Educating Roberto

Tonight, I am going to begin an experiment. I am crying to try and teach a cat a new trick. The trick is to not EAT HOLES IN MY CLOTHING. After consulting with some friends, I have a method in mind. The tool? Bitter apple. The delivery system? His favorite sweatshirt.

Now when I say his favorite sweatshirt, I mean that it used to be mine, and then he bit a hole into it and I decided it was no longer worth wearing with a hole in it and gave it to him. Then, he preceded to make it into a likeness of Charlie Brown’s costume for Halloween and eat scores of holes. There are no fewer than 20 holes in this sweatshirt. It is also matted with a 2nd layer of cat hair. Yum.

And so, tonight, I’m going to try and take back the night. I’m putting some bitter apple on the sweatshirt in hopes that Roberto will take a bite, then make the Mr. Yuck face or whatever face cats make when they taste something they don’t like.

Now, here’s the tricky part. I’m fairly certain ‘Bert will stop eating holes in his fave sweatshirt. But will he be able to utilize the transitive property of logic? Basically what I want him to do is use inductive logic. Which is to say:

My blanky eat shirt is a piece of clothing
My blanky eat shirt tastes like crap right now
All clothing tastes like crap now

Hopefully, ‘Bert won’t realize all it takes is trying another piece of clothing and realizing that it doesn’t taste like crap, and he makes that into his new blanky eat shirt.

He’s a cat. How smart are cats really? I intend to find out….