So last night I began the teaching of young Roberto Shelkey. I sprayed the blanky eat shirt with the cursed bitter apple. Have you ever smelled/tasted/touched this stuff? It’s pretty vile. It is sticky too. I wonder if it’s supposed to trap the animal when they have done something wrong, so you can effectively Venus fly trap your couch or favorite sweater and catch them in the act. It seems to me you’d ruin your couch or sweater if you did this though. Maybe it washes off. Who knows?
After I sprayed, Roberto did what cats do. He was curious. So he went over and smelled and generally inspected his blanky eat shirt. There was no yuck face as I was hoping. Instead, he deemed the blanky eat shirt not worthy of taking a chunk out of right then. And he went back to rolling around on the bed. Chasing himself. I don’t think cats really chase their tails but they definitely seem to make up imaginary friends and enemies.
The next step in this plan is to bitter apple something that would normally be irresistible. I remarked to Flynn last night that it’s hard to tell if he puts a new hole in the blanky eat shirt b/c there’s already like 30 holes in it. So I’m thinking of sacrificing a sock. This way if it works but the gunk is too pesky to get off the sock, no big deal. But also if Bert is unaffected and chomps on the sock, then that’s no great loss either.
The label on the back of the gunk says to say, “No chewing!” right after the animal inspects it. I did this but I had the feeling it didn’t mean much to Bert. It also says you can use it on the animal himself if you do catch him in the act. This seems cruel. Plus I’ve never caught him in the act. I’ve just seen him throwing up the little bits of clothing. He’s kind of awesome in his way b/c right after he does this, he pretends its the most normal thing in the world.
The lesson continues…
Categories
Submit a Comment