This is The Illusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, throw language a bone. Actually, you will hear some distant noises of bone chewing in this episode. It's dogs. it's not me and there are also some sounds of dog lolling against the recording equipment i swear it was a dog and not me
Because this episode is the second half of the pair about humans and companion animals communicating via buttons programmed with human language. In Lexicat Part 1, we met science fiction author Mary Robinette Cowall and her cat Elsie. and heard about how they learned to do this. And animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd discussed what animals might be getting from this process of interacting with human language. So I suggest you listen to part one before this, if you haven't already heard it.
Note, the illusionist is not affiliated in any way with any companies that sell communication systems to use with animals, and I have not been paid to feature the people and animals that do use them. I'm just interested in how and why they do it. Before we get into it, I have a bunch of things to tell you about. It's the illusionist's 10th birthday in January.
And I'm celebrating with a big live show at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver, BC on the 12th of January, 2025, with a special performance of the latest illusionist live show, Souvenirs. about friends and friendship breakups and fonts and the history of the word ass, plus special material. for and about Vancouver. I've linked to tickets at theillusionist.org slash events where you should also go for the dates and times of a special online event this month of December 2024.
I will be reading the whole of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens over at youtube.com slash illusionist show. And you're all invited. I'll be reading it aloud. You wouldn't just be watching me quietly turning pages. And this novel is a real banger. So funny, it's so sharp, and...
It is the stop hoarding your wealth and ruining lives fable for our times. Whether or not you're someone who does Christmas, we can have a lot of spooky festive fun. I'd love for you to join me and the videos will also be on the channel for viewing Not Live afterwards too. Then, for members of the Illusionverse, we will be watching the finest film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, The Muppet Christmas Carol, as well as other Winterbull-relevant literary adaptations, Carol and Die Hard.
Yeah, Die Hard is a literary adaptation. So then. Also members of the Illusionverse, if you have questions for Mary Robinette about what you hear in this episode and the first part of Lexicat, She's agreed to answer them, which is very cool of her. She's already been in the Illusionverse Discord responding to some of you. So why don't you join this charming and thoughtful community and watch films and TV with us and share photos of cookies you've made and comics you've drawn. We'll just look.
Basking in the satisfaction of helping to bankroll this independent podcast. You can do any and all of that by going to theillusionist.org slash donate. Content note, this episode contains mentions of Parkinson's disease, dementia and death. That's human and animal death. But there are no descriptions of death. On with the show.
Previously on The Illusionist, Mary Robinette Cowall and her cat Elsie communicate via human language using a system of buttons made by a company called Fluent Pet. No affiliation with this show. The button use is also recorded on camera and in a log. Mary Robinette's dog, Guppy, uses the buttons a bit too, mainly to say outside and friend. But Elsie uses currently 124 word buttons, which are arranged on hexagonal tiles in different colours.
Each button has a word written on it and is also programmed with Mary Robinette's voice saying the word. So while she was learning, while she was acquiring all these buttons, because 120 is a lot. It's a lot to keep track of just in layout. How is she recognizing them? Do you have any idea? We don't know. This is one of the things that's really fascinating. We talk about a lot.
Fluent Pet in particular, when they started out, the tiles were patterned in order to give the animals an easy way to recognize what was what. And then several people didn't like the patterns, and so they painted their tiles a solid color, and the animals continued using them with no hesitation. So then we thought, okay, well, it's spatial. It's where the button is in relation to other buttons.
But we will rearrange boards and some learners can't handle that. But you can rearrange a board. They will continue to use the buttons. I had the buttons up on the bed once because we were vacuuming and the tiles were in random sequence. And Elsie said something like, loud device concerned. And I'm like, reasonable, reasonable. But she found the buttons that she wanted. We thought it might be smell.
But I have replaced one button with a new button and she continues using it. So we don't know. And then the other thing that happens, which makes everyone go like, we have no idea. is that in the dog community, you'll get a bunch of dogs that will get together where they each have their own boards and the dogs will begin using each other's boards. Hmm. Accurately? Accurately.
All these buttons are labeled, so the obvious explanation is that the dogs and cats can read. Clearly. Clearly. That's the only possible explanation. I actually did witness this very thing happening shortly after we had this conversation because that evening, two dogs, Parker and Bastian, and their humans, Sasha and Joelle, came to visit. and Parker immediately ran over to Elsie's button board and started using it without hesitation.
So not all dogs will talk in front of everyone and not all, and cats as well, will use each other's boards. But Parker sees every new board as an expansion pack, as an opportunity to try out new buttons. So she walked in and pressed frustration. frustrated a whole bunch and once she's pressed it once she she clearly knows that that's where that word is and that's a word she has on her board so she knows that word
And then she found the outside button. So then she was pressing frustrated outside. After she pressed frustrated outside, she walked to the door in the room that was closed. She didn't know it was on the other side, but she sees a closed door and she thinks this probably leads down.
outside she's incorrect but um the idea that she's pressing these buttons and and learning where they are on a new board and also hearing words she's familiar with and then responding to them as such even though it's not her board yeah That's amazing. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen that. That's animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd. We'll be hearing more from her in a bit.
