Cher and her crumbles

I haven't written much about my kids lately. So this one's about Cher.

Cher has always seemed to think that getting pet is an important part of her being able to eat. So when we'd walk in the general direction of where we keep her food she'd get excited, walk under our feet, and meow as she led the way to her food bowl. Letting us know just how hungry she was because how could she possibly eat if one of us wasn't there to pet her? We've tried to break her of this habit, and she no longer expects morning and evening petting sessions while eating. But she does still like it, so every once in awhile we'll give her that special treatment.

Cher's food is dry cat food, and all of the kibbles are the same shape and size. She doesn't seem to mind that, but she's not 100% efficient at eating those kibbles. Sometimes as she bites them a crumble or two will fall back into the bowl. And eventually there are only crumbles left--no full sized kibbles.

Cher does not like the crumbles. Cher HATES the crumbles.

One night a couple weeks ago Marty declared, "Cher doesn't get any more food until she finishes her crumbles!" Yep, it was sort of like saying to a child, "You will eat your vegetables, and if you don't eat them now, you'll have them for breakfast."

Now, I'm not certain if Cher understood the meaning of Marty's decree, but shortly after that she began really letting me know how hungry she was. Meowing away, "I'm so hungry and Dad won't feed me." Marty is generally the one who takes care of feeding Cher. And in coming to me with her hunger complaints, she was coming to the softer, more sympathetic parent.

I went with her to her food bowl and I began petting her to encourage her to try the crumbles. And she did. Every few bites she's look up at me like, "Can I be done now? That's three big bites. Isn't that enough?" We checked with Marty and he held firm on his declaration--she needed to eat all of those crumbles. I kept petting her while she choked down more crumbles. Then she stopped eating, looked at me, and puked.

She looked at me and began purring--apparently quite satisfied with herself for proving her point about her crumble dislike. Razor got to finish of the rest of the crumbles and Cher got a new bowl of full-sized kibbles.