Oh The Things You Don't Know About Me
Matt’s not the only one with cats. I have cats too you know. Maybe they don’t star in videos, but they’re just as cute. And OK, maybe they’re a little chubbier, but hey. We all need hobbies and theirs are sleeping and eating. You would pick those hobbies too if you could. Charlie is my black cat. And yes, he’s brought me luck the entire 13 years I’ve had him. Randy seems to sleep a little less than Charlie, but he’s not any skinnier.
Here’s the trouble with putting cats on a diet. First, the food sucks. I mean, I haven’t actually tried it myself, but you would be surprised how clearly cats communicate despite the lack of talking ability. Second, even with diet food, you’re supposed to limit the amount the cats eat. And even though the food is crappy, the cats are thinking that it’s better than no food, so they’d like some more please. Do you know what happens when you don’t give them more? That’s right. They climb all over your face as you try to sleep and meow loudly in your ear. Don’t think that cats don’t have a keen sense of anatomy. It’s quite possible they keep a secret stash of medical books and share them amongst themselves. The internet has probably made this much easier. I bet in the 80′s cats had to tear off individual pages and leave them under trash lids in alleys for each other. Now they can just blog.
The best place to step as hard as you can is her stomach. Especially after she’s just worked out and done 50 crunches. Just slowly walk up like you want to nuzzle her hand and then POUNCE. She’ll think twice before leaving that bowl empty next time.
The moment I get home from work, the cats are starved. I have to feed them right this instant or surely they will die. Die! So starving! So, I feed them. The trouble is that by around 3am, they’re thinking it’s time to eat again. They start out just a little peckish. A snack might be nice. They start pacing on the bed. Back and forth. Over my legs. My head. My already sore abs. When they realize I’m ignoring them and they might not get that snack after all, they start ramping things up. A few well-placed meows here and there. And by “here and there”, I mean of course, directly in my ear. And my other ear. And then it just gets pitiful. The wailing. The crying. You would think I hadn’t fed them in weeks and weeks!
So, I get up. I feed them. They run at the bowl, joyous again. Until they start to eat and realize it’s that crap diet food again. But hope springs eternal. Every time, they have great confidence I’ve gone back to the yummy food. And I keep giving the cat food equivalent of broccoli rather than Big Macs.
Which makes me think maybe a cat’s life isn’t so great. Sure, you get to sleep all the time. But what if you really want that Big Mac? Even if you could manage to steal the car keys, your little paws would just never reach the steering wheel.
I can soooo relate. My cats are positively devious when it comes to getting food. And they work as a team – with each cat taking responsibility for one stage in the “Wake Mommy Up” exercise. First sweet Monet comes up and rubs on my hands, then her son Petey joins in with strategically placed ‘love nips’ to my upper arms. This is usually enough to get me stirring, but if all else fails, the big 20 lb fluff-ball Dickens stands on my chest, sheds hair up my nose, and gives me cold wet nose ‘kisses’ all over my face until the desired reaction is received.
Have you ever been a “So I Married An Axe Murderer” fan? Based upon your cat’s name (charlie) and the amount of time you have had him, the naming would be placed around the same time that movie came out.
I am here in San Diego since 2004. But back in the Philippines I had tons of cats. Which are well different from many cats here.
My cats ate super big rats, almost as big as them. Tiny mice. They brought home small snakes. (only as thick as a finger, but real long) Common Philippine house lizards. Small fruit bats. And sometimes they climb trees to eat small birds or sometimes chicks or eggs in a nest. Fish in our neighbors fishpond, and a whole live chicken. Who our neighbor got mad, since my cat killed and ate their chicken, he got a BB gun and shot my cat several times until it died.
I find it funny that here in the US, when a cat climbs a tree and can’t seem to get down, they call 911. My cats had that as a daily routine going up and down.
Up to today, when I go home back to the Philippines every year, there are still all the cats. And they are still related by bloodline to the 1 single female stray cat we had in 1978.
I can’t relate to how people take care of cats that eat cat food.
My cats, although domesticated, lived lives close to their predatory ancestors in the wild.
My cats are still young enough to simply belt out a couple of begging meows to get me to do EXACTLY what they want. Here’s some pictures for the cat-lovers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adammoro/tags/cats/
That’s perhaps one of the few posts about cats on the Internet that doesn’t have their photos (or videos). Maybe, yes, I was expecting pictures?
Anyway, great post!
I guess all your posts can very well go popular on Sphinn, btw. This cat one is pretty popular, it seems
Maybe because Sphinners are more expert cat lovers than Diggers, or something.
[...] so I can proudly put the Sphinn badge on the post. Which I could really never do with the Digg badge, because seriously, how lame does it look to [...]