louiscatorze.com

Merci à Dieu: the Easter holidays are here!

As from last Saturday, Louis Catorze was switched down to the lowest dose of pills (one every other day). And, five days later, the silly sod scratched himself. So he is now back up to one pill per day.

However, he is eating from the bowl gifted by his cher ami Sammypuss. This is good news. Cat Daddy, might I add, is not helping matters with remarks such as, “Poor boy. You’ve had to deal with so much since SOMEBODY broke your favourite bowl.” (Cat Daddy has broken 724 things in the house whereas I’ve only broken about three, but tant pis.)

I have sought bowl-fussiness advice from a number of friends and the general theme of replies has been, “My cat only cares about the food and doesn’t give a hoot about what it’s served in.” With the exception of a few cats who aren’t keen on plastic bowls, absolutely none of my friends have had experience of a cat being so particular as to hesitate to eat their familiar food from a different vessel. This makes me very nervous indeed, because I had hoped to try out the PDSA’s idea of serving the old and the new food in two – TWO – separate bowls.

Most advice regarding changing a cat’s food suggests mixing the old and the new together and progressively increasing the proportion of the latter, but this didn’t work the last time. However, the PDSA’s plan is different, the idea being “to introduce them to the idea that this strange new substance with a different smell and texture has something to do with food”:

https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/looking-after-your-pet/kittens-cats/changing-your-cats-food

I can see the logic in that concept; perhaps Catorze didn’t eat the previous mixture because he didn’t understand why his familiar old food suddenly smelled different. I don’t like to think of him being SO stupid that he didn’t realise it was still edible but, regretfully, I think he actually is.

However, my decision to try this out took place before the destruction of Catorze’s favourite bowl and the lawlessness that ensued. I now have to make the decision of whether to put his new food into his Sammypuss bowl and the old food into a(nother) different one, or vice versa. The first option makes by far the most sense, but then I am also trying to second-guess the most illogical and mercurial mind ever to exist.

It’s utterly nonsensical that I even have to think about this, but then “utterly nonsensical” is exactly what he does.