Reflection: Interspecies Relationships
Leonard's Progress
By Norah Eldredge (05/04/10 08:48:02)
Related animal: Cat

I want to discuss two things for Leonard.

First is his jaw or mouth area that Lisa and I both experienced when communicating with him when Barbara was visiting our class. Lisa and I both chose Leonard, and both experienced the same odd warm/tender/swollen feeling in the jaw that the cat might also be experiencing. As Lisa said, it wasn't painful or bad, it was simply a sensation that brought our attention to his jaw.

I did a few experiments with this to see if I could do something for him based on this information and experience. I massaged his jaws, looking for a response and for any indication of a possible tooth ache or mouth pain. Nothing seemed to show up, but he purred a lot a really seemed to enjoy the feeling. After about two minutes of massaging his jaw, he turned and bit then held my hand in his jaw. This is a play thing that he does often; with my hand, my arm, my ankles, so I was not surprised when he did it. However, I did have a new perspective on it. Perhaps the sensation Lisa and I both felt was his desire to chew things, to gnaw or play with things he could put in his mouth (ie, my limbs).

After this thought, I went and got him a squishy toy I thought he could chew on. He was interested in it for a little while and then decided that he like my arms and hands better!


The other topic is our progress on his drawings. We've been doing a few drawings a week, and they are coming along very well! He usually chooses edges to rest on, and I am working on getting him to move more toward the middle of the page at least once so one can see his whole shape on the paper.



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Comment by LisaJ (05/19/10 16:22:23):
Scan the drawings and upload them please!