The Cat That Meowed Wolf

Back in the old days, interaction with the cats was simple. I visited my fiancee, petted her cats, and then left her apartment, so she got to feed them and change their litter. Even after we got married and she made me alternate the kitty litter cleaning, the feeding wasn't so bad, since we had a self-feeder. But these halcyon days could not last. Pippin, our monstrous furry behemoth, kept stuffing himself, and the vet said to put him on a diet, and that our other cat Cricket could stand to shed a pound or two as well.

Deciding to help the ungrateful wretches, we determined that three times a day, we would feed Pippin and Cricket separately. Their 8:30 am feeding would begin with Pippin meowing obnoxiously outside the door and my hoping that my wife would get out of bed, grab the supersoaker, and shoot him for me. Once one of us got up and put their food out, Pippin would wolf down his food in two minutes and start howling to be let out so that he could eat Cricket's food. Meanwhile, Cricket would nibble a little at his food and then decide he wanted to sit on the couch. After thirty minutes had gone by, we would take away his food, and he would immediately jump down and nibble the little bits that have fallen on the floor. Around 5:30 pm, they would start meowing for two and a half hours for their next feeding at 7. Around 9 pm, they would start meowing for two more hours for their next feeding.

I started to ask myself, is this really worth it? It’s not as if Pippin’s going to be "getting any" if he has a sleeker bod, since not only is he an indoors cat, he is neutered. Cricket seems unable to grasp the concept that just because your dinner is unequivocally dead, that does not mean it won’t move after it has sat there for an hour. My wife thought it would be inhumane to try one of those anti-barking collars on them to see if it works in shutting them up. And what happened if Pippin actually did lose the weight, and an emaciated Cricket still somehow clung weakly onto life with his declawed paws ... would we just keep regimenting their food for the rest of our (painful) lives, or would we just let Pippin get fat again? "As a dog returns to its vomit, so also does Pippin return to his vomit, and to the self-feeder if we let him," as the proverb goes.

Further, given the cats' propensity to meow at every moment for food, it posed a considerable challenge for them to communicate a desire for the little things, like that they wanted us to play with them, or that there was no water and they were about to die. After realizing that meowing and pointing their heads at the water dispenser didn't work (since their head was then pointing at the food bowl at the same time), they opted for the more pathetic solution of drinking out of the toilet or hanging out in the bathtub in the hope that the faucet would release a few drips.

Well, we've given up on the diet now, because one of them, and by one of them, I mean most likely Cricket, has been pooping outside the litterbox. It's not entirely his fault; Pippin doesn't cover up after himself, and I'm not really sure how you communicate proper etiquette to a cat. I have wondered if Cricket's dilemma is something like this: "I don't get enough time to eat food ... but for the food that I do eat, I just have to poop it out again in a litterbox that smells because Mobert [that is what Cricket calls Pippin] can't clean up after himself. I want to die. But since I have no opposable thumbs to hold the noose, I shall just have to poop in the corner instead. I shall pretend that this spot is what has become of all my hopes and dreams." We hope that by leaving food out all the time, maybe Cricket will be a little less depressed.

Now that we leave both food bowls out all the time (in separate rooms), Pippin still doesn't understand what's going on, especially at 8:30 am when we are trying to sleep. Outside the door, Pippin will be meowing, not because there is no food out, but because the remaining food is in Cricket's bowl, not his. I wonder if Pavlov ever had these problems.