I recently met my friend Dorothy for lunch.  Dorothy is the owner of a beautiful Russian Blue.  He was a tiny little thing when I first met him, scared of his own shadow. He now weighs 6kg.  6kg!!!!  Can you imagine it?  That is 6 times a normal bag of granulated sugar and twice the size of two my girls! But the boy is solid, this is not fat.

Dorothy’s affectionate name for her boy is ‘Tink the Stink’. He doesn’t stink but he is a stinker in the sense that he is ‘a bit of a lad.’  He rips the carpet apart, the soft furnishings and ties to swing from the curtains (easier and safer when he was smaller).  In fact, he rips anything that is vaguely rip-able.  Not so different from my girls really.

Of course, ‘the mummies’ started telling cat-war stories.  

            “Of course, he’s into self-catering,” said Dorothy.

    “Oh, you mean he’s started hunting his prey?” Said I.

            “Oh no.  He knows where the sachets of cat food are kept and he helps himself. Usually three or four packets at a time. He rips them apart, one by one, takes what he wants, which is usually only a couple of mouthfuls and then leaves the rest. Usually right where I want to walk.”

The vision of this adorable cat helping himself to sachets of cat food made me cry with laughter. Even my girls haven’t resorted to that, although if they’d thought about it, they probably could.

            “Mm, not sure whether that is better or worse than my little Oceana,” I said.  You will remember, Oceana is the Queen, and undoubtedly the smartest one of my bunch.

Dorothy looked at me, quizzically.  

            “A while back, I’d cooked some chicken, and put it on a plate in the ‘fridge’.  I went to bed and all was well.  When I came down in the morning, the ‘fridge’ door was wide open, plate upside down on floor, chicken gone.”  

Of course, I had known straight away who the culprit had been.  I now have a child lock on my fridge door.  She hasn’t worked out how to open that… yet…  I, on the other hand, struggle from time to time.

And then there was the time, when I had the old storage container for the dry food….  I tend to buy my cat food in bulk, it’s just easier when I either have to collect it or have it delivered.  

My girls have three different types of food, to cater for a range of different things: dental, urinary tract, skin, and to give them variety.  The bags come in 3kg, 3.5kg and 10kg.  A few years back, I bought a storage container that stated it would hold 10kg of dried food.  That was a lie, it didn’t.  It was more like 9kg, so I’d pour as much of the 10kg bag into it as I could and leave the rest in the original bag.  This was no self-seal bag and  Telesto and Oceana didn’t much like the idea of waiting for their food…. 

Picture the scene: Mummy comes home from a long day at work to find cat biscuits all over the kitchen floor…. They make a very crunchy mess when you walk on them, and if the floor is a bit slippery and you don’t pay attention, it’s easy to go flying… 

To be fair, they did have the good grace to eat what I didn’t manage to clear up and put back in the bag.  

Telesto ate a whole packet of Dreamies one day when I didn’t fully close the drawer…  

I’ve bought a new bin for their dry food now, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before they work out how to know the lid off…  Does someone want to remind me why I worry about them not having enough food?

© Susan Shirley