So I've got a gentle soundtrack of dogs chewing on chews, and we now have three dog friends and two new humans. My name is Joelle Andres, and this is my puppy, Bastion. And I'm Sasha Krasnow, and this is my dog Parker. How long have each of you been communicating with human language with the dogs in the ways that you do? So Parker has been using buttons to communicate for about two and a half years since she was six months old.
And Bastian has been learning since June 2020, so we're approaching his fourth year. He was two when we started. Now that he's been learning for four years, what kinds of things are you teaching him now? His newest buttons, we just gave him actually colors. We gave him yellow and blue, which are two of the colors he was learning to discern later last year.
Last year was like talking about places, stores, restaurants, and things like that. Now I want to get more into specifically describing objects. Yeah. What kinds of conversations do you have with him about restaurants? Well, it's usually us communicating that we're going to go to a restaurant with him. And then sometimes he'll opt in or out of that if he knows that.
He doesn't want to go out. The other night we were out in Nashville and we were having a conversation about going out and we asked him if he wanted to go and he hit. bed several times so we left him home that night it's very relatable yeah i mean nashville's very loud and that was quiet sound in bed were his big themes in nashville and uh parker can do jokes right
Yeah, she's definitely got a sense of humor. Her favorite button is poop, and she uses it a variety of ways, including making jokes. She has some comedic timing. If there's kind of a pause, she'll press it for a laugh and kind of look at you. Classic. I recently gave her an UGG button to try and get her to stop using poop in that way. But for example, if I'm doing something in the other room, like making some noise, hanging like a picture and she doesn't like it, she'll press poop.
to express her dissatisfaction. Or if I keep saying no, that we can't do something that she wants, she'll sometimes press poop again to say she's none too thrilled.
I find that generally the dogs I've known are quite good at indicating when they're excited to go for a walk or when they want to go outside so what kinds of things have you learned that you wouldn't have expected to notice from you know spending time with your dog and knowing that their personality like what does them communicating using english words add for you.
I think it's more of the timing of things. We were feeding Bastion on a schedule and we found that when we let him advocate for when he wanted to eat, he was asking for food at different times. So we changed his feeding schedule. Elsie also, I changed her... her feeding schedule because of buttons. I also found out that he really likes ice cream trucks, which I probably wouldn't have known. So the things that he comes home and talks about are things that I may not have like...
put together. So the ice cream truck came about because we heard an ice cream truck going down the block and he had a fridge car and I wouldn't have known what he was listening for at that moment. So we ended up taking him to get a little pop cup. Parker, she just gets more agency over kind of what her life looks like. She's also, she likes to know the names of people and things. She's asked the name of my dad before. She's asked what yarn is before. She chooses her next button.
sometimes by just asking me what the name for things are. So the fact that she just cares about those things are things I wouldn't know otherwise. She's particularly fond of my parents and she will ask about that. She loves my dad and asked his name before he had a dad button when he was around and asked about him after he left.
sometime last year, also asked to FaceTime my mom. And she said mom device. And device is sort of, you know, things like the phone, anything electronic. And so I FaceTimed my mom and she kind of came and said hello. So she definitely, I mean, the fact that they think about people and other animals when they're not there, whether they're kind of permanently gone or just temporarily gone is really interesting. And also very much, I think.
serves to debunk this idea that they only live in the present. Or that they're only food motivated. Also that, right? Like they care about things other than food. The things she's talking about are so much more expansive than food. And that's the thing about, you know, even with 120 odd words, it's still only 120 words, right, for a language that we use, you know, extensively more than that on a daily basis. I suppose they've got to get very creative.
to use 120 words in so many different ways. And they are. They're really creative. I mean, that's also something that's so fascinating is just how innovative they are at figuring out ways to talk about their world with the limited words that they do have. Yeah. One of my favorite Elsie stories is, you know, cats like the reflective. So my cell phone was reflecting on the ceiling and she jumps up onto the back of the chair, bats at it, jumps down. It's like want.
jumps back on the chair, bats at it, then comes back down and says, laser bird. And I'm like, yes, that's a great thing to call it. For us, it was the word fridge and water. We would reinforce the word water by taking the water out of the fridge and refilling Bastion's water bowl. And he began asking for water treats. And I was like, I don't know what a water treat is. Is it ice cream? Is it something liquid? I have no idea.
