Today marks day one of the “anytime food” experiment for our cats. Up until now, we’ve had automatic feeders dispensing dry food in the morning, and we’ve been giving them wet food by hand in the evening. Well, the batteries in the feeders died, and we thought this would be a good time to try. We had tried once before with Shakey, back when we were living in the apartment – that didn’t work too well. He would stand there and gobble up any dry food coming his way. Repeatedly. We had to give up because he was gaining weight, and not adjusting to the concept of food sitting out.
He’s older now, and a little bit less protective of his food. Recently, we’ve even noticed him walking away from his bowl while there’s still stuff in it. So off we went this evening – putting out their regular serving of wet food, and filling up their dry food bowls. And then we watched in amazement as both of them gobbled up their wet food, and then, like the food vacuums that they are, moved on to the dry food. And crunched. And muched. BB left for a bit, and then ambled back, Shakey still not lifting his snout away from the bowl. And then she came back for seconds (probably closer to thirds, in terms of portion size). Finally, even the main piggy left, and stayed away for a good 5 minutes.
When we came back from volleyball, there were still a few kibbles left of what was probably close to their (normal) daily portion of food. I managed to refill the bowls for tomorrow without the cats hearing – they were passed out in a food coma. Is that what people look like at Thanksgiving?
So day one was only marginally better than last time – but there’s food out now and it’s not being eaten! Baby steps, people, baby steps. I’m very hopeful we can get them used to this idea without them fattening up (which is what happened to Shakey after our first attempt) – those feeders take a good amount of space in the kitchen, and it would be nice to have them out from under my feet. Although I think in that case, I think I’ll miss the gong show that accompanies the yelling of the word “Food” in our house.
