CATS CATS CATS

Ever do something so often you don't think about it anymore??? and THEN it totally hits you that what you are doing isn't quite right???

We have 5 cats (which, if you have been reading my blog, you probably already know) and we have to feed these 5 cats in 3 different rooms.

We feed Max and Tigger, the two oldest cats, in the laundry room - which is a pretty good, out-of-the-way place for their food bowls. And it is where we always fed all our cats.

Until.......we got Missy 4 or 5 years ago. Max and Tigger took an instant and quite violent dislike to Missy. There was no way she would have been able to eat beside Max and Tigger. So, in order to provide Missy a nice safe and monitored place to eat, we started feeding her in the living room where one of us could keep an eye on things. Consequently, Missy will only eat in the living room.

When Nibbles showed up, she was very pregnant and starving all the time, so I took to feeding her in the kitchen where I could make sure no one stole her food - She didn't mind Max or Tigger or Missy, and probably would have eaten wherever I put her bowl, but the others might have stolen her food. Then when Buddy was old enough to eat "real" food, he (of course) wanted to eat with mom (Nibbles) in the kitchen.

Soooooooo....to recap. 2 bowls in laundry room, 1 bowl in living room, 2 bowls in kitchen.

ARE WE INSANE??????? And, YES, I have, on occasion, TRIED to get everybody (well, the cats, not us...) to eat in the laundry room - if not beside each other, at least in the same room!!! BUT, when I try this little experiment, they (the cats) get totally confused and run to their preferred spots (kitchen or living room) and if I pick them up and plunk them in front of their bowl, they bolt. And I'm left with a 5 bowls of cat food that, apparently, simply cannot be eaten unles placed in the proper spot.

So, I have to put the bowls back in the "right" places in the right rooms, track down the cats (who have by now scattered like panicked cock-roaches) try to re-assure them that the sky is NOT falling, their world is NOT collapsing and put them in front of their assigned bowl in its assigned place.

And.......they're just too freaked out to eat....and just sort of crouch there waiting for me to leave so they can run away....again. sigh

picture today is Buddy on the back of the couch - he is just too cute! My sister-in-law Janet, pointed out that the backs of our couches are all squashed down (like theirs) from the cats lieing there. ya gotta love 'em.