But today, a wonder occurred--I was in my room, and heard the familiar heaving sounds. Anxious to prevent another carpet stain, I looked to see where Tripod was--she was in her litterbox in the bathroom! She'd heaved in the box, though some had been caught by the overhanging portion of the box liner. But there was none on the floor--all in the box and liner! I cleaned up the portion in the liner, and scooped litter over what was in the box. I told Tripod she was a "funny girl".

So, what do you all think? Did Tripod finally figure out that if she's gonna ralph, she'd better be in the box, or it was a coincidence? As long as I've had her, I've seen her figure things out by herself with some things taking longer than others. I wish I'd had a video camera from the time I got her and recorded all her moments--that would be quite a tape!

Recently I got her some treats, and Tripod has this thing of choosing which packet of treats she wants first. I put the pouches of treats down in front of her, and ask her which one she wants, while tapping each packet lightly with my finger. She sniffs the packets, and facemarks the one she wants. I tried getting pictures of her doing this, but I couldn't get them to up;oad from my camera. In order to save the battery, I had to remove it from my camera and thus lost the pictures.

Hopefully, I can get another opportunity to not only get a picture of her choosing her treats, but maybe even a mini movie of her washing her face "one-handed".

Some cats are more special than others.

At our house my 2 1/2 year old Marshmallow has finally learned how to climb to the top of the 8' cat tree by herself.  The other day she was meowing for my attention, then I found her very proudly sitting on the top of the cat tree purring.  Due to an early kitten injury to her left rear leg (at the hand of the original owner) she has had a very hard time jumping and climbing.  Gave her "good girl" praise and ear and tummy scratches for this achievement.

When we had a momma cat she had a bout of puking and she did actually do it in the litterbox.  It was disturbing at first because I didn't see or hear her do it, i just saw the stuff in the box and was alarmed that actual kibble was coming through without being digested I got a clue in a minute, of course, but I thought it was very kind of her to do it in the box.

A bit of caution for others: - you must never allow anything associated with the litter box to be a negative experience or you may cause problems associated with the box - like not using it. What Tripod's mom did worked - just placing the cat in the box - but a cat should never be trapped in the box or scolded and then put in the box or anything else that might be offensive to kitty.

 
So many cats...
Isn't it great?

But, as Evendozen said, the litterbox must never be used as a disciple tool, otherwise the cat may very well associate it with a negative experience, because this could cause the cat to stop using it.  The catbox is not a discipline tool.

On a lighter note, my ex-husband had a rather weak stomach, and Nannette, Hogni and Zorro seemed to know it, because it seemed as if they deliberately chose to retch directly in front of him. I don't know how many times I heard "You'd better get in here and clean up this mess before there's two messes in here!" 

^{_{Cyn and Jake}}

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