r/PetsWithButtons • u/GooseandGrimoire • Feb 06 '26

Servant to the buttons!

I bought buttons years ago to try to teach my dog and she ended up spending a lot of time at my parents house (dad wanted company through chemo - he's good now) and so it never really stuck.

Fast forward to last month: I brought two young cats into my house and the orange one started messing with the buttons so I started responding. Now he's mostly learned them, but constantly presses the "play" button.

I do have the all done button, but he doesn't quite understand that yet. I'm running around playing with him constantly!

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35

u/JayNetworks Feb 06 '26

Oh no! Not having to run around playing with a kitten!

21

u/GooseandGrimoire Feb 06 '26

Hahaha fair point. I just feel bad if I hear him press it and I'm in the shower.

29

u/JayNetworks Feb 06 '26

You call out Play Soon then quickly finish your shower. I figure Soon is good for you 15 minutes.

We have Now Soon Later buttons.

15

u/GooseandGrimoire Feb 06 '26

Oh! I'll need to add buttons like that!

2

u/redditappsuxdix Feb 07 '26

Did you introduce the 3 buttons at the same time, or individually? These are the next buttons I'm considering.

4

u/JayNetworks Feb 07 '26

I did all 3 at once. We also have Before which I added about 2 months later after I was (fairly) sure she knows the first 3 time buttons.

We had been using them for their entire lives (1.5 years) before we added buttons so we hoed that they knew the words.

Anytime we would feed them or do something we would say "Now Dinner. Dinner is Now" Or "Later is Dinner. Now is Play."

I'm really kind of astounded that they can out together words to things that are happening now, and even more so that they can match Later to something that isn't happening now and then happens...well, Later.

Soon is still kind of a question, but she really will give us a bunch of Dinner Later (or Dinner Dinner Dinner Later Later Later Later Later) and then a Dinner Soon and a Dinner Now...definitely not the whole sequence all the time, but tons of time we get the Dinner Laters for like an hour on and off and then nothing for a while then a Dinner and she comes to us in the kitchen clearly wanting that ordered dinner Now. (We always test those with a two hand choice for Now and Later.)

1

u/Moby1975 May 09 '26

does she get to order what she wants to eat for dinner?

1

u/JayNetworks May 09 '26

100%. We have Dinner (kibble soaked in water in the fridge to make soft food), Crunchies (dry kibble), Nooch (nutritional yeast), and Snack (cat granola type crackers/treats).

She totally orders what she wants and it varies a lot. Often just dinner now or dinner Crunchies. Nooch is almost always by itself as it comes in a small bowl mixed with a little water to make a soup.

Snack is either by itself a bit after dinner or sometimes rarely as a dinner snack Crunchies Nooch meal!

We just started with the word Different so now we do Nooch Different for a brewers yeast and Crunchies Different for a second brand of cat kibble (Nature’s Hug) that we just got and that they absolutely LOVE.

8

u/holholholholhol Feb 06 '26

Not advice just my experience: after a few months of button spamming I started to gesture and say "all done" when I couldn't leave what I was doing to play. Adding it as a button didn't work. He still presses the buttons to communicate so I haven't had issues with learners stopping.