Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 2)

~ iamthesunking

It pains me to admit this after Sammypuss and Alex were kind enough to send TWO bowls, but double-bowling just isn’t working out for Louis Catorze.

He has no issue with the bowls themselves, but he is utterly flummoxed by the presence of two. Not only does this put him off eating the new food, but he is also unsure of his old, familiar food AND HIS PILLS. Anything that deters him from his pills has to be addressed, because we don’t want to have to add Grecoing to the list of Grand Changement problems.

More worryingly, there has been some bizarre behaviour in response to the two bowls. As well as sitting and staring at them with the level of suspicion usually reserved for unexploded bombs, Sa Maj has been approaching them at a strange angle and eating with his body contorted awkwardly through the legs of the stool* that sits around/above his feeding station. This is something that we have never seen before, and watching it has been quite uncomfortable.

*Incidentally, the stool is not the problem. He has always happily eaten underneath it – in fact, he has never NOT eaten underneath it.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “The PDSA are probably used to normal cats who do normal things. They won’t have come across one as weird as Louis.” Sadly, on this occasion, he may have a point.

We then decided to take a risky deviation from the PDSA’s guidance, offering Catorze both his old food and the Plan B food in one bowl. If mixing makes a cat think their familiar food has been poisoned, perhaps a distinct pile of each one in the same bowl would demonstrate that, although they look and smell different, they are both edible? Well, it made perfect sense to me. Which most likely meant it wouldn’t make any sense to Catorze, but it had to be worth a go.

I had some success with the first attempt, and he ate a small amount from each pile. Naturellement, after eating, there was some mixage between the two foods, so I pushed the pellets apart again to form two distinct piles. When I later refilled, once again he ate a little from each pile.

Although this is HUGE progress, we still have some way to go; the next phase involves the bigger deal of 50-50 servings of each food, so it would be premature to celebrate now. Or, as Cat Daddy put it, “There’s still time for him to f*** it up.”

The pubs are open again, as from today. I fear that, if I go into one, I may never come out again.

Before eating: Lily’s Kitchen at the top, Canagan at the bottom (garnished with a Pill Pocket).
After eating: Youpi!

20 thoughts on “Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 2)”

  2. What’s a good piece of news. I’m glad for you.
    Isn’t it a proof that your owe ideas are worth the ones of the PDSA’s experts?

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    1. I must say on this occasion I felt I had no choice but to trust the experts, because I tried something last time that didn’t work and I didn’t have any better ideas! I really hope this ends up working!

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  3. Mr. Bowie needed a lot of medication during his life. I was lucky there were never problems. You could give him any medication in all forms… Jimi is not that easy… And it seems Louis got a mind of his own!

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        1. 😱😱😱 Good grief. One earthling cat is enough trouble. I’m not sure I can cope with a ghost one too! 👻

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  6. Yay, there’s progress! What would happen if you mixed both foods? (Calinette also ate the pockets around the pills, I never managed to give her any medication, except towards the end, when I finally got medication that was actually mixed within the meat.)

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    1. I’m a bit scared of mixing because I used that technique with Catorze once before, and it all turned to merde on us. The little sod waited until we’d got to a mix of about (from memory) 70% new food and 30% old, and suddenly he declared, “HANG ON A SECOND: WHAT’S ALL THIS NEW STUFF?” My protests of “But you’ve been eating this for months” fell on deaf ears. I figured that having separate piles would mean no nasty surprises, but then I’m trying to use sensible human logic on an unsensible cat here. 🙄

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  7. I’m kind of siding with the idea that he thinks there is another cat in residence. Which – in most cats – would stimulate him to eat BOTH portions. It is a muddle…

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    1. Maybe he wants ghost cat to have first dibs? When he was found by the nice lady who eventually took him to a rescue, he would hang back and let her cats eat first!

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