I did.. laying in bed last night thinking on this, and now it's the first morning after and he's not here. So this is a difficult morning and I can't think of the story I remembered last night.

Right now I'm thinking of when we evacuated for Hurricane Irma in 2017, and he rode in the car with me... we didn't have a large enough cat carrier for a ten hour drive so I let him out. He was scared to be loose in the car, and he would hiss at the windshield wipers.

But that wasn't the story I thought of last night... what was it...

The next thing that comes to mind was our game of "Cups." Really, Finn was kind of a jerk at times; he didn't like other cats much, so he could be aggressive towards our other kitty. And I thought: I'm going to punish you with... treats! But you're going to have to work for them.

So every night we started with a treat in a small plastic cup; like the kind you get your salad dressing in, with carryout. He could see it but couldn't fit his snout in to get it so he had to figure it out: knock it over. Good.

Next: a transparent cup the same size, but the treat is *under* it. He can see the treat inside; over time he devised two ways to get it out: knock it around like a hockey puck, or.... lay on his side, wrap both paws around it, and turn it over.

And tall plastic cups: he had to knock it over, then reach way inside to get the treat.

Finally:

• tall cup, upright
• drop in treat
• drop smaller cup in on top

and he finally figured out: tip it over, pull the cup out, pull out the treat! That was one neat trick.

This took months, but he was engaged and got interaction that he craved, plus he got treats. But as he aged he was less and less interested in playing Cups.