What, You Don't Feed Your Cat By Hand?

Desperate times call for retro methods.

When I told my mum what I had done, she did the parental trilogy; head shake, eye roll and verbal tat tat. Even my most logical reasoning didn't sway her belief that I had gone over to the crazy pet owner's side. Maybe...

Mausi has hardly been eating but when we eat, she hungrily dances around us and no, we don't feed her morsels from our plate. On Tuesday while I was organizing Bob's diabetic equipment, I took the opportunity to visit the pet store and take my time meandering from one aisle to the next. Food galore but only the best would do for our cat. Trying to tempt her pallet, I bought a cross section of stuff.

Back at home, even the tempting rabbit, buck or beef concoctions didn't move her majesty to eat more than a whisker of it. Panic time for Bob and I. Should we start to cook her food? No, surely not.

There was only one other option left...Googling which got me the aforementioned motherly stricture. The good folk hanging out on Google gave the advice of hand feeding your cat, if all else fails. Look, I wouldn't do it for any other cat but ours. Rolling up my sleeves, I put a handful of her wet food into the palm of my hand and called her hither.

Yeah, or alas, she ate with gusto from my palm and I had to dig into her bowl many times before she was sated. As she is an animal with sharp fangs, I made sure to flatten my palm as much as possible. Not that she'd bite mummy on purpose, but remove temptation and so forth.

Bob wasn't home of course, because he'd have vetoed my way and I wasn't disappointed when I regaled him later with my success.

" Don't expect me to do it. "

The next meal, a different flavour was again eaten with a soft saucer and if I hadn't come up with another and better idea, Bob would have tried it too.

A saucer, a flat white saucer was the answer. Our princess didn't like eating out of a pet's bowl, mainly because her whiskers kept getting sauce and so forth stuck on it. Since putting out the saucer, she has eaten at least three meal times in a row. Yeah. It turns out our cat is a regal creature after all and decorum and etiquette seem to be most important to her.

Thank goodness we've found a way to get her to eat, as otherwise our list of pet-sitters would have dwindled faster than an ice cube in bright sunlight.

Biggi