The feeding ritual

I live with three cats.

One is ancient, for a cat -- Oldest Kitty is a creaky little white thing who is missing many of her teeth. She sleeps most of the day on a chair in the living room. Even when she isn't in her chair, it is clear that it is her chair from the white cat hair that covers the seat.

The other two cats are larger, male and generally brown tabby-like. Blind Kitty is a bit younger than Oldest Kitty, but much more mobile and active. If Blind Kitty weren't blind, you'd think he was about the same age as the other boy cat. Extra Toes is about 10 years old, and by far the youngest of the three. He has, as you may have guessed, extra toes on all of his feet. I'll post a picture sometime soon, but for now imagine a normal cat foot and add two toes to the inside of each front foot. Where normal cats have 8 toes in front, he has 12. He also has dew-claws on his back feet, for a grand total of 22 claws... he generally gets what he wants.

Oldest kitty needs to eat babyfood --yea, the stuff in the jars -- she likes any meat flavor. I get strange looks in the supermarket when people see me clear out the "chicken and gravy" section of Gerber's food... Since she has very few teeth, she needs to eat baby food to avoid puking most of it up. This is the cat version of Ensure.

The problem is that Blind Kitty and Extra Toes LOOOOVE babyfood. They will more or less push Oldest Kitty out of the way to get at the babyfood we put down for her. Oldest Kitty is very cranky, so we can't just put her elsewhere to eat, because she won't eat it... so -- the feeding ritual goes as follows...

1) Oldest Kitty finds us in the kitchen and demands (via grunts and growls) to be fed.

2) We pick up Blind Kitty and Extra Toes and put them in a bedroom and return to feed Oldest Kitty.

Blind Kitty and Extra Toes have learned that if they are cooped up in the bedroom for about 10 minutes, they'll get babyfood. They go willingly... although each of them is pushing 20 pounds -- I can pick them up with one arm and take them in the bedroom...

3) Oldest Kitty finishes eating and returns to her chair for another nap.

4) We let Blind Kitty and Extra Toes out of the bedroom.

5) Extra Toes goes into kitty-overdrive to get to the kitchen first...

Extra Toes always beats Blind Kitty places, as Blind Kitty no longer runs because hitting something at Kitty Warp 9 hurts...

6) Eventually Blind Kitty finds the kitchen and Extra Toes lets him lick the spoon.

7) All is well... until Oldest Kitty gets hungry again, and we repeat the ritual....