{"id":542,"date":"2011-06-10T12:07:27","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T17:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/?p=542"},"modified":"2011-06-10T12:07:27","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T17:07:27","slug":"maybe-if-i-sit-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/2011\/06\/maybe-if-i-sit-on-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Maybe if I sit on it&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my (many) favorite scenes from Animals are Beautiful People features a meerkat trying desperately to figure out how to get at the good stuff on the inside of an egg.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"349\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LejGbIDfGhM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I thought of that scene this morning when I gave my cat his new treat dispensing toy, complete with 4 of his very favorite treats inside. He realized that there was something very important in the fact that he&#8217;d seen me stuff those four treats into the nasty hard thing. Very important indeed. Maybe if he yelled at it (and at me) the treats would appear before him&#8230; No dice.<\/p>\n<p>I batted it for him a couple of times, letting out one treat. He thought that was awesome. Then I walked away. He was puzzled. He knew there were more treats in there, but I&#8217;d left, so now what?<\/p>\n<p>Stealthily, wondering if he was allowed to do this on his own, he batted tentatively at the toy. Nothing. He tried licking it. Nothing. He tried sitting on it. Nothing. Maybe if he tried licking it harder&#8230; this time with some biting action? No. Hmmm&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>SWAT<\/p>\n<p>And out came a treat, much to his surprise and delight.<\/p>\n<p>When I left for work, he was carefully keeping his back to me so that I couldn&#8217;t scold him in case he was being naughty, and he was batting the toy around the kitchen wondering exactly what he&#8217;d done that last time to make the glorious treat appear.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder how many times people look at me and see instantly that I&#8217;m licking at the problem when I should be batting at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my (many) favorite scenes from Animals are Beautiful People features a meerkat trying desperately to figure out how to get at the good stuff on the inside of an egg. I thought of that scene this morning when I gave my cat his new treat dispensing toy, complete with 4 of his very &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/2011\/06\/maybe-if-i-sit-on-it.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Maybe if I sit on it&#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-with-cats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}