Training & Behavior

We taught the kitten to sit because everyone on the internet says you can, and it is true, you can, if you have a chunk of chicken and no shame. The kitten, Pim, sat on the first night for a piece of thigh, and by the third she sat on the word, smug about it, tail curled, knowing she had cracked the system.

The old dog watched from his bed.

He was a lab, retired from everything, and he had never been asked to sit on command because he had always just been there, solid and slow and assumed. Now the kitten was getting chicken for a trick he had apparently been performing for free his whole life, and he took it as a personal insult. You could see the thought land. The cat is paid. I am not. This is a scam.

So we started giving him the sit too, same word, same reward, and he did it with the weary air of a man cashing a cheque he should have been given years ago. He sat, took the chicken, and went back to bed, but now he watched the kitten with new eyes, like a colleague who had discovered the pension.

The funny part was the kitten learning from him. Pim started sitting without the word, just to be in the room, because the dog did it and the dog got paid, so sitting was clearly the house currency. The two of them formed a small union of animals who sat on command and expected tribute, and the cat, who had started it, now had competition for the chicken.

Training a kitten is easy. Training an old dog is mostly about fairness he can feel. He did not need the trick. He needed to know the trick counted for him too. Prey and predator, both sitting on the kitchen floor for a bit of meat, and the insult lifted the day he realized he was in on it. The kitten still thinks she invented sitting. The dog knows better, and knows he is paid now, and that is enough.

The chicken budget grew, quietly, because two animals on the sit roster is two animals expecting payment, and the cat had no off switch once she learned the word paid. She would sit in the kitchen, in the hall, on the windowsill, anywhere a person appeared, offering the behavior like a busker with a hat. The dog watched this graft with the tired respect of a senior who had seen the scheme and chosen not to compete, then cashed his own cheque at bedtime without fuss.

We added a down and a wait, small steps, and the kitten flew through them while the lab did them slowly, the way old dogs do everything, with the air of one humoring a foolish game he had agreed to play. The insult had fully lifted. He no longer glared at the cat mid-trick, he simply waited his turn, knowing the chicken came to him too, and that was the whole point of the exercise, not the tricks but the fairness he could feel in the room.

The cat still thinks she runs the show. She sits, she gets paid, she struts. The dog knows the truth, that he was paid all along, just quietly, in ear scratches and the warm bed and the door that opened before he reached it. Training the kitten taught the old dog he was not forgotten, and taught me that a house of animals runs on the same thing any household does, everyone knowing they matter. The sit was the excuse. The chicken was the proof. The dog, as ever, knew.

The chicken budget grew because two animals on the sit roster is two animals expecting payment, and the cat has no off switch once she learns the word pays. The dog takes his cheque at bedtime without fuss, the senior who knows the scheme and chose not to compete. Training the kitten taught the old dog he was not forgotten, and taught me a house of animals runs on the same thing any home does, everyone knowing they matter. The sit was the excuse, the chicken the proof, and the dog, as ever, knew the truth before any of us said it. He was paid all along, quietly, in the warm bed and the door that opened before he reached it.

The chicken budget grew because two animals on the sit roster is two animals expecting payment, and the cat has no off switch once she learns the word pays. The dog takes his cheque at bedtime without fuss, the senior who knows the scheme and chose not to compete. Training the kitten taught the old dog he was not forgotten, and taught me a house of animals runs on the same thing any home does, everyone knowing they matter. The sit was the excuse, the chicken the proof, and the dog, as ever, knew the truth before any of us said it. He was paid all along.