field-notes
Apr 11 · 6 min read
When a small dog decides she's a big dog
Biscuit insists on guarding the front door. Here's what the behaviorists say about the gap between size and self-image.
Read
Field notes
Notes from a cockatiel who hates Mondays
Cricket the cockatiel started clocking the calendar. What that taught us about routine, ritual, and pet boredom.
JA
Jules Andrade
5 min read
Cricket is a six-year-old cockatiel who lives with our colleague Jules in a flat in Lisbon. Sometime last winter, Cricket started getting noticeably grouchy on Monday mornings — biting the cage bars, refusing the millet that was usually a sure thing.
It took Jules a few weeks to notice the pattern. The flat was quietest on weekends; Mondays brought back the morning-rush noise of two humans getting ready and leaving. The bird was, in his way, complaining about the regime change.
The fix turned out to be embarrassingly simple. A radio, set to a low-volume talk station, on a smart plug, scheduled for both weekend mornings. The transition stopped being a transition. Cricket's Monday mood normalised within a fortnight.
We mention it because pet boredom is rarely loud. It looks like a dog chewing the wrong thing, a cat over-grooming, a bird picking at its own feathers. The fix is rarely a new toy — usually it's a small adjustment to the rhythm of the room.
Written by
JA
Jules Andrade
Contributor