So I would go and try to find things, and he wasn't interested in any of them. And eventually, after his persistence, I... realized that he was calling the fridge water because that's where the water was coming out of every time he said hit water i went to the fridge and took out the water and we have these like uh venison jerky bits from this local farm and when we open the package it has to be
refrigerated and they're his absolute favorite. So that became the start of our fridge button. So then he stopped hitting water when he had a fridge button and he gets for fridge treats. Yeah, that's one of the things that always fascinates me is you can see that they've made a connection, but like which piece of it is important to them is the piece that I'm like, I don't know why this is the important part to you.
Animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd. I think it gives us lots of really interesting questions to ask about what they understand exactly from these words. But at the same time, of course, they are communicating with us with body language all the time. And it would be nice if we were better at understanding what they're trying to tell us with that too. Yeah, what's a good way to learn about that?
because why have all this time they've been wagging their tails and we're like, oh, they're happy, and they're like, no, that's not it. You're missing it. But sometimes we are missing it. It's not necessarily a happy sign. So a tail wag would be a happy sign if it's really wide and loose and especially if they're wiggling their body with it. But if it's kind of an upright, narrow...
That's not happy at all. That's actually perhaps they don't like you and they might even be thinking of seeing you off. It could be seen as a threat. It's important to pay attention. And the more we pay attention, the more we learn. It really helps to look at other people's pets. Like if I'm out and about on the street and I see a dog, I'm always looking at that dog to see. Is that dog happy? What is that dog?
kind of thinking as far as I can tell. So I think we learn a lot from watching other animals that aren't our own as well. And it takes practice. It does take practice. And I think it's easy for people to recognize when the animal is happy. And it's not so easy to spot the signs that they're stressed or unhappy or showing signs of discontent in some way. Yes. Oh, there's some common signs of stress or discomfort that we should be looking out for and may not know about.
So for a dog, some of the signs of stress might be a low posture. They might be licking their lips and there's not food coming. They might be yawning. they're not tired they're actually stressed but people often think that they're tired or they might be looking away or trying to move their body away or they might lift one paw especially in the little dog that kind of lift one paw and it's almost as if they're asking for your help to resolve.
situation for them. Cats, you can get a lip lick in cats too. The tail is a good one to pay attention to in cats because the more the tail swishes the more aroused the cat is. Like if you're petting the cat and the cat starts staring at you, that's not a good sign. If they're staring at your hand, they might be about to bite your hand next to make you stop, for example. And the skin rippling can be a sign of arousal as well. And the more kind of...
tight and enclosed the body language the more stressed they're likely to be so a relaxed cat will be perhaps spread on their side you can see their tummy the tail is away from their body and if they're stressed they'll be really tucked up tight and close with the tail in close to the body and the pores tucked in too. I always feel like it's kind of an honour when a cat shows me its tummy.
Yes. Unfortunately, many people make the common mistake of thinking that the cat wants their tummy to be petted and this is not what they want. They just want you to look. Yes. Like, I'm proud of this. Check it out. Yes. Is there a particular grammar or word order that you use or is it just dependent on how the respective animal ends up using the buttons?
for a while we introduced the ouch button to bastion and if i called it belly ouch he um would start to like ears back lick his lips um even if he had a stomachache i think that he started to get a visceral reaction from just the freeze and And I found that eventually it transferred to the word belly as well. And one of the animal trainers that I've worked with said, you know, you should flip it like they do in the romance language is like do ouch belly so that.
it's just you know the ouch is in the forefront and it helps them not generalize the word belly with pain and I've only been doing it maybe for the last few months but it took a while to undo the triggers that came from the word belly. I also noticed that Elsie tends to not always, but what I think she is doing is the important word and then modifiers to try to get more specific about it.
So I would say loud sound and she is much more likely to say sound loud. Unless she's just mad at you and then she just goes straight to loud. How do you tell if she's hit a button by accident? The motion for this is an intentional press versus not an intentional press is very different. Most of the time with Elsie, the accidents are back foot. She has this bum leg and she doesn't always have control of where she's putting it down.
She has done the occasional intentional back foot press, but it's really clear because she's standing in place. She's not moving and she's feeling with the back foot and then presses. But it's usually. You can see her moving across the board and picking a button sometimes because she doesn't really have a backspace. I've given her an oops button, which is not actually working right now. Oops, ironically.
Sometimes if she presses a button and then presses another one that's right next to it fairly, there'll be like an ear flick back. Like, no, that wasn't what I meant. I guess if you want a couple of other cat body language signals.
Cats have something called the tail up which is when the cat is stuck up and usually it's kind of like a little curl at the end so it's like a question mark and they put their tail up like that when they're approaching another cat who they like or a human who they like. So that's a nice affiliative signal from a cat. And another nice affiliative signal is when they do a slow blink, just a really slow blink. And then often it's followed by a little look away.
