(Nauseatingly Cute Cat Story)
After more than ten years of having nothing more to do with my computers than an occasional tentative walk across the keyboards (the mice held no attraction), the resident manx has suddenly discovered that screen savers are, in fact, well worth staring at.
First, it was the Hubble Telescope slide show. Now it's some random swirly thing. That's even better.
She is absolutely entranced.
Do I dare touch anything?
Well . . . the power save mode is about due to kick in.
And by that, I mean she's about to have a nap.
Not on this keyboard, you fat load.
2 comments:
Our third, in a line of four, cats has been put on a diet. From the day we rescued Hans (whose brother Luke and sister Leia had already been adopted), they warned us about his weight. Since he was a 1.1 pound 6-week stray, I have no idea how they knew that. But he has since grown and morphed into the name "H-Bomb," because he's two orders of magnitude larger than any other cat.
The rest of our cats are on the small-normal side; and we never see The Bomb eating more than the others, so we have no idea how he's gotten so big. Nonetheless, we were warned at our last vet visit that if he continued to gain at his current rate (the human equivalent of 25 pounds last year alone), he'd develop diabetes, and we'd have to give him shots the rest of his life. (Diet and exercise apparently don't work in the feline Type II world.)
So, we've had to change our ways. No leaving large vats of dry food out all the time so the cats can graze. Now we have to herd the cats together, twice a day, to feed them 1/4 cup each.
Yes, we are herding cats at 6:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
And it is not going well.
H-Bomb is furious at us that we're not leaving food around, so he's on a complete hunger strike and giving us the no-purring treatment. Penny (the new kitten) pesters the other two while they're eating, so we have to feed Penny on the ping-pong table in the basement, while the other two get fed near the laundry room.
And despite H-Bomb's hunger strike, he doesn't seem to be ... reducing. I suspect he's got a back up food source.
Must investigate.
My sympathies. There's a reason why "herding cats" is such a well-understood metaphor, isn't there?
I long ago gave up on trying to manage the disparity in my cats' weights. I'm convinced that the skinny one would die of starvation if I didn't leave food out all of the time. He won't eat more than a mouthful at a time, no matter how safe and secluded the food bowl is.
As with H-Bomb, my fat cat doesn't seem to eat like crazy, but she's a fat load.
The only way out would be to separate the two of them for the majority of the day, and that seems even more cruel.
And too much like work.
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