Cat Treats

Sasha, the cat who owns me, has excellent taste. She prefers the comfort of a warm laptop to a ratty old towel or blanket. She prefers one of my pillows to the dime-a-dozen cat beds built expressly for her kind (which, as far as I can tell, is significantly higher on the totem pole than my kind). She prefers to cry and yowl for me to get her off the dining room table rather than climb down herself (despite the fact that she managed to get up there all by herself).

Her desire for the finer things in life extends to food. Why eat boring, modified-for-renal-failure food when you can have bright, colorful, Fancy Feast? All I have to do is crinkle the bag it comes in and, suddenly, there's a little face with big ears in the kitchen asking "Where's the beef?"

So recently, when she and I both experienced some disorientation after rearranging the bedroom, I knew a little dry Fancy Feast was just the treat to calm her anxious tail. A little furniture movement proved to be quite distressing, since neither of us are inclined to change any more than our positions on the couch. All of the sudden, the bed was in a different place, her little kitty stairs (required, because my bed is so high) were on the opposite side of the bed (or is that the same side but the opposite side of the room?), and the baskets and toys that used to be on the floor by the kitty stairs are now somewhere else. What's a girl to do?

I started by putting Sasha dead center on my bed and watched her turn around in circles until I got dizzy. She sat. She turned again. She leaned forward. She turned again. Finally, she looked around the room, looked at me, and gave me an expression that told me she was about to jump, kitty stairs or no. Now, Sasha is 19, ancient in kitty years. Imagine your grandmother jumping off the roof of your house, because that's pretty much how it compares. I dashed to the kitchen, shaking the bag of Fancy Feast, and hurried back to the bedroom, placing a handful on the bed in front of her. As predicted, this calmed her down immediately. If you're not familiar with it, dry Fancy Feast is crack for cats. Sasha starting rubbing her cheek on the bed, tossing the pieces of food up in the air, batting them around, and finally gobbling them up as though she hadn't eaten in days.

Seeing an opportunity, I placed a few pieces on the nightstand next to the bed, and a few more on the kitty stairs that leads from the nightstand to the floor. Maybe I could get her to eat her way to the floor and finally figure out how to get up and down with the new setup. While Sasha has a heat sensor that can lead her to a basket of warm clothes from the dryer in 0 to 60, her sense of smell is not as developed, so I followed Hansel and Gretel's lead to create a trail of Fancy Feast from her spot on the bed to the edge closest to the nightstand. The temptation was too great. Tentatively, she stepped onto the nightstand, ate the Fancy Feast pieces, and looked at me. I have no idea what she thought I should be doing, so I pointed to the stairs. Oh, she seemed to say. That's kind of far, isn't it? But she bravely made her way down the stairs, familiarity returning, nibbling along the way. Satisfied, I left.

A few minutes later, I came back to find Sasha comfortably waiting at the bottom of the stairs. What now? She'd positioned herself oddly, around to the side of the stairs, essentially cornering herself under the window. Evidently, she was now under the impression that, if she waited long enough, the stairs would begin growing Fancy Feast pieces just for her. Since she has nothing but time on her hands, she figured she'd just wait for the next delivery. She looked up, glanced my way, and glanced back at the stairs.If there's a clearer way for a cat to order her mom around, it must involve them learning the English language. Anyone who thinks people own cats as pets has never had one. I would argue the point, but my cat is calling for me.