She’s not as stupid as she looks

J and I have always been cat people. I think that’s because of three things: (1) they are low-maintenance; (2) their trust is a precious thing, and once you’ve earnt it, you feel on top of the world; and, (3) they’re low-maintenance.

Sausage’s appearance has — as Lennon put it — tossed a Spaniard in the works when it comes to gauging feline intelligence, however. Here we were, thinking that Fluff and Squeak were members of the smarter species when evidence to the contrary seems to crop up at the least expected moments.

The cats, for example, take an extraordinarily long time to figure out how to get from A to B if their favourite door is closed. Sausage? No problem, she says, just whip in through the guest bedroom, down the passage and into the kitchen. Taa-daa! So, do you have some food for me or what?

And we’ve had an interesting experience with, er, food. We buy our cats slabs of frozen meat in handy 900g (2-pound) lots. The problem is defrosting it with two hungry cats around, so we normally pile on things to stop our darlings getting at it. I use an overturned cast-iron pot, but J has been a little slack by using only three wooden chopping boards arranged artfully over the meat in the sink.

Somehow (and this is more motivation for me to get a webcam in the kitchen rather than anywhere else), the cats have managed to navigate the maze of boards, hook the meat and drag it onto the kitchen floor. (They are big cats.) All well and good. They start tucking in … and are rumbled by a keen-eared Sausage with a perennially empty stomach. Or so she makes out.

Now, I haven’t seen this so I’m speculating here but, based on how the story plays out when I am around, I imagine she does her little bolshy stiff-legged strut up to the cats, snuffling near their heads, they scarper…and she’s left with 2 pounds of glorious red meat, all to herself!

The first time this happened, Sausage was a puppy, and I only rumbled to what happened when she came into my office and regurgitated entire slabs of meat behind my black rucksack. The cats were miserable…and still hungry.

We had a good laugh and moved on.

Well, yesterday, it happened again. The exact same thing. Only in the meantime, Sausage had grown and, this time, managed to internally retain her prize. Of course it made her look exactly like an overstuffed sausage on four chopsticks, she wasn’t quite so sprightly going up the stairs at the end of the night, and all she wanted to do was lie some place comfy and, legs akimbo, go to sleep, but the cats still ended up hungry and indignant. (Not a speck of remorse from our feline companions regarding their meat-bagging, but lots of emo-angst. Maybe I should suggest their casting in the next Twilight movie?)

J looked at them with a jaundiced eye. “You’d think they’d learn,” he told me, while the kids fell about in laughter around us. In the kitchen, the patch where we cleaned up the blood was still damp with the dregs of detergent and water, Sausage was gamely trying to wag her tail and look innocent at the same time, and the cats were lined up against the cabinets, looking disconsolate and complaining in loud voices.

“They know she has excellent hearing,” J continued, “and it isn’t as though this is the first time it’s happened.”

But now, in relating the story to you, I wonder if there are two lessons here? Yes, certainly, the cats have to get a bit more crafty if they want to purloin their provisions ahead of time. But I also think J should abandon his three-board model. It seems both the cats and him need to devise alternative strategies, or Sausage will triumph again. I’m not saying boo to the cats but may I suggest a cast-iron pot to my husband? I figure, if the cats can get under that, they deserve whatever they can get their thieving paws on. What say you?

Ah, the joys of a multi-species household. Have a great weekend, folks, and I’ll catch you Monday.