We adopted Laika Mae from the Dane Co. Humane Society about 4 years ago. She was shy for about two weeks and then she took over the house. She proceeded to de-masculate my other cat and is now the ruler of our roost. She is quite the problem solver. She is on a measured diet to control her waist line per vet orders. Well, she decided to take "measures" into her own paws one day as I found her in the kitchen cabinet snuggled in next to her food container. She taught herself how to open the kitchen cabinet door and hopped in next to her food. Luckily she doesn't have thumbs and can't open the container. She then proceeded to teach herself how to open the kitchen drawers to get to the counter top where the other cat's food dish is left as he's rather thin and likes to graze all day. She taught herself this while we were on vacation and had fun messing with the two ladies cat sitting who couldn't understand how the drawers were getting opened up. Laika then figured out how to open the patio screen door so she could get out on the patio and sleep in the sun. We put a stick in the door to stop her, but she got past that in a week's time. We then had a child gate up instead and low and behold, in another week, we found her asleep on the patio and the screen door wide open. Unfortunately, our other cat likes to explore and he was found three houses down with his butt sticking out of our neighbor's garage. Since Laika is so food motivated, I decided to see if I could train her to do some tricks, and since I have no kids.... I have some spare time. I just used her food kibbles as treats when she'd do a trick I wanted. Sometimes I'd have to show her the trick, but she's a pro now. We have her routine down pat and have even worked in some of her tricks while standing on a little box. She's quite the alarm clock also. If there's not food in her dish at 6am, she will find you in bed and pat you in the face until you get up. She's been known to work around pillows on the head and still get you in the face and if that doesn't work, she takes her 14lb body and runs over you until she finds the bladder. YIKES! Luckily she's super cute, loves to talk to you, especially to tell you it's supper time, or that you've forgotten some food in the cup. She's a good listener, has great eye contact, and will roll over and let you pet her belly, and I wouldn't change her for the world!
P.S. She's named after the first dog shot into space. The name means to bark or howl, and she does both. She barks at us when she wants to eat, and howls when she's had a full dish, or at night when she brings a toy to bed and drops it at the foot of the bed before jumping in.
