Fussy kids, fussy cats, flustered mom
I like having adult children. A few years of fending for themselves made them more grateful
When the boys were young, they were rarely happy eating the same thing.
One would eat cooked carrots, the other only raw. Tuna for one, not the other. Different cookies, always different soup. I didn’t tailor much to their whims; here’s your meal, you’ll like tomorrow’s better. Hauling everyone through the door at 6 p.m. and having to tackle making dinner while somebody was complaining about their lunch was more than my exhausted body could bear, not to mention my worn-out brain.
Of course, they both eat everything and anything now. I like having adult children. A few years of fending for themselves made them more grateful. And a few years of feeding myself popcorn and wine for dinner made me more calm.
I wish my cats could figure this issue out.
I care what I feed the cats. I truly believe the better the food that goes in, the lower my vet bills will be. I’ve had enough cats to trust this theory, but my current duo is severely testing my patience.
Cairo would eat kibble all day long if I let her, but she’s like me with a bag of potato chips and she has the physique to show for it. She is affectionately known as Chonk in some circles. They both get wet food, but as prices have escalated, I’ve moved to the large cans to try to economize. Pea was not happy with the lack of choice because instead of moving between several flavours, she was stuck with the same one two days running. She got really stroppy when I further economized by buying cases of the large cans.
If you own a cat, you know the surest way to get them to quit eating a certain kind of food is to buy a case of it. I keep kibble on hand for when somebody is getting a take-it
Cairo would eat kibble all day long if I let her, but she’s like me with a bag of potato chips and she has the physique to show for it
or-leave it dinner. The cats, not the kids. As I stood in front of the display of kibble the other day, a clerk asked if she could help me.
“I have one fat cat and one skinny cat,” I said. “But I’m only buying one bag.”
“Are they active?” she asked me. “Well, Chonk chases Pea, but that’s about the extent of it.”
She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Maybe I was. She tried a different tact. “How old are they?”
“I think Pea is 10, and Cairo is probably eight,” I replied, like a mother who is unaware her children are playing in traffic because she’s home with a martini and a Xanax at four in the afternoon.
“This should work,” she said, pointing to a bag that said it was for senior kitties.
“Will this work for two different ages, one picky, one not, one fat, one skinny, one that gets hairballs and one that doesn’t?” By this point, the poor clerk was rueing the day that pet food companies got so specific with their labelling. When I was a kid, our cat ate something called Cat Food.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” she said, retreating slowly down the aisle. The prices indicated the largest bag was by far the best deal, and throwing caution to the wind, I made the purchase.
Things went well for a week or so, before both cats started asking if we could get a different flavour. I glanced at a bag of cat food as big as a bed pillow and just laughed.
“If you get hungry enough, you’ll eat it,” I told them. In my head, I could hear my mother’s voice as I remembered she used to say the same thing, and she’d been absolutely right.
Except she was saying it to her fussy kids.
LORRAINE SOMMERFELD HAS WRITTEN THE MOTHERLODE COLUMN FOR THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR FOR OVER 20 YEARS. SHE IS ALSO AN AWARDWINNING AUTO JOURNALIST, AND HER FIRST NOVEL, "A FACE IN THE WINDOW," IS AVAILABLE AT AFACEINTHEWINDOW.COM. YOU CAN REACH HER AT CONTACT@LORRAINEONLINE.CA