Irrelevance Glorified

Well, my time as a catsitter is almost to an end. It’s been a crazy roller coaster ride. As for the meowing…well, we’ll mark my war against meowing a horrible, horrible failure. First of all, let’s describe what I’m up against. I arrive at the apartment, and the first thing I hear is a tiny pitiful meow, like a “Is someone really there?” meow. After about 20 seconds, this changes to a more insistent meow, like a “Finally! Where the hell have you been? I am HUNGRY” meow. Now, as part of my anti-meow campaign, I’m not going to feed this damn cat until she stops meowing. The first stage of her response is anger.

Gina says this type of tail wrangling is a sign of “extreme excitement”, but whenever I see it I think rattlesnake and impatience. Maki looks at the place where her food should be and it’s not there, and she is PISSED.

As part of my war on meowing, I won’t feed her until she stops meowing. But that’s quite an open-ended condition, so I decided that 15 seconds will be my cutoff. If she stays quiet for 15 seconds, then I will give her dinner. Well, waiting for her to stop meowing for 15 minutes seconds generally takes between 15 and 25 minutes, I would say, and I am not exaggerating. She’s figured out that sometimes when she leaves the kitchen, she comes back and there’s food for her. But most of the time, she runs out of the kitchen and keeps on meowing, which means I do nothing. She runs back in after about 30 seconds, and unleashes a few unhappy chirps. After about 20 minutes, probably by some coincidence, she shuts up for about 20 seconds, and I’m able to feed her.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This cat has a whole, full dish of dry food she can eat as well. She’s not starving. But she wants the good stuff. While I’ve never had a pet myself, I’ve dealt with plenty of pets, and in once instance dogsat for about about nine months while his owners were on sabbatical. The most frustrating about dealing with pets is getting them to understand what you want. In general, most pets want to please their owner, or barring that, just want to do whatever it takes to get some treats. As a scientist, I always put on my analytical hat and try and figure out different experiments to figure out what’s wrong. Obviously, me ignoring the cat wasn’t working. So I figured that maybe she wasn’t getting that I was purposely ignoring her. So, sometimes I looked at her while she meowed her heart out, letting her know that I could see her and I was ignoring her, for some reason. I also tried periodically picking up the food dish and making motions to give it to her until she meowed, at which time I would set it back down on the counter, and wait until she became quiet. My whole goal was to get her to understand that the reason she wasn’t being fed was because she was meowing. But basically, it appeared that my efforts were for naught. No matter what, she continued to cry and whine. My current theory (other than the cat is ridiculously stupid) is that she doesn’t realize she’s meowing — sort of like if I punished you for breathing; you would get pissed that I wouldn’t feed you, because you wouldn’t ever think that your offending action was breathing. Whatever, I’m through with this.

So, as of this moment, I’m giving up. Tomorrow Cameron and Gina return, so its not my problem anymore. But I can’t help but feel that this cat outsmarted me. She frustrated my good intentions, stuck to her guns, and she’s still meowing up a storm. This theory here is supported by the actions of the last night. I waited for her to stop meowing, and probably by some coincidence, she stopped meowing for about 20 seconds, so I gave her dinner. She ran up and took some bites, and then turned to me and meowed really loudly. Yeah, rubbing it in. She had her food and meowing.

She eats with a lot of gusto, and afterwards she does something weird.

She continues to meow while licking her lips and face, which just makes it look like she’s an actor in a poorly dubbed martial arts film. But these noises, they are not noises that she makes regularly. I’m not sure if they’re of the “Oh, I am very content after eating all this food” sort or the “Oh my god I ate so much I’m gonna puke” sort. Probably the latter. One time I accidentally fed her too much and she was extremely vocal afterwards, like she was eminently satisfied.

Alas, our time ended with a stalemate. I never broke down and entertained or fed her while meowing was going on, but she never actually learned to stop meowing. Touché, Maki, and well met. I hope that next time you may find me a more formidable adversary.

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