got a new cat tree with a few toys built in it seems obvious this would happen when you say it out loud but i was tickled to notice that although my 18mo son and my cat enjoyed exploring the toys, they went about it in very different ways

even at 18mo young sir is thoughtful, experimental, systematic cat by contrast only is experimental. her learning involves classifying different objects as members of various hard-coded sets. prey, subsets of prey, things she can scratch. abstraction is primitive

example. balls in a track on the bottom. cat swatted them, clocked them as prey, chased them a minute before getting bored (or maybe reclassifying not-prey --> inert) toddler squinted at the ball, pushed it along the track, watched it roll, stared at its path, followed it

he has suddenly gotten very sophisticated in humor. went from learning a game where he makes me mime his silly movements and expressions a week ago, to staring out the picture window as he points out imaginary objects and insists they're right outside. he thinks this is prime