We put our red-eared slider turtle Midori into isolation, er, hibernation, for the winter the other day, and Choco the cat went into mourning.
Choco is relatively new to the family, as we adopted her from the SPCA in August, while Dori has been with us for at least eight years. Their relationship began with turtle dominance, and gradually developed into cat attempts at play. Needless to say, this doesn't work very well, however Dori held her own with occasional adult intervention.
Dori was getting increasingly sluggish as the days shortened and the temperature dropped, so we put her into a deep tank that we placed in the tub in the spare upstairs bathroom to sleep for a couple of months.
Well... the next morning Choco went weird. She sniffed Dori's sleeping basket in the living room. No Dori. She went to the corner where Dori's tank and steps usually are in the living room. No tank, no steps. To our amazement, rather than relishing her sole presence as, uh, top dog, Choco cried.
Huh?
We let it go for a day, but Choco seemed genuinely distressed, so we finally brought her into the dark bathroom, and let her view Dori. Choco was amazed. She edged out onto the tank cover, she sniffed the water, she hunched down and observed the semi-somnolent Dori, and was rewarded with some sluggish movement.
We gathered Choco up, shut the door, and the meowker has been fine since.
So what do we know? What does Choco know?
What's going on in those little brains?
Posted by Paul at December 23, 2005 11:23 PM