What's really nice about this is that scientists tested what happens if they slow blink at cats. And so for a lot of people who work with cats in shelter and rescue, you get used to going into the room and you see the cat and you know that you mustn't stare at the cat.
cat because they don't like it so you do a little slow blink and look away and hope that it will tell the cat that you're being friendly to them so it's really nice that scientists actually went and studied this and they slow blinked at lots of cats and they got slow blinks back So you can exchange the slow blink, but it's harder for a human to do the tail thing back at them. Yeah, we can't do that one at all. Useless.
What I'm noticing from the language buttons is they give the animals some tools for training their humans, knowing that they can hit a button or combination of buttons to elicit specific responses from the humans. is a power that Elsie has harnessed to tell lies. Elsie does lie. Yeah. I had just given her the sleepy button. And I was in the kitchen. I was making lunch. And she goes to the button board and she says, bedroom, sleepy, lie down. I'm like.
What a great contextual use. Yes, absolutely. Let's go take a little nap. I walk into the bedroom and I'm like, my cat doesn't come in. And I come back and she's eating my cheese sandwich. And she has multiple times. tried to send me out of the room in order to get my food. When I'm making lunch and she starts talking to me and it's something like, go check the litter box or something like that, food goes into the microwave and then I investigate whatever was happening.
how did that make you feel you like i can never trust her again i was like oh right cat parker will definitely like ask me to do things But she doesn't necessarily want to get me to get up and engage with her. And the way I can usually tell, she'll ask me to do something and then she'll just pick up a toy and look over her shoulder. She runs away like, oh, while you're up, maybe we play some chase.
What kinds of reactions do you get from people when they learn that you've taught your animal friends to use the buttons? It's a range of things. Some people are just really excited and... Well, I would say a lot of people are really excited by it and find it interesting, if not unbelievable. A lot of people say...
Oh, your dog must be smart or something particular or special about your dog. My dog would just ask for food constantly. My dog would nag me all the time. My dog manipulates me enough as it is. Which I'm just kind of like, well, if your dog is already doing that, then this isn't going to make it worse. Like, it's just going to make it more specific and also create a two-way street, right? Like, so when you're first teaching it, yeah, you're doing everything.
you know, every single time to reinforce it. But then it's not like an on-demand system, right? It's a way to communicate. So it's, you know, I want this now. It's like, well, right now we can't do that, right? Right now I'm busy, but we can do it later. right or we can do something else instead and so it's it's a conversation and perker when she was a puppy would always drag books off the shelf you know to get my attention when she was frustrated
And now she just tantrums on the buttons if she's frustrated, which is much more productive because we can at least have a conversation about it and I can give her something else to satisfy her. And so I think the idea that the buttons like can create behavior. is like a misunderstanding of what's going on. It can, I think, mediate behavior. It doesn't change their personality. Exactly, exactly.
I'm just thinking about how many things I thought Bastion enjoyed until we got the buttons and I was like I'm doing this great thing of taking him camping and I was convinced he loved camping and the first time we took the button He was asking about the fridge. He was like, where's the fridge? We didn't pack it. And he was like, where's home? And I'm like, we also didn't pack that. And it became very evident that he does not like camping.
Most people are incredulous. Some people are immediately into it. Other people think that it's much more of a... oh, your cat presses buttons on command. I'm like, have you met a cat? Typically obedient animals. And I think one of the big differences with a cat versus a dog is that people know that dogs can be trained to do things and people assume that cats cannot, even though Elsie actually has more tricks.
than Guppy does. So when you hear that a cat is doing a thing, they're like, oh, that is something that the cat is definitely choosing to engage in. One of my favorite... research papers talked about how they had 12 cats engaged in the study originally, but one of them escaped through the ceiling. So you know that if a cat is doing a thing, it is their choice and it is fully intentional.
And when I start talking about the kinds of things that Elsie says, I think I get more buy-in than I would if I were talking about a dog doing the same thing. I notice that I don't get the kinds of comments that I see people. getting on the dog accounts like, oh, you just trained the cat to do this. This is all fake. It's like, obviously, if you've ever met a cat, you know that this is much less bitable. Yes. The negative comments that I get are that it's just random.
And that I am seeing patterns that aren't there. We had someone over. And they were interested in the buttons. They were like, oh, that's really cool. That's really neat that you've got that. We were talking and Elsie had not said anything, but she just looked at them both, went to the button board, made eye contact with one of them in particular and said loud. Skater.
