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MARTHA SEZ: ‘It isn’t just dogs who have learned the art of human-training’

January in the Adirondacks. It’s cold outside. A lot of humans I know would prefer to be inside the house where it’s warm, but their dogs? Not so much.

A friend described an imaginary conversation between himself and his dog that went something like this:

Dog: Let’s go for a walk.

Man: I’m reading. Do you have to go out?

Dog: Define ‘have to.’

Man: Well then, why do you want to go out?

Dog: To smell things.

Man: I can’t smell things the way you can.

Dog: Oh, so because you can’t, I don’t get to either?

Man: OK, OK, I’ll get the leash.

Dog: Good boy.

After thousands of years of domestication, we are seeing evidence everywhere that humans are evolving to fill the needs of pets.

It isn’t just dogs who have learned the art of human-training. Lorna, who lives in Wadhams, cares for several goats who have become adept human whisperers.

Last summer there was only one goat, a lamancha, who came with a cat because goats pine away without company. While the goat and the cat liked each other pretty well, the goat felt that the cat just wasn’t enough. Cats are finicky, and can be very ho-hum about their personal relationships. Now, if there is one thing a goat isn’t, it’s finicky. Furthermore, a goat wants a dependable companion to hang with. At night the goat cried and cried when Lorna went into the house. So she brought in two miniature goats, and now the three goats and the cat happily frolic around the farm.

These frigid nights, the goats and the cat cuddle up together for warmth in a barn stall piled deep with straw.

Mornings, Lorna lugs out buckets of warm tap water from the house, the goat equivalent of coffee or tea for breakfast. The other day, the goats checked out the water buckets and then stood back and stared at her, as if to say “What’s this?”

“The water wasn’t as hot as usual,” Lorna admitted. “I had to take the buckets back to the house and refill them and then haul them back out to the barn.”

Mind you, Lorna is petite, not some big strapping farm hand.

Wait, I told you that goats aren’t finicky. They probably learned it from the cat.

On a whim, I once bought a highly processed packaged treat for my cat Jupiter. Now it’s the only food he wants. Fancy Feast? Chicken? Ground round? Sardines? Forget it. He craves this one treat, and follows me around the house yowling for it.

I shouldn’t buy it. Right? I tried to take a stand, but I wasn’t up to the challenge. Maybe if I stick to giving Jupiter the treat only when I come home from work…

The British are the experts on this kind of thing. The BBC has made a documentary called “The Secret Life of the Cat” in which cats in an English village were monitored for a week in order to find out where they went and “what they got up to” when they “went out the cat flap.” It is well worth watching, but difficult to find. Go to www.dailymotion.com/video/x10w49m to see it for yourself.

Ginger, Sooty, Coco, Rosie, Hermie, Phoebe, Deebee, Chip, Orlando and Kato were fitted with scaled-down versions of the kinds of GPS device and camera zoologists use in Africa to monitor the activities of lions and wild dogs. Data was collected and explained by eminent British “cat scientists.” Little scribbly maps of each cat’s meanderings, in its own distinctive color, were shown to the enthralled cat owners.

There were some surprises: less hunting than expected, and several instances of cats going through the cat flap of another cat’s house and eating its food. A lost cat was detected on surveillance camera secretly living in someone else’s house at night, and it was returned to its rightful home several miles away. One cat kept to its own garden, while another traveled several miles a night, and a third was “drawn to a neighboring wood.” While there was considerable overlap of habitual travel routes, the cats avoided confrontations by “time sharing.” Coco for example would explore the hedgerows from 10 p.m. to midnight, and then Chip would take over from 1 until 7 a.m.

The cat scientists believe that domestic cats are still partially wild, but are gradually evolving to become more “what their human owners want.” I wouldn’t be so sure.

Have a good week.

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