I Spy

(May 07, 2001)

The Kitty Cam is up, click on the cat in the right margin. It's our first "cam" of any kind and we're all very excited. It will take some getting used to, however. You may get a shot of me in my underwear feeding the screaming babies in the morning.

So it's the first day of Kitty Cam'ing, what have we learned? Well, for one thing, I see that Casey, Chloe, Elvis, and Donovan pretty much finish the morning portion by about 2pm. And the water, having been used as a washtub by Casey and Donovan a few times today, is looking pretty mucky and low.

Okay, you're probably wondering about a thing or two. Yes, that's a Hello Kitty mat and no, none of my cats are channeling a fourteen year old Japanese girl. I just like the Hello Kitty mat. You're probably also wondering about the ratio of food dishes-to-cats. Yes, there are a total of four cats. Yes, there are a total of three two-sided food dishes, making six food receptacles in all. Why so many?

It's all about the puking. When you've squished with your bare toes into a warm, bumpy skid of whorked-up kibble a time or two, you're going to sit yourself right down and think of ways to keep the kibble inside the cat.

Well forget it. None of the things you think of will work. They stick their snouts into a mound of kibble and shovel it in. Too much, too fast, and then of course the whorking.

So early one Sunday morning (way too early, but the average hungry cat has no snooze alarm) I stumbled from bed, encouraged into reluctant wakefulness by a series of plaintive "meeeeerrrrrwwwwww"s. Oh who am I kidding. I was not in any sort of "wakefulness." Barely awake, I shuffled through the furry bodies around my feet, I unhinged the plastic cover off the food bin, I dug out the measuring cup, I scooped up a cup of food. Then I opened my eyes in time to see myself drop the entire cup of food. Kibble everywhere, skittered across the whole expanse of kitchen floor.

I went back to bed. I'm barely motivated to start cleaning the floor on a good day, let alone half-asleep on a Sunday.

But imagine my surprise when I didn't step in anything squishy that day. My theory, and I'm sticking to it, is that the wide-spread kibble forced the cats to slow down. Since then, we've fed them in these shallow dishes, the kibble spread out thinly in a single layer. No mound of food, no shovel-snouting.

We still get the occasional whork-fest, but believe me, it's WAY better.

Now there's just the FAAs (Feline Assisted Accidents) and emotional disorders to deal with. But it's all worth it. I mean LOOK at this one...

And THIS one...

I mean, come on.