My Indiscriminating Cat

Keep moving, keep moving. No big writing discussion or process theories here today. Just a quick little post about, yes…Alice.

As a kid, I remember that we couldn’t leave food out on the counters, or one of the cats would get to it. But, since I’ve “grown up,” my cats have been amazingly non-food-grabby. I’m not saying that the roast chicken smell wouldn’t bring them running, or that their tails didn’t quiver if I opened a can of tuna. In general, though, baked goods were safe, and it was no big deal if the dishes didn’t get moved into the dishwasher before we went to bed.

And then came Alice. Overall, she is a smart little cat. (How do I know that? Well, sure, it’s based on the fact that she loves us and wants to spend time with us and hasn’t yet run (hard) into too many walls chasing the laser pointer. But still…) There are just a couple of things…Like she walks across the front of the stove top. A propane stove. With open pilot flames. She did this once when the kettle was on, with a full flame burning under it. Call it bravery, if you will, but I thought all cats came from the factory with more sense.

And then there’s the food.

• She jumps on the counter to get her face into her cat food before you’re ready to put it down, either in the bowl, the can, or the spoon.
• She licks at plates we leave on the counter.
• She puts her face and whole body into the sink to investigate what’s there.

So far, I  know, pretty cat-normal, if slightly aggravating. The kind of thing you could say to yourself, okay, sure, these would be good cat edibles in the wild.

The other day, though, I caught her licking the beaters from the electric mixer. Which I had been using for…

GLUTEN-FREE BREAD MIX.

Oh, yeah. Because every wild cat LOVES flour and water and butter and egg.

My new kitty and all her charms! I feel like I could start a blog, a la Jo Knowles’ THINGS WE PUT ON FRED. Only we’d call ours, THINGS ALICE STICKS HER NOSE INTO.