Friday, October 19, 2007

about a cat

Sometimes when I serve my cat his dinner and he finds the quality unsatisfactory, he gives me an offended look and jumps out the kitchen window.
Goodbye, cruel cat food!
Minutes later, he is scrabbling at the back door. I open it. He slinks past, rewarding me with a brush of his fur on my calf.
Miaow!, he cries, managing to sound relieved, smug and sycophantic all at once.
He heads for his bowl, in the hope that something else will have magically taken the place of the home-brand fish in his absence.
It hasn’t.
He gives me another dirty look and is out the window again.
Five minutes later, scrabbling at the back door. I open it again.
This time I don’t get any fur.
Miaow!, he cries, managing to sound--etc.
This goes on several times until the cat accepts its unhappy fate and sullenly eats a mouthful of home-brand fish, then goes to settle his unhappy self on a couch arm, giving flinty glares if any attempt at patting is made for the duration of the evening. After a while he jumps on the telly, dislodging the aerial he knows is only held in place by BluTac, and smirks a little as I swear and spend a long time fixing the reception. When the picture is restored he rearranges his warm fat body so that his tail is hanging across the face of the person talking on television.
He sighs loudly to reiterate: He does not like home-brand fish.