This is how one gets in trouble with cats:
See this boy, Toby?
See how thin he is?
See this sad face?
Could you resist it?
Toby needs feeding up. He may be developing kidney issues, so of course we purchased kidney diet, at considerable expense.
Needless to say it sits, still, in the cupboard.
You can try to feed a cat a special diet and it may humour you by consuming half a teaspoonful. But I’d recommend you only lay in a very small supply.
You cannot force a cat to eat something it doesn’t like.
Begging and pleading will get you nowhere.
Kibble is bad for him.
But so is starvation.
Force feeding? A cat?
Inhumane and very dangerous to your own health.
So. You feed the cat what you can. When you can.
Toby sometimes sits beside me as I write.
And I happen to have kibble in a drawer.
So when he feels peckish, he sits in front of me with this look.
Well what would you do?
Of course, you’d slip him a bit of kibble.
The only trouble with that was…Willow was sleeping in a chair next to the drawer whence said kibble had to be extracted…
…and Willow is not deaf. See that eye…
…but she did not stir…not even when Toby crunched his kibble right beside her.
That would have been beneath her dignity.
She just made a sleepy eye, as if she was not interested, but she did not quite go back to sleep.
The expression narrowed to read “I saw what you just did.”
One way or another, I’ll have to pay.
It hurts to see Toby in this state.
I hope he will get over it soon.
Toby has always been very slender and even though he looks sad, I think he has a happy enough life. We love him to bits. Kidney disease in cats is very bad news. We have seen too many go down with it and all you can do is watch and try to decide when enough is enough, which is very difficult. But Toby isn’t there yet. Fingers crossed.
You cannot lead a cat to diet food and you, most definitely, cannot make them eat it!
I can only imagine the damage that would incur.
Oh, Toby’s face (when he sits in front of you), is just so adorable đź’Ś. There’s no way that I could say ‘no’ when looking into those eyes!