And then just walked away. And they were like, oh, I do actually get told all the time that I have a very loud voice. And like lowered their voice. Her husband said. That is the moment when I became a believer. I don't know why... indictments like that feel worse coming from animals than humans because you know that they're not going well I shouldn't say they're not going to lie clearly Elsie they're not going to lie to make us feel better no that's correct
I think that there's always going to be skeptics. I'm more than happy to engage in conversation with someone that has healthy skepticism because there's always room for improvement in what we're doing. but it's when you get like people that are just nasty for the sake of being nasty my kitty hallie when she passed the day before she passed she hit um all done now bye and people are
on the internet telling me that I staged it. I was using my cat and all kinds of things. And no one was even home at the time. And I think, you know, when people are making these claims about them being staged, it's what's so frustrating about folks that are creating content that is just like for fun because they're not creating content as if this is genuine communication.
they're using something that's made for greater agency and actually denying that opportunity to those animals for the sake of making content that is, you know, quote unquote funny. I mean, most of the time it's like. misogynist and curse words and things like that. And it's just like, I personally think a lot of those accounts are just like,
cheap jokes. When you are living with this, there's a lot of ways that you're like, oh, this is obviously not a real thing, especially when there's a punchline and lots of cutting. It's like, this is obviously a scripted content. I don't think it's that funny. But then it's also doing harm with this tool that is really giving animals that live in our lives as captive animals more agency and instead using it as like a tool to...
gain internet fame. If they had spent the same amount of time teaching their animal to communicate with the buttons as to press them for... They could have this deeper relationship with their animal. And I feel a little bit mad, but mostly I feel sad. There's a lot of nuance that I... didn't know existed and not just talking about like oh I can't read you know the way they move their tail I'm talking about those things where I would have
based on her body language, thought that she was adjusted and happy. And then she says something with the buttons that is counter to that. Like, we had another cat, Helix, and when he died, she started talking about him. and using emotion words that she hadn't used. And I wouldn't have guessed that she was that attached to Helix before, or that she was grieving as much as she was.
But there were some sounds that she made right after he was gone. She was alone in the apartment. So there's no human. She's not responding. She's not going from a cue. And she just went to her button board and pressed sad and then went and lay down in the sun. And I was like, oh, I'm never leaving home again.
Just looking at her body language, without the buttons, I would be like, oh, look, there's my cat, and she's lying down in the sun. What a lovely, pleasant day for her. And with the buttons, I'm like, oh, no, she's lonely. Yeah, she's feeling stuff. Yeah. She asks about... People who are not here. Animals seem to grieve their companions and the cats do miss their companions when they're not there. And I love those stories, actually. I think animals do have a sense of time.
And I used to use the word soon with my dog Bodger and I used to feel like he knew what that meant. So I might say we'll go for a walk soon if he was looking expectant for a walk. And I felt like he knew what that meant. Or if we had people coming round who he knew, I would say their names and say soon. And he would go to the window as if he was waiting for them. So I felt like he knew what it meant.
But of course, to prove it scientifically is another matter and quite difficult to show exactly what his concept of soon was and what length of time it might be.
And there was even a time when we had to be out of the house for longer than we'd intended to be. So we were actually coming back quite late and I was a bit worried about him being home on his own. So when we were 10 minutes away... from home I actually rang and spoke to the answer phone and said Bodger will be home soon and I felt when we came home like he was different than I thought he would have been with us being away for that length of time so I felt like he understood
I can't prove it and it may simply be that he heard my voice and he liked hearing my voice and it didn't make him feel alone. But we know that they have a sense of time because if you take your dog for a walk at the same time every day, they will start coming and looking.
for you at that time or they will even bring you the leash so they do have a sense of time I have been told i don't know how many times that cats have like a you know five minute memory or something ridiculous like that like which is obviously obviously very false like this person has never spent time with a cat because they can hold a grudge
I knew that they had emotions. I knew that they had opinions. I knew that they could feel sad. They could feel angry. But I didn't know that they had like this inner life where they were thinking about things like after after you all left yesterday, Elsie came out and. You know, it was like delicious quiet. Like, oh, baby. Even with this lifelong love of animals, I had absolutely bought into the thing of, oh, once the immediate stimulus is passed, they're fine.
and hadn't thought about the way things linger and they continue to think about it. Bashan's my first dog, and a lot of just learning about dog behavior in general has come from the buttons and noticing his body language and the congruencies and things like that. I think it's also about trusting what they're actually telling you too.
And there have been times where he's hit something on the board. I'm thinking he wants something else. It was one night in particular that I had taken him for a walk. He went to the bathroom, came back inside, and I asked him if he wanted to go to the store. And he said, no, he wanted to go to the bathroom again. And I took him to the store and he pooped in the store. Fortunately, it was pet smart, so it's not the first time that that's happened in there.
We're just going to take a quick break to check on our bathroom needs and to pay the bills with these words from our sponsors. You've heard me recommend the podcast Constant Wonder from BYU Radio before. Every episode gets into what makes us think and feel by people talking about their lives and particularly about nature, what we can learn from otters.
What parenting tips we can get from peregrine falcons. Here's a tip. Be a peregrine falcon. No kid's going to mess with you. We get even more surprises from the ever-surprising seahorse. And we hear what to do if we come face-to-face with a polar bear. Look, it's good to be prepared. You never know. Right now, Constant Wonder has an audio advent calendar.
