You can not force a cat to do anything it doesn't want to do. If a cat wants to eat, it eats, if not, it turns up it's nose and ignores you. Take dinner last night... and the night before... and the night before that... and... Ok, you get the point. H & I and B have a battle at dinner. Not getting her to eat her vegetables, or getting her to eat her protein. No, the battle is getting her to eat anything at all these days. Except eggs. She'll usually eat scrambled eggs, if they're pure. Don't try to scramble sausage into them, that would be WRONG. But we don't believe in making a special dinner for one child, so she gets what she gets, and she just needs to eat it. It's not like I'm serving weird food. Last night I believe she was offered a cheese burger, corn, and tater tots. POISON. She was sure of it. For dinner she had 4 sips of soy milk and 2 bites of cheese. Toddler sized bites. Bits really. So, we do not spoil her with custom dinners.
And because we are terrible parents who don't succumb to her requests for cookies and eggs, she will turn up her nose at the food. OR, worse, her new tactic: look straight down at her hands.
And no matter what you say to a deaf cat, it won't hear you... unless you say "shrimp" or "eggs". My cat is funny that way. Deaf as a post, but you crack an egg in a bowl and he'll arrive as soon as the shell is in the trash. Uncanny really. Well, once B is looking at her hands she can no longer hear you. You don't exist. You may as well be in Eastern Europe on a tour of Romanian Castles because B cannot hear you or see you.... and at this point, Eastern Europe is sounding better than the battle.
So why, you ask, do we fight the fight? She is a cat. She ignores us. She does what she wants. She demands things she wants when she wants them. She snuggles on her terms. She wants to go outside and come inside when SHE wants to, regardless of how long the door gets left open. So, WHY do we trouble ourselves with the battle over dinner? We could put her to bed hungry and be done with it. And, don't get me wrong, we've done that in pure frustration. At first our idea was, she'll learn her lesson. Well HELLO- cats are NOCTURNAL. IF they're hungry, guess who gets to hear about it? So again, just like a cat...
She gets up at O'dark thirty in the morning complaining that she's hungry and wants her "buffest now peas". Well, I'm sick, and I'm tired, and the last thing a person who is sick and tired wants in her bed is a toddler two hours before sunrise asking for food.
2 comments:
Eggs and shrimp? My cat growing up was clued in to the crinkly wrapper around a slice of Kraft Process Cheese Food.
BUT, back on topic. Moms around the world have to know - was B given the burger plate again, or did she get pure, unadulterated eggs at o'dark forty-five?
She was given NOTHING at o'dark forty-five. She was sent back to bed. Now, at sun rise, well, that was a different matter... she was given cereal with *milk. Which she ate, followed by a packet of instant oatmeal... which she also ate. And as the sands of time and blah blah... so the world turns, because that's exactly what she got again today after an o'dark hour wake up, after yet another battle.
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