This occurred a month or more ago: I was sitting there on couch watching tv, and suddenly from my left I heard a voice go 'YOU HAVE NO NEW MESSAGES!' Kinda startled, I looked over and saw kitty sitting on the floor near my cellphone with her paw on the phone. Somehow she'd managed to 'dial' the phone's voicemail- and it's not speed-dial or anything like that. Previously, on multiple occasions she'd pushed random numbers, which led to strings of the numbers ending up in my contacts list. I suppose she likes playing with the phone because it lights up when numbers are pushed, but I've never heard of a cat doing that before. Has she transformed from a cat that's nearly 11 yrs old into a teenage girl?
My youngest cat will watch us carefully, and it seems clear she's trying to figure out how things work, and particularly anything that might make something move or cause a light to shine somewhere. I have an external speaker for my computer that is a dancing cat. When I play a song on the computer, the sound comes from the cat and the cat dances. After glaring at that dancing cat for hours, Ella determined that the real enemy was my remote. The only thing I can think of is that she has seen me shut Netflix off with the remote just before playing the song that resulted in the dancing cat. So now, when the cat is dancing, she attacks my remote. When I play a DVD, the disk reflects onto the ceiling, resulting in a light that drives Ella nuts, so I use the DVD as a sort of a laser light toy for a few moments since she gets all revved up. Well, I have found that the DVDs that I get from Netflix are more likely to play if I clean them before inserting them. So now, Ella related my getting the spray cleaner and cloth out with the light shining on the ceiling, and she gets into place to chase the light. Of course, if I am cleaning my glasses or my monitor instead, there is no light and that confuses her.
My own cats, brother and sister, lived during the pre-PC age, but exhibited many perceptive abilities allowing them to manipulate circumstances. One was the male's ability to sense the difference between risky or dangerous and playful behavior. In the garage, I watched in amazement as he carefully "bopped" a big scorpion so fast, the intruder had no chance of responding effectively. He hit it with one big paw over and over, while the offender flailed it's tail sting about uselessly. Finally, the fun over, he reached cautiously, paw extended under the scorpion as it no longere moved, and turned it over on it's back, as though it were a delicacy being fried! Satisfied, he then walked away. This same cat played with a tiny baby duck which showed up swimming in our pool one morning, no evidence of it's mama. I plucked the ducky out of the water, it couldn't climb out on it's own, placed it on the patio, and both cats proceeded to look closely, sniff, walk circles around it, and finally lay down with it standing between them! No signn of fear or malice. I loved those two cats as much as I have loved anything else in this long life, and choke up even now thinking of, and reiterating their antics. My wife and I got them as 2 month olds, very small, in February, 1974, while we were living in Vegas, having moved into our new home the previous Fall. The ducky they questioned There's "Oxie" tethered to the 4X4 Ranchero I built in Canon City, Colorado, lived there a year, one of the darkest times of my life following my divorce. My hobby activities as well as my Mother'presence, and the cats, helped me get through it, with liberal helpings of vodka, which my Mother denounced as "pi$$". She meant only good for her son, I knew. The house there, and the truck before final paint. Little K.C. after her getting "fixed". Brave little cat, too young yet to be fixed, but came through it fine. Roaming dogs ended her life about 13 years later. I never found her carcass.... I'm outta here, it hurts so
Lovely pictures Frank, you could adopt another ................. I know how sad you feel, but maybe giving a home to another will help @Frank Sanoica