A little pod present every day counting down the winterful season. And an episode I'm looking forward to is about how to survive a freezing cold winter, the painted turtle way. Apparently a big part of it is not breathing. Which... I don't think it's going to work out for me, I'm poorly equipped, and because I'm always gasping at the wonders of the world around me, thanks to constant wonder opening my eyes and ears.
listen to constant wonder wherever you get your podcasts or via byuradio.org The Illusionist is sponsored by Home Chef, makers of meal kits and fully prepped dishes, all delivered to your door so you can have a hot meal ready in minutes. And you can also get snacks like cookie dough, where you can just dollop lumps of it onto a baking tray and put it into the oven. And minutes later, ding! Oh, just look at that! Oh, you baked! A new domestic deity is crowned!
Do deities wear crowns? This one does, and it's made of cookie dough. Because who says cookies have to be cookie-shaped? Home Chef isn't checking up on how you cook things in your own home. And Home Chef's not going to peer at you and say, why is your hair full of cookie crumbs? For a limited time, Home Chef is offering Illusionist listeners 18 free meals, plus free dessert for life, and of course, free shipping on your first box. Go to homechef.com slash illusionist.
That's homechef.com slash illusionist for 18 free meals and free dessert for life. You must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. So become one at homechef.com slash illusionist. Communicating with her animal companions has changed how Mary Robinette communicates with humans too, including herself. Sometimes Elsie does not have a word, or we're away from the button board.
And so what you do is something called two-hand choice. You offer two hands and you'll say, you know, like, do you want to go inside or do you want to spend more time outside? You know, inside, outside. And it'll tap with a par, a nose boop, the one that they want to do. Something that I have begun doing with myself. So I have ADHD and executive function is real hard sometimes.
And I've begun, when I'm trying to move forward with the project, I've begun two-hand-choicing myself. And so one of the things that I've learned with doing the two-hand choice with the dogs... Or when I'm trying to guess a context with Elsie, if I've offered a choice and it was the wrong choice that I don't offer that choice anymore, I'm like, okay, you have two choices in front of you. You can answer the emails or you can take a nap.
But taking a nap has not served you anymore. So you can answer the emails or you can do the dishes. Two hand choice. So I've begun using that framing for myself. Mixed results, much the same way it is with animals sometimes. But that kind of framing has been a thing that has been happening with my brain. For me, it's reducing the executive function load. the decision-making load by trimming it down to two and also by saying that hasn't served you before.
Like that was a bad choice. I'm always saying to Guppy and Elsie, good choices. And I have also found myself saying that to myself. It's like, oh, good choice. You did open the email, good choices. It's like a flow chart in real time. Yeah. A few months before we met, Mary Robinette's mother Marilyn died. She had had Parkinson's disease, which is what my father died of two years ago, with some pretty brutal dementia in his latter years, and...
I wish I had had this conversation with Mary Robinette while my dad was still alive. There are a lot of ways that I was not expecting working with Elsie to be helpful. with my mom's decline. My mother had Parkinson's. Parkinson's does a lot of things and people focus on the tremoring, but one of the things it does is it slows down the processing speed. You would say something and she wouldn't respond and then you'd fill the silence.
And it didn't give my mom space to express herself. And with Elsie, one of the things that they talk about is that it can take 5 to 40 seconds for a cat to respond. And so I would count. And I started doing that with mom. She would say something or I would ask her a question and I would just start to count in my head. And that gave her time to respond to me.
It gave time for her to find the word, make the connections, and just to talk, like just to gather her energy and talk. So that was one thing, was just reminding myself, you know. slow down, count, just count to 40. The other one was context and how, you know, Elsie would say something and she's clearly trying to communicate something to me, but...
I don't know what. And so I would have to look at the context of what we were talking about and try to piece it together, sometimes super clear, but again, changes based on context. So my mom... In the last month, Parkinson's often comes with what they call the dementia expansion pack. What happened with mom wasn't that she didn't know who people were. She just became completely unmoored from time.
So sometimes she was still in the 1980s working on an Arts Council grant. Other times she had fast forwarded it and we were getting ready for Christmas. So it was just meeting her where she was. Yeah. For my dad, it was the 1970s and he had to get to London for a very important art event or to watch a rugby match.
And we'd have to say, it's OK, Dad, it's Tuesday. The rugby's not on on Tuesdays, which I did remember because some of the last information to stay with my dad was rugby related. There were two things that I remember where... I felt like I was using the Elsie skills. One was that she kept saying things like, you know, why don't we move the marble top?
dresser in here to put the food on for when the company comes or let's do this thing for when the company comes let's do that for when the company comes and the company was not coming I would always just treat it like improv and I would just roll with her. But I'm like, why does she keep doing this? What contextually is she trying to communicate with the tools that she has? And I realized that she'd always liked the house kept a certain way.
