up CatName” she would do a little “what’s up” head nod and go “mrow!”.

    • beansbeansbeans@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When my husband and I had two cats both would refuse to come when called, but one would always come running when we called the other. Ya know, because, “Why are you calling the other cat? Hmm? Giving him something tastier than you gave me?”

    • Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I had two cats and both knew several words pretty well, like their names and “food”. There is no beast that comes at you faster than a cat when it hears a promise of food.

    • spudwart@spudwart.com
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      1 year ago

      Yeah no.

      If the order was

      1. Call the cat
      2. Cat doesn’t come
      3. Shake favorite cat treat bag
      4. cat comes

      The post would’ve been believable.