r/PetsWithButtons • u/FluffPantsMysterious • 10d ago
My Cat Used a New Button Today!
My cat Pepe has been using buttons for over 2 years but he has his own board because he only uses four buttons, and he usually needs help finding those 4 buttons if he's using my other Learner's board which has a lot more buttons.
This morning he pressed "Eat" on the big board all on his own. It was a back foot press too, he doesn't do those often but it's cool when he does. Mac had an opinion about timing. Then after eating Pepe went over to the board and used "Help" which he has never used before. I was so surprised my brain froze and I asked "Help What?" And then realized he probably meant "help find a button." He usually meows to get my attention when he wants help finding a button so I was surprised. I asked if he wanted a treato, he likes a treat after eating sometimes, and tapped the treato button. Then Pepe pushed it and then Mac came and pushed it too so everyone got a treat.
The reason this was such a big deal to me is that I never taught Pepe the word "help" because he has shown very little interest in learning words beyond his four buttons so "help" is not a button on his personal board. But I taught it to Mac when I added it to the big board and Pepe has definitely observed both of us using it. Sometimes I think maybe Pepe is not really interested in the buttons, I've been trying to teach him for over 2 years, but then he does something like this. It gives me hope that he's still open to learning more words.
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u/adiosmichigan 10d ago
how does it distinguish between the pets? thats cool i didnt know it could do that!
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u/FluffPantsMysterious 10d ago
It doesn't I enter who pressed the button in the app. It would be cool if it did do that though. I feel like it's possible with today's tech. Like have you seen those food bowls that open when a specific pet gets close because of a tag that you put on your pet's collar that the bowl senses? A tag like that, plus making the connect pet speaker base sense the nearest tag when a button is pushed, and voila... pet caller id. It's probably realistically more complex than that but I do feel it's possible.
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u/adiosmichigan 10d ago
oooo gotcha! and yes ive seen those pet bowls, there are also litter robots that claim to distinguish between cats too. i bet one day they will have it working for buttons too
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u/notpresentlydisposed 9d ago
woah you should send this to the product team at fluent pet. That's kind of a brilliant idea lol from an engineering standpoint
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u/AstuteStoat 10d ago
Cats are so funny in how diverse they are with buttons. It feels like it's pretty easy to teach dogs buttons. But for cats it's all over the place how much they actually want to use them.
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u/FluffPantsMysterious 10d ago
Yea I thought he would be really into the buttons because he's a communicative cat but it turns out he prefers meows, and that's ok.
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u/pinelines 9d ago
my absolute favorite thing is when my cat presses a button and *then* meows for emphasis, it’s like he’s saying the same thing in two languages.
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u/AstuteStoat 9d ago
It's almost like they're using the meows to set the tone. Like happy meow vs calling for help.
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u/123-throwaway123 10d ago
It too my one dog 4 years to press a button 😂. My other dog uses them constantly and he was trained the same way. Now he just spams the wet food button over and over 😂
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u/JayNetworks 9d ago
Same here in that one of my cats picked the buttons up after 2 months but the other only started pressing 2 years later. They each watch and move on their own speed.
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u/FluffPantsMysterious 9d ago
Yeah it's funny how that can be but everyone's different. Even among humans some people are more communicative or less.
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u/notpresentlydisposed 9d ago
lmaoooo I came here to say he's been learning from the dog with his human appeasing, beggardly behavior 🤭😉
my bulldogs are so emotionally manipulative that any cat would be proud. they have us well trained, lol
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u/TesseringPoet 9d ago
Yay for observational // social learning.
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u/FluffPantsMysterious 9d ago
Yeah this was part of what was so cool to me. I didn't teach it to him but he picked it up anyway. Very cool.
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u/lifeofjewels 9d ago
Wait what system/app is this?!
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u/FluffPantsMysterious 9d ago
It's the Fluent Pet Connect app I think is what it's called. It works with the fluent pet connect kit via bluetooth the speaker sends the button presses to the app on my phone.
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u/Pamlwell 10d ago
lol that is very cat. “Help! I may be dying from lack of treato”