Excuse me. She did correct me on this. Mom liked the house kept the way it should be kept. As decreed by neutral forces. Yes, with the international convention. And I kind of looked at the house. I'm like, yeah, no, the house is actually a little bit of a mess right now because we were like full time caregiving. And so I hired cleaners to come in and clean. And she stopped asking.
to make changes for the company that was coming. And then the other one was she kept saying she needed to go shopping, she needed to get something very special over and over again wanting to go shopping. It was really hard for her to leave the house. I knew that that was going to be like a disaster trip. It would not be fun for her, actually, if we went to do it. I would have been fine with the stress for myself, but I knew what her body was doing to her at that point.
Um, so again, I'm like, okay, well, what does, what is she actually saying? And it clicked when I walked into the bedroom and my dad who like loves her, but you know. is an eight-year-old boy, had just put her in one of his fiddling t-shirts. And she was a woman who always was so careful with her appearance. And I'm like, she's saying she doesn't like the way she looks.
And so I bought a bunch of adaptive clothing, things that were meant for Parkinson's patients or wheelchair patients that did not look like hospital gowns. They all just looked like dresses because they were. They were just dresses for wheelchair users. and got a box for her of those and she stopped asking to go shopping.
What I started doing with mom was trying to look for the context and the emotional truth that she was experiencing. And I don't know that I would have done that if I hadn't just spent like two years working with this cat. Also, two-hand choice came in useful again. One of the other things Parkinson's does is that it steals your voice over time that accelerated during her last week, really. And so...
When we were getting dressed, at first it would be like, what do you want to wear today, mom? And the slowness of the brain, the fact that she was unmoored from time, all of that meant that she would say, well, what do you think I should wear? which was her way of masking. And so I started just holding up two dresses. You know, what do you want to wear today, mom? And she would pick one. And first it was, you know, the blue flowered one. She would tell me.
And then as her voice started to go, she would just point and then she would just look. But what that means is that on the day she died. she was wearing a dress that she picked out and that's a gift that I could not have given her if I hadn't learned the tools from this ridiculous talking cat situation. But, you know, that giving them agency, we say all the time with the learners, presume competence. And.
You know, all of the times that she was unmoored from time and trying to communicate, all of the times it's like, well, did she really look at this dress? You know, it's like, yeah, she did. If you presume competence and you pay attention to everything that's happening and you give them time to respect. mom and you know it was she had she had grace and dignity on on her last day
And choice. And choice, yeah. And joy, too. And she passed the morning after their 58th wedding anniversary. She hung on for that. Which is also why it was so important for her to be wearing a dress that she wanted to be wearing. It's something I was very glad I could do for her. It's striking with both her and Elsie. It's like you're going over a bridge to where they live. Yeah.
That's exactly, exactly what it is. You know, Elsie is coming over the bridge to me by just agreeing to use these buttons. And so I have to figure out. what she wants and what she means, but also within the context of looking for those patterns. Like if mom had said, I want to go shopping once, you know, okay. But it was the pattern of it. And with Elsie, you know, sometimes she'll say something and she's just experimenting with the words just to see what they'll do.
The danger is inserting my wants and my wishes and my thoughts in. And it's really hard as a human who is pattern-seeking creature to not, you know, there are things that I'm like, I really want that to have a meaning.
No. She's a cat. What is an important thing to a cat? Probably kibble. Maybe murder. And what's been the best thing you think about this whole... process for you I get to talk to my dog honestly like that's something I've probably wanted since I was a kid and I get to talk with her and I get to help her live her her best life A slight second to that is just the community of people who I've met through it. It's just this whole community of people who like care deeply about...
their animals and learning more about them and are interested in expanding knowledge and learning more. And I think that's just so like... wonderful to have met people who live all over the world and come from all sorts of backgrounds and yet all have this really powerful thing in common. I would agree with that. The community is huge, too, because it's a lot of troubleshooting and problem solving. It's interesting to see which animals use similar combinations. I think Buster...
Or Juno had used squeaker car after Parker had used squeaker car for ambulance. And there's two dogs on opposite sides of the country that are both using the same combination for the same meaning. And so... almost creating like a dictionary of sorts of what it could potentially mean when they press a pattern and just having each other to cheer each other on.
refocuses you on the way we all started because we wanted to learn to communicate with our pet, not because we wanted to become internet famous. Because at the end of the day, I'm still going to keep communicating with my dog using the buttons, whether or not we're posting it online. Give it a try with your learner. Even if you approach it just as an enrichment activity, just as a game, it's still worthwhile just to see what will happen.
to sometimes people see on the internet dogs with 122 buttons and think that I don't have the time for that. But you don't need to have that. You could just have four. You could just have 12. You could just have one. And I think that going into it...
