Every day at noon it begins.
I’m in my office (still working from home), minding my own business when I feel a scratch on my leg.
Blinker is ready for dinner.
Yes, you heard me right, dinner.
Back in the before times, when I went into the office every day, I fed my cat Blinker twice a day—once in the morning before work, and once when I got home around 5:30 pm.
There is nothing in the world Blinker likes more than breakfast and dinner.
When I began working from home, she began demanding her dinner earlier and earlier. I started feeding her at 5:15, then 5:00. What harm could there be?
At noon (a mere six hours after breakfast) she begins with the scratch. Then she’s up on my desk, walking on my keyboard. She pushes my mouse off the desk. Pencils and my phone hit the floor, along with my notebook.
She chews on the pull string of my desk lamp. She sits on my hands while I try to type.
If I’m on a work conference call, she begins meowing. If it’s a particularly important call, she meows at the top of her lungs until my coworkers ask what the heck is going on. How she can determine the importance with deadly accuracy is beyond me.
If I’ve successfully ignored all this, she takes it to the next level by trying to crawl on my back while I’m sitting in a chair. While she sometimes does this for fun, in pursuit of dinner she will make sure to dig her claws in.
And finally, there’s the nuclear option: she sits in front of the computer alternating between staring at me and putting her butt in my face.
Using these techniques, she has successfully made her dinner earlier by fifteen minute increments until I now find myself feeding her at 2:00 pm.
I refuse to go any earlier and we’ve been at a stalemate for the last nine months.
At some point I’ll be going back to the office, and I’ve been trying to slowly push back her dinner time, but it isn’t easy.
Today I made it to 2:02 pm, two full hours after she began her antics.
It’s going to be a long summer.
Joe and Jake used to get three meals a day. Now they’re getting six, so I’ve had to halve the portions. They pretty much want a meal every two hours when I’m in the house. Plus a percentage of everything I eat. Has there been some kind of memo to pets to expect more food? A Joe is seemingly obsessed by getting on Zoom calls, shameless self-promotion. Why? What’s going on with cats?
I think it’s a power trip. They just want to see how quickly they can bend their humans to their will! Glad to hear that Jake and Joe are as spoiled as Blinker!
Switching off the tv when I’m watching it. Not happy at these tactics!
Oh no! Don’t let Joe and Jake teach Blinker that trick!