I have four cats. Most people consider that a LOT of cats. People react to the information on the size of my furry family in many ways, including comments like:
- “You must spend a LOT on litter/cat food!” (Yes, I do.)
- “Wow, do they all get along?” (No, they don’t. They’re like kids, sometimes they squabble.)
- “You must have to clean your house a lot” (Only if I don’t want giant cat fur tumbleweeds)
- and simply “You must really like cats!”
Most of the time, I do really like cats. But you know, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes the cats drive me BONKERS.
For example, recently my cats have decided they are hungry – no STARVING – ALL THE TIME. Saturday morning I got up at 6:20 and fed them, then went back to bed for some much-needed extra sleep. When I got back up at 8:00 they were sitting just outside the bedroom door, SCREAMING for food, despite having eaten less than two hours previously.
Now, to some extent, they have excuses. Rumpelmintz is on a new medication that has the known side effect of an increased appetite. In fact, we were counting on it, as she’s lost a lot of weight over the past year and we wanted her to gain some of it back. The medication seems to be working very well as she now yells for food constantly, and gobbles it up once served.
Kitty.com may have early symptoms of hyperthyroidism, one of which is an increased appetite. She not only demands food loudly, but swats at my legs when I walk by to punish me for not feeding her AGAIN. We can’t treat the condition until it’s advanced to a certain point, so for now it’s a waiting game.
Studley was a stray for years and maybe he just never got over that feeling of not knowing where his next meal would come from – or if it will come at all. He’ll eat about anything offered him, voraciously, as evident by his super-sized stomach.
Jellybean doesn’t really have any excuse, but she also screams at me for food less than the others – for food, that is. She likes to follow me around the house between mealtimes, begging for attention – LOUDLY.
So, there are times the cats definitely drive me nuts. I imagine it’s similar to how sometimes my friends’ children make them crazy. On occasion I even imagine a day when I don’t have any cats – where I come home at night to a house that’s quiet and still and just as clean as I left it (or at least no messier). However, I imagine that would be pretty lonely. For all their demands, my cats give much more than they take. In my experience, all relationships take work to make them worthwhile – and my relationship with my cats worth every investment I’ve made into it.
Submitted for publication in The Greeley Citizen.
Life of the Lintee Bean 
Beautiful! Ax [hitting “post” and hoping…]
Come November, mine are all eating twice as much as they do in the summer. But then, they do go out in my (cold, old) winter garden in daylight hours. Ax
I know what you mean, my two sometimes wake me (even biting me on the ass!) if I want to sleep in rather than feed them. It makes me a bit nostalgic for the old days, when they just nibbled dry food all day…. Which was why they had intestinal problems and bad teeth, of course, but it WAS nice to sleep in a bit more.
I have 5 babies age ranging from 12 to 4 and I get all the silly comments too. Wow that costs alot of money and do they get along – 4 out of 5 like each other – the 5th the older one hates them all.
Nice blog
🙂