Just open minded and not knowing where it could go is the first step. I think actually that's one of the bigger changes is that I used to just be able to talk to Elsie to mask the fact that I was talking to myself. And now I'm like, oh, no, you understand.
more of this than i think you do she knows all your secrets she does and and worse she can tell people yes and then i have this additional lens because I'm a science fiction writer and I am having communication every day with a non-human intelligence and it has changed the way I think about what happens if we ever make
contact with extraterrestrial life. It's changed the way I think about what are core important things because these creatures are not... human but the things that are important to them align so closely to the things that are important to us you know love and safety security routine concern about well-being like empathy like the fact that we're seeing that coming from these wonderful little tiny monsters, it makes me think more about what it means to be human.
Because I have this contrast, you know, this every day where it's like, you aren't human and yet we have this stuff in common. And yes, Elsie, I too like delicious quiet. I should take that as a key to pack up and leave you more delicious quiet. Today you heard from Mary Robinette Cowell, Zazie Todd, Sasha Krasnow and Joelle Andries.
And thanks to Elsie the Cat and the dogs Guppy, Bastion and Parker. Zazie Todd is an animal behaviour expert and author. Her books include Wag, Purr and the latest, Bark, the science of helping your anxious, fearful or reactive dog. Find out more about her work at companionanimalpsychology.com. Mary Robinette Cowell is...
puppeteer, the co-host of the podcast Writing Excuses, and a multi-award winning novelist. Her newest novel, The Martian Contingency, is available to pre-order. Find Mary Robinette and her work at maryrobinettkowall.com. And you can find Joelle Andrews and her dog Bastian and Sasha Krasnow and her dog Parker on Instagram and YouTube. I will link to all of the episode's guests at theillusionist.org slash lexacat2.
next episode is the annual end of year bonus episode i love these i save stuff up all year for them Because the guests say very interesting things that weren't language related or just didn't fit into their episode. But then in the bonus episodes, we get all of that. And in this year's one...
Amongst many other delights, you will hear from Zazie Todd again. She will advise on how if you want to change your dog's name, you can get them to recognise the new one. So come back next time for that and all the other bonus bits. The Illusionist is sponsored by Quince. Luxury gifts at affordable prices.
I'm stressed by gifting these days because I just worry about bestowing an item on someone that they then have to give house stream. What if they don't want to? So my tactic is useful everyday items that are nicer than what I'd buy myself. Like quince has some very charming sets of linen napkins. My favourite are the ones with the scalloped edges and contrasting colours. Very cute. Hint hint. And using a proper napkin feels like...
You're an adult who has their life in order. So that's my gift pick. And if you really love someone, you could also give them one of the coordinating tablecloths. And if you really love them, one of Quince's beautiful serving bowls. gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com slash illusionist for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I. NCE.com slash illusionist to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash illusionist.
Thanks to our beloved Squarespace for sponsoring The Illusionist and for being our one-stop shop for creating our websites. My Squarespace website, theillusionist.org, and I have now been together for 10 years. And the 10th anniversary is... What is it? Tin? Tin? I was hoping for something a little more festive, but I guess you can't spell illusionist without tin, or it would be allusios. Allusios. Is that anything? The tin-free spin-off podcast?
Do I run to Squarespace right now, see what Aluzio's domains are available, choose a suitable template, bestow the website with all the features my tin-free heart would desire, and then launch? Well, I could. I probably won't. But you should with your own thing. You can't spell thing without tin either. Go to squarespace.com slash illusionist for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the... code Allusionist.
We love having new podcasts to add to our subscriptions. How about SmartList Presents Clueless? It is a new bite-sized podcast where the host, Elliot Kalen, the Emmy Award-winning writer, guides the listener through different... kinds of puzzles wordy ones number ones song names mysteries brain teasers and conundrums and you the listener try to solve them faster than sean hayes and his celebrity friends
So for 10-ish minutes of puzzling fun twice a week, not a short pod, subscribe to SmartList Presents Clueless in the places where you get your podcasts. You're familiar with the system. That part's not the puzzle. The puzzles are in every episode of SmartList Presents Clueless. Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is... Yabra. Noun in bridge or whist. A hand with no card above a nine.
Origin 20th Century, named after an Earl of Yarborough, said to have bet 1,000 to 1 against its occurrence. Try using Yarborough in an email today. This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Thanks to Scott Newman and Jenny Mills from On Air Festival, Erica Ensign, and Mary Robinette Cowell's family. Ken Harrison, Rob Cowell, Jamie and Steve Harrison, and Elsie Guppy and Todd.
Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor this show or any of the others in the Multitude Nest, get in touch with them at multitude.production slash ads. Spots are already filling up for 2025, so get on it. find illusionist show on instagram facebook blue sky and youtube and i'm keen to hear what you think after you've listened to an episode so do let me know
and you can hear or read every episode. Get more information about the topics and the guests who talk about them. See the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words. Keep track of events coming up like the 10th birthday live show and the readings of A Christmas Carol. and donate to the show and become a member of the Illusioniverse, you find all of it at the show's forever home, theillusionist.org.