That Damn Cat

I am officially concerned about the psychological effects of owning a cat.

The Girlfriend, as lovely and generous as she is, is also rather prone to stress and it doesn’t take much to work her up. Unfortunately, Uno seems to have not yet figured this out and so is responsible (However inadvertantly) for, among other things, causing her to be extremely distressed, angry, and, as of a couple of days ago, physically injured.

Uno is, after all, a street cat. She comes from a world where food was an occasionally uncertain thing, since, even though there were many people who wander the neighborhood at various hours of the day, leaving everything from actual cat food to left over human food for the cats to eat, the sheer number of cats in the neighborhood pretty much guarantee that meal time is a competition of the fastest eater or strongest defender in the hierarchy of street cats. Consequently, Uno has learned to wolf down her food at light speed and pretty much hoover ANYTHING else left sitting around. Despite the fact that she is a street cat, however, this hasn’t prevented her from becoming pudgy, though not yet hugely fat.

This is starting to change.

Now that she is a house cat, and has, for the most part, adapted pretty well to her new role, her eating habits have changed very little. This means that at meal times, what is definitely more food for her than is healthy is wolfed down in very short period of time. Once it is, she starts eyeballing Zero’s food and tends to leave him without any, since he has adapted what the books and veternarian tell us is a more healthy eating pattern, of nibbling regularly at his food at regular intervals over the course of the day. This pattern, while healthier for him, has also left him with no food after an hour, and more or less given Uno four meals a day.

The Girlfriend, however admirable it is, is very big on the concept of fair. The fact that Uno seems to be inadvertantly punishing Zero for his A) cowardice of her and B) healthier eating habits strikes her as consummately unfair and so she’s been getting pretty angry with Uno. Especially since she gets so much more food than Zero and yet it still doesn’t seem to be enough for her.

So what ended up happening a couple of days ago (While I was at the Microsoft Marketing thingy) was that she caught Uno raiding Zero’s food bowl once again, and got out the water bottle, chased her out while squirting her, slipped on the water on the floor and landed on her tail bone, which is still smarting even now. We’re going to wait another day (The pain has gone down somewhat, as has the swelling) and if it’s still really bothering her, I suppose we’ll have to get it checked out, ’cause right now she’s hobbling around like an old lady and is, understandably, somewhat peeved at the cat who obviously doesn’t think any wrong has been done. But then she lives in a very Uno-centric world and so all she understands is her hunger.

We’ve been trying to condition her. For the last day or so we’ve been laying out Zero’s food bowl where she can get it and then zapping her with water, then putting food in her bowl and letting her eat it. She seems to be slowly getting it, although she still experiments to see whether she can sneak a quick devour or two from his food. This is pissing off the Girlfriend to no end, and if she were an older woman, more set in her ways with higher blood pressure, I’m pretty sure a heart attack would be in the offing considering how much this is getting to her.

Sort of makes me wonder. Zero is stupid, and he is a coward, definitely not a public cat, but on the whole his behavior is much more manageable, something I never realized until I started seeing how other cats react compared to him. He’ll never be a popular cat amongst visitors since he’s not as outgoing or friendly as Uno. Then again, when the Girlfriend is in physical pain, or I am depressed about something, Zero seems to know and genuinely care about the suffering, whereas Uno has made it clear that she is only friendly to those who pet her or feed her. I guess it’s that whole question of personality again; Uno will superficially appeal to more people because she’s a more public cat who whores shamelessly for attention and food. Zero avoids the limelight and really is only comfortable around people he loves, but he is quite devoted and affectionate to those who make it into that circle of caring.

I’m hoping that it doesn’t come down to this, but there may be a time when we have to accept the possibility that we might have to give Uno away. It’s not that she’s an incredibly bad cat who tears curtains or anything like that, but her one particular pattern of misbehavior seems genetically designed to pick at the one area of conduct that will stress out the Girlfriend most. She doesn’t, by human terms, “play fair,” and Zero suffers for her greed, which, I admit, I’m not real thrilled about either, but I don’t get angry to the same proportions as the Girlfriend who has difficulty concentrating or even working properly when she even thinks about Uno’s constant raiding of the food bowl. Of course, it doesn’t help now that she’s also somewhat physically disabled as a result of trying to put a stop to Uno’s recent raid, so Uno is, for better or for worse, seriously starting to wear thin in the affection department around the house. Whatever charm she has a friendly cat is starting to become outweighed by the fact that she is starving the first, better behaved, though superficially less appealing cat.

Agh. Poor cats…