More Than One Way To Feed A Cat

I stir my tea and stare out the window at the pouring rain. I notice, at the bottom of the garden, Rodney sits looking forlorn and miserable.

About half an hour ago, the moment I kick-started the gigantic yellow Dyson vacuum cleaner in the front room, he darted his furry ginger backside out the back door to his favourite spot just below a bird’s nest. Now, too scared to venture back inside, he has gone from fat and fluffy to soaked and scrawny.

I step over the puddles to stand on the edge of the lawn and call his name, “Rodney… Rodney…”

His eyes – great big saucers of ennui – blink twice.

Not wanting to squelch across the muddy grass, I bring out the secret weapon. I crouch down and in that voice reserved for cats shout, “Fish!”

Quicker than Jabba the Hut to the annual Empire Christmas party buffet table, Rodney bolts across the lawn, past me, and in front of his food bowl. Of course I have no fish to give him, but I put some cat food in his bowl, open and close the microwave door, and he doesn’t know the difference.

The reason Rodney probably can’t tell if I’ve given him fish or not is because he scoffs his food so quickly that I’m certain it never touches his tongue. It’s not eating, really, but inhalation.

If ever there was a being that just ate, slept and shat – it is Rodney.

In the wee hours of the morning Rodney will be at the bottom of the stairs squawking. He won’t let up until someone stumbles down the stairs and puts some food in his bowl; or, if there is food there already, pushes it from the sides into the middle.

A few hours later he will be making desperate noises – looking from his food bowl to you to his food bowl – until he is fed yet again. His flat face and bad sinuses make his puling sound like the last gasps of some pathetic dying thing, and are impossible to ignore.

If one were so inclined, a conveyer belt could be designed with a small cat-mouth-size funnel at the end that poured ‘Felix with Beef & Jelly!’ down his gob. In all likelihood the contraption would break down before old fatguts was satisfied.

But I can’t get mad at him or feel any kind of contempt for such greediness.

When a snorting, burping lump like Rodney has licked his lips and then deposited a turd the size and shape of a baby seal into his litter tray, all he has to do is aim his sorrow-filled eyes at yours, meow in that whispering way so you swear he’s trying to form the word “Help”, and gently paw at your knee.

Then you let him climb onto your lap, and hope you can get to the next commercial break before he needs feeding again.