It all started when we realized that one of our cats was getting a little tubby.
We have two cats, who are also litter mates. Jagular is graceful and lithe, and was named after the mythical-but-actually-Tigger character in Winnie-the-Pooh that likes to climb up into high places and drop on you. She never dropped on us, but did climb through the banister around the stairs onto the second-story plant shelf above the front door on multiple occasions, one of which required a complicated rescue operation involving a laundry basket.
Sasquatch was named for her enormous polydactyl feet. But before her first birthday, we realized that wasn’t the only thing about her that was getting enormous.
At the time of this discovery, the girls were eating the same food out of a shared bowl. But while Jagular is a born grazer, stopping when she’s comfortably full and returning later, Sasquatch is a python. She gorges, on the assumption (flying in the face of all evidence to the contrary) that food may never appear in the bowl againĀ and she’d better eat it before her sister does.
And thus, for the last ten years, we’ve been feeding the cats in separate rooms. This is a laborious process that involves a lot of inconvenience to the providers of the food, who can’t just fill the bowls and leave the house. And even if staying home, have to remember to let the cats out of their respective feeding areas half an hour after feeding begins, because only one of those areas (and it’s NOT the one in my office) has a litter box in it.
Not to mention there are twice as many dirty dishes.
Still, we were getting along quite well, until Jagular spontaneously decided that her breakfast portion (also known as “crunchies,” in contrast to evening “squishy”) was too large to eat in one sitting. She still wants that extra food, though. She just wants it an hour later.
Jagular wants Second Breakfast. And she’s not the only one. Sasquatch, with a sibling’s finely-honed sense of inequality, is fully aware that Jagular gets to eat twice (and in fact gets twice as much food to begin with, due to her speedier metabolism). Which means we have one cat crying for Second Breakfast, and one cat sitting outside a closed door crying because she’s not in there sharing it. Every. Single. Morning.
Sigh….
What about you? Are your pets pythons or hobbits? What bizarre rituals have you concocted around their feeding or walking or – horrors! – going to the V – E – T times?
My dog was definitely a hobbit. He would have had third breakfast if he could have figure out how to make that happen.
My parents’ shelties, were like that too, Diana. Which makes sense, as sheepdogs have a lot of opportunities to forage in between guarding!