Do Pets Understand Us?

“Sit!” Booker stands. I try again. “Sit!” He lays down and looks at me with hopeful eyes. I have to rough up his fur and tell him he’s a good boy for trying. To do otherwise breaks my heart.

The other day I watched a pair of ducks swim in a pool of snowmelt. “Do you think they know this is a temporary body of water?” I asked my husband. “Can they tell it’s just a momentary, wet, respite on their journey as opposed to the actual pond across the road?” He looked at me the way he does when he’s sure I have mental deficiencies. “You give animals way too much credit,” he said. I thought about that as we walked along, but in the end could not agree with him.

Let me give a prime example. On Sunday night I asked our cat, Pudgy, if she’d seen any mice lately. There’s been a dry spell in the hunting department. Pudgy looked at me for a moment as if considering, and then walked away. The next morning I again asked her if she’d seen any mice. She looked at me with a far off sorta gaze, but I felt like we understood each other.

That night, prior to going to bed, I walked around the house turning off lights and other electrical devices. Pudgy walked up to me and with a “Ptttuwee” thud, dropped a mouse at my feet. If she could have said, “THERE! There’s your @#$%^ mouse! Happy now?” I think she would have. I was startled by her gift. So startled, in fact, I froze as the small grey mouse took off with not one, but two, cats in pursuit. Giese, kitten that she is, wasn’t sure what to do, but hey it was running so…

As of today that poor mouse is still being chased. Both cats have made a mission of finding it, tormenting it, and bringing it to my attention as often as possible. When I told the story to my husband as an example of Pudgy understanding me, I got an eye roll. He hasn’t seen the mouse, so it’s just a figment of my imagination once again.

Do pets understand what we say? Ask the !@#$% mouse. Realizing maybe, just maybe, I should be careful in my conversations with my pets? The best part of my day.