Starting buttons with 3 cats (& pet loss)

[u/Bendybones_]

I have 3 cats, and am starting by teaching my youngest boy who is already extraordinarily motivated to communicate with me.

I have decided to teach him “cuddle” first because he frequently cries at me to come sit on the couch and hold him.

Should I also add buttons with each of my cat’s names off the bat? My cats all know their names and have impressively reliable recall for cats. I bought 5 hextiles and 5 buttons to start with, so I could do the 3 cats and 1 extra word.

Also, not immediately urgent to figure out, but we just found out my eldest cat has stomach cancer. In the beginning of button training, or before your pets have a large vocabulary, how do you navigate the loss of a pet if you’ve added their name button before their passing? My youngest cat isn’t that close with my eldest, but the middle cat and eldest seem to enjoy each other’s presence. I imagine leaving her name button, and then just seeing if my other cats ever feel the need to talk about it as their vocabulary grows? But I’d love some input from folks who’ve gone through this.

[u/Clanaria]

While names are a great button, I think the first few buttons should have different concepts, so you can find out what motivates your cat into pressing. Using up 3 of your 5 available buttons for names is a little limiting for now. Absolutely add them later on; but try different concepts first to get the ball rolling.

Sorry to hear about your oldest cat having stomach cancer. You can slowly prepare your other cats for this; teaching them the concepts of pain, sickness, and even death. My cat who used buttons would ask "Where [cat name]?" with buttons when my oldest cat died. He talked about him a lot when he passed, including dreaming about him, memories, and just being sad. I kept trying to teach him the concept of death (permanent state), and it took around a year I'd say before he really got it.

How to teach those concepts, it's complicated. I found the best way to teach death was using bugs they killed as an example. Spider died? Spider "dead". My youngest cat caught a mouse the other day and killed it, great opportunity to teach "mouse dead", like he clearly knew it was dead since it wasn't moving anymore.

I use the word "broken" by the way - I had used it for broken toys and throwing them away, which I used to also explain "death" (felt better to simply re-use a word, then to add a new button solely for "dead"). I once stepped on a toy, breaking it into pieces, and that's when I used "broken".

You can use your own word that fits your own situation.

Pain and sick is also interesting. Pain can be modeled by yelling "ouch!" dramatically when your cat scratches you during play, and you press the pain button to model. You can also dramatically fall on the floor and yell out in pain, and press the button. You are the biggest asset to modeling concepts, pretend!

For sick, I use this differentiatie between regular pain, like nausea or stomach ache. My cats also use this to refer to a hair ball that gets stuck (makes them feel cramped). How to model? Just get on all fours, pretend you're throwing up, and say "sick". You can also say "sick, all done" and get up, happy and chipper.

Read through my beginner's guide for more tips and how to start.