Paws and Reflect

Lizzie B is a bit of a chowhound for a tiny little tabby. She loves her noms. Since she can only eat wet cat food (gag), I don’t love feeding her. It’s gross. SOOOOO GROSS.

Especially now, because – due to her food allergies – I’ve invested in prescription food for her. It comes in two flavours: Vension and Duck.

People. I’ve eaten a bit of venison in my day. I think it’s delicious.

The cat food version is, apparently, NOT delicious.

Also – and I can’t stress this enough – IT. REEKS. It smells like … old socks and the bottom of a compost heap and a mangy bear. It’s … pungent.

Lizzie B goes all Miss Elizabeth Bennett when confronted with it and won’t eat it. I can’t say that I blame her, really, due to the highly offensive stank that rolls off of it in waves, but since a) She’s a CAT, and licks herself on the regular and b) a case of this stuff is about $60, I’m being sort of insistent about the “YOU WILL EAT THIS, YOU TEENSY BALL OF ADORABLE AND CLAWS.”

I am determined to win the battle of wills. I AM. I am ALSO determined to break her of her “I will wake my mom up in the middle of the night by poking her in the face with my paws until she stumbles into the kitchen to make me stop by appeasing me with alternate food selections, some of which I might find acceptable.”

This is a tougher battle, and frankly, one that is less than awesome. Because she is, after all, a cat, and doesn’t understand logic or reason or “Mummy needs her beauty sleep” and I think that, in her brain, she observes my sleeping form and thinks “Silly Mummy. Get up! Get up now and bring me something to eat, because you clearly are failing to grasp that I don’t LIKE the food there and need more noms. NOW. I WILL POKE YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL YOU GET UP. I MAY APPLY CLAWS IF NECESSARY.”

Here’s the thing, though, about her full frontal facial assault – she purrs the entire time, and rubs her face against mine and is ridiculously cute about it.

She also, I might mention, saves this JUST FOR ME. The Fella can be in bed, fully awake and alert, sitting up and reading, and she will walk over him so she can peer in my face and poke me awake. He will shoo her away and she comes back, a fuzzy boomerang, so she can resume jabbing me in the chin with a paw, purring and drooling the whole time, happy as a cat can be.

On the one hand, I want to shoot her across the room. Leave me alone! Go eat your stinky food and let me sleep!

On the other – do I want to teach her that it’s not okay to snuggle with me and be all loveable and awesome?

No. I kind of don’t.

So I don’t get up. But I don’t give her a short and sudden flying lesson, either. I lay there, paws on my face, cat on my chest, and listen to her purring joyfully, if hungrily. I sometimes scritch her ears. She sometimes scritches mine.

I guess we’re still figuring each other out.