(no subject)

Maine Coon cats are known for their smarts. Cleo and Yeti both have smarts, but different kinds: Cleo has a practical, problem-solving intelligence, while Yeti invents games.

Thus far, Yeti has invented rug surfing (where he races down the length of the house and pounces on a rug that’s sitting on the hardwood floor, causing it to slide along the floor with his momentum and eventually block the door when I come home at night), ice hockey (where he bats ice cubes around), and hide-and-seek (where he notices that I’m coming to collect the kittens and take them to the bedroom for the night and zooms away from me, lurks someplace, then zooms again when I find him, and repeats until he decides he wants to let me catch him).

Cleo has observed the hide-and-seek game, and has come up with her own version: she notices that I’m herding kittens to bed and lurks under the dining table (one of Yeti’s preferred hiding spots during hide-and-seek), then as soon as I’m getting under the table to pick her up, she zooms over to the cat tree and scratches on it, a behavior that she well knows is frequently rewarded with treats. She’s quite the little mercenary.