Cats on a diet

Recently, Andy has been taking manly charge (grrrrrr!) at work, mainly because 'things' have occurred there which have caused him a huge amount of distress (resulting in much comfort cake eating at home) and in order to preserve his sanity he has been trying to make daily life as simple for everyone as possible until 'things' are resolved and normal service is resumed. Ha! I say 'Ha!' because I would have liked to have marched in there ages ago and 'git fings sortid' in my Cockney Eastenders Philippa Mitchell kinda way. In fact, when the 'thing' first occurred and Andy was in danger of taking off into space under the power of his super-high blood pressure, he had to tie me to a chair each morning in order to stop me coming with him. He'd then make a dash for the car and by the time I'd struggled free from the ropes he'd be well on his way and I'd need three cups of tea and a shortbread just to recover from the struggle.

'What has this to do with cats on a diet?' I hear you cry. Not much actually but I feel better for the rant especially as I experienced a moment of lane rage whilst swimming this morning but that's another story and I'll tell it when I've reguritated the 3 litres of water I managed to swallow.

So, Andy being manly at work has had a knock on effect at home and he's decided that Phoebe and Tybalt need to go on a diet. Now I can see that Phoebe could lose a kilo or two. Currently, she is modelling the 'I've swallowed a whole melon' look. She registered 53 steps on her pedometer yesterday and 40 of those were from her bed to the food bowl and back again. She is thirteen years old. I'm not sure how old this is in human years - you'll have to ask Andy; he's a vet and knows the formula for working out these things. So yes, Phoebe does need to slim. But Tybalt? Okay, so he does have a baggy underhang but that's down to a hernia he had when he was but a likkle ikkle fluffy kitten. (No it isn't,says Andy. Yes it is, says Denise. Who's the vet? says Andy. You are, says Denise, but do you want any cake in your lunchbox tomorrow? Okay you win, says Andy. Thanks darling, says Denise).

And Tybalt is active. Although he is a house cat, he races around, darting up and down the stairs like a gazelle on speed. We have kipper wrestling sessions. He plays 'pat-the-pasta-shape.' He dances with Mr Light in the kitchen (only not today because it's raining and Mr Light doesn't appear without the sun). But no, Andy has declared my cat is getting fat so I agree to supervising their calorie intake in an attempt to tone them up.

This is how it has gone so far. I rise in the morning and put a measured amount of dried cat food in the bowl. Phoebe and Tybalt both start breakfast. Tybalt eats about four kibbles, drops one on the floor, loses interest and goes into the front room for a surreptitious chew on Terwilliger, our gi-normous potted fern (yes, the plant has a name - you got a problem with that???). By the time he comes back, Phoebe has eaten all the food so he sits and stares at me until I put some more in the bowl. And when I say stare, I really mean STARE. Phoebe is conditioned to go to the bowl every time she hears food landing in it (dried cat food is very noisy - perhaps that's where we're going wrong? Perhaps she needs ear-plugs??) So she joins in for breakfast number 2. Then, at regular points during the day, Tybalt will stare at me and I will put six or seven kibbles in the bowl which he will eat, then wander off only to return half an hour later to do more staring and so the cycle continues.

IT'S DRIVING ME NUTS! I know what they are thinking, these cats of ours. They are thinking, 'We refuse to be starved like this. Let's make such a nuisance of ourselves that she'll go back to filling the bowl up properly, like in the good old days, so we can help ourselves whenever we want.' And then Phoebe added that perhaps Tybalt could do the half hour staring thing because she is getting old after all and it's a bit of a slog walking around with a whole melon in your stomach.