Entry tags:
the case of the obligate carnivores
I have two cats. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
niqaeli and traykor have four. Mine are named* Buttface and Little Miss. Theirs are named Bratmonster, Grumpykitty, Snugglebutt, and the fourth, to my knowledge, does not answer to his name, only to his mistress.
In any case: theirs like human food like ice cream and chicken. When Bratmonster went after some turkeyniqaeli had after Thanksgiving, I mocked him and she rolled her eyes and said, "Obligate carnivore."
Mine do not appear to know they are obligate carnivores. Unless pumpkin guts actually are offal.
Buttface is always in the underfoot when I am cooking; I have stepped on his tail more than once (by accident!) and it does not deter him. Finding this inevitable, I do, I guess reward the behavior. I'll hold out a bit of whatever I'm making at waist height and watch him hop up on his hind legs to sniff it longingly.
Tonight I am roasting pumpkin, and if you are going through the trouble of roasting your own pumpkin then it would just be a waste of a good salt delivery system not to collect, clean and roast the seeds as well. So having put the main part of the pumpkin in the oven, I was sorting pumpkin guts from pumpkin seeds and letting Buttface sniff chunks of pumpkin guts. Only tonight this went: sniff, sniff, lick, lick, CHOMP. And then he would fall back to the floor with a few strands of pumpkin guts to devour. Oh, well, I thought, a little vegetable** never hurt anybody, and it's not like he's the one who pukes in the hallway on a regular basis.
(Little Miss is a longhair. She can't help it.)
Buttface in the underfoot in the kitchen is absolutely normal. I think if I were cooking something and didn't almost crush him at least once, I would start to wonder if he'd escaped the house or something. Little Miss, on the other hand, does not like interacting with standing humans: she is afraid of feet. She started out the pumpkin adventure a ways away from the kitchen, but in sight of it, and occasionally yipped to me. I find the best way to answer her vocalizations is to vocalize back--it's like she wants to be reassured that you know she's there. I'm not sure if vocal attention is all the attention she wants or needs or if she's trying to make sure no one's about to almost step on her.
But she edged closer. So I bent over to hold some pumpkin guts out to her. She sniffed at them from a reasonable distance of a few inches, not the nose-in-your-palm way Buttface does, and then she backed off. Ah, normal kitty, I thought.
Except she continued to yip whenever I let Buttface have a sniff-lick-CHOMP. So finally when I was just about done I left the last few bits of pumpkin guts on the plate and set the plate on the floor. I watched them come up and sniff it--both of them, how odd--and I honestly expected that would be the extent of it, because heaven knows when I offer them things like salmon skin they turn their noses up.
I turned my back on them to wash my colander full of pumpkin seeds and when I turned back around they were both sitting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen by the plate, which was entirely clean except for half of a pumpkin seed.
"Freaks," I said.
They each twitched an ear at me.
*whereby I mean what they actually answer to, because this is what they are called all the time.
**where by I mean fruit
niqaeli and traykor have four. Mine are named* Buttface and Little Miss. Theirs are named Bratmonster, Grumpykitty, Snugglebutt, and the fourth, to my knowledge, does not answer to his name, only to his mistress.In any case: theirs like human food like ice cream and chicken. When Bratmonster went after some turkey
niqaeli had after Thanksgiving, I mocked him and she rolled her eyes and said, "Obligate carnivore."Mine do not appear to know they are obligate carnivores. Unless pumpkin guts actually are offal.
Buttface is always in the underfoot when I am cooking; I have stepped on his tail more than once (by accident!) and it does not deter him. Finding this inevitable, I do, I guess reward the behavior. I'll hold out a bit of whatever I'm making at waist height and watch him hop up on his hind legs to sniff it longingly.
Tonight I am roasting pumpkin, and if you are going through the trouble of roasting your own pumpkin then it would just be a waste of a good salt delivery system not to collect, clean and roast the seeds as well. So having put the main part of the pumpkin in the oven, I was sorting pumpkin guts from pumpkin seeds and letting Buttface sniff chunks of pumpkin guts. Only tonight this went: sniff, sniff, lick, lick, CHOMP. And then he would fall back to the floor with a few strands of pumpkin guts to devour. Oh, well, I thought, a little vegetable** never hurt anybody, and it's not like he's the one who pukes in the hallway on a regular basis.
(Little Miss is a longhair. She can't help it.)
Buttface in the underfoot in the kitchen is absolutely normal. I think if I were cooking something and didn't almost crush him at least once, I would start to wonder if he'd escaped the house or something. Little Miss, on the other hand, does not like interacting with standing humans: she is afraid of feet. She started out the pumpkin adventure a ways away from the kitchen, but in sight of it, and occasionally yipped to me. I find the best way to answer her vocalizations is to vocalize back--it's like she wants to be reassured that you know she's there. I'm not sure if vocal attention is all the attention she wants or needs or if she's trying to make sure no one's about to almost step on her.
But she edged closer. So I bent over to hold some pumpkin guts out to her. She sniffed at them from a reasonable distance of a few inches, not the nose-in-your-palm way Buttface does, and then she backed off. Ah, normal kitty, I thought.
Except she continued to yip whenever I let Buttface have a sniff-lick-CHOMP. So finally when I was just about done I left the last few bits of pumpkin guts on the plate and set the plate on the floor. I watched them come up and sniff it--both of them, how odd--and I honestly expected that would be the extent of it, because heaven knows when I offer them things like salmon skin they turn their noses up.
I turned my back on them to wash my colander full of pumpkin seeds and when I turned back around they were both sitting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen by the plate, which was entirely clean except for half of a pumpkin seed.
"Freaks," I said.
They each twitched an ear at me.
*whereby I mean what they actually answer to, because this is what they are called all the time.
**where by I mean fruit
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