Animal Observations

As I sit here, I am currently listening to my cat clean up a mess she made. I am blessed with a cat who eats so fast, her stomach actually forces it back out. Kind of, "Wow, that's a lot of food all at once. Why don't we try that again in slow motion."

So after binging, then hoarking her kibble, she is now methodically eating it again. I've gotten over many things that would make a normal person squeamish, however I'm still a sympathetic puker.  Yes, even with animals. Only when I was pregnant did I actually throw up. Now I just dry heave a little; things are looking up!

Not that all this isn't disgusting enough, she has now re-eaten her fill and left the area. Cue dog...yep, here she comes, right on time.

There is no more methodical eating, just one big disgusting, bile-raising, slurp. Quick. Efficient. Done. (Insert dry heave)

This raises a couple, thought provoking questions.

1. Why won't the damn cat slow down? Seriously, almost every night we go through this binge, hoark, eat routine. Yuck! (Yes, we've tried feeding her less, but more often. We've even put obstacles in her food dish - doesn't seem to slow her down at all.)

2a. Why does the cat eat her own puke?

It's disgusting on so many levels. When humans hoark, we usually figure out that something went wrong between the eating and the digesting posts. After we finally quit reversing natural physiology, we go lie down somewhere to wallow in self-pity.

2b. This is somewhat the same question. Why do dogs eat nasty stuff? Trash, tissue paper, diapers, anything rotting, the list goes on.

They have super noses, so they should be able to figure out, by smell alone, that they are about to eat something normally considered inedible. Unless their super noses can pick up on subtle nuances that we can't?!

Most days I'm happy when I can actually smell or taste the things I'm supposed to taste when drinking wine. I always thought having a nose capable of picking up the things a dog can smell would be extremely helpful; now I'm not so sure. Anything that may lead me down the road to eating my own puke doesn't seem like a good thing...and that's just a cat's nose. A dog's nose would evidently make someone else's vomit a delicacy. No thank you.