Like people, pets can have peculiar eating habits. My animals are no exception. Each one of them has their own special way of handling meal time. Or snack time. With four animals, it all becomes a blur.
I’m very particular about what my pets eat and probably spend far more money than I need to on their nutritional needs (and fussy tastes), but I think it cuts down on vet bills. Kinsey is the only one who regularly goes to the vet, but being the active dog that she is, she tends to be accident prone. My cats have always been healthy, but the oldest has had colitis a couple of times and had to have some teeth pulled. Then there’s the incident of Ted eating the dental floss… but I digress.
So what do my pets think about each others eating habits? Let’s find out…
Kinsey: You eat funny.
Sammy: Chewing. What? I don’t eat funny, I eat kibble. I probably wouldn’t like a funny if I tasted it.
Kinsey: No, stupid. I’m talking about the way you eat. It’s not normal.
Sammy: Selecting another bite of kibble. What’s wrong with the way I eat?
Kinsey: You don’t stick your face in your food bowl
Sammy: That’s because I’m not a savage. And you KNOW I have to share the bowl with my brothers. They slobber.
Kinsey: It takes you forever to eat two bites. Look at what you’re doing. You stick your paw in the bowl and pick out a piece of kibble, then pull it out of the bowl and onto the table. Then you eat it. What a waste of time.
Sammy: Carefully selecting a piece of kibble with her paw. It tastes better this way. Bite me.
Kinsey: Is that an invitation?
Sammy: Squints at Kinsey. Try it and see what a claw in your face feels like.
Kinsey: Clears her throat. You drink funny, too.
Sammy: Do not.
Kinsey: Do too.
Sammy: I drink water the same way all cats do.
Kinsey: Barks a laugh. I doubt it. You eat with your paws AND you drink with your paws. That’s weird.
Sammy: What’s so weird about it?
Kinsey: You stick your paw in the water bowl then lick the water off your wet paw. If that isn’t weird then I don’t know what weird is.
Sammy: Shrugs. Then you don’t know what weird is. Weird is a dog drinking water out of a glass.
Kinsey: It tastes better that way.
Sammy: Hm, why does that sound so familiar?
Kinsey: Rolls her eyes.
Sammy: I eat and drink slowly. YOU inhale your food.
Kinsey: It’s my survivor instinct.
Sammy: Do you even taste it first?
Kinsey: Pauses to think. Does it matter?
Sammy: Eyes wide with shock. Of course it matters! How can you eat something that doesn’t taste good?
Kinsey: But everything tastes good. Doesn’t it?
Sammy: Mumbles something about creaton dogs. Have you ever eaten something you don’t like?
Kinsey: Looking puzzled. No. What about you?
Sammy: Of course not, dummy. I’m picky about what I eat. If it doesn’t taste good I won’t eat it.
Kinsey: But how do you know it doesn’t taste good if you don’t try it?
Sammy: Stops to think for a second. I just know.
Kinsey: You’d starve instead of eat something you think you won’t like?
Sammy: Long pause. Maybe.
Kinsey: Well, there’s never any shortage of bugs to eat and I know you like those.
Sammy: If not for chewy bugs we’d probably all starve to death.
Kinsey: Word.
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Karen Duvall is an award-winning author with 4 published novels and 2 novellas. Harlequin Luna published her Knight’s Curse series last year, and her post apocalyptic novella, Sun Storm, was released in Luna’s ‘Til The World Ends anthology in January 2013.
Karen lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and four incredibly spoiled pets. She is currently working on a new contemporary fantasy romance series.
http://www.karenduvallauthor.com/
That made me laugh out loud, Karen. I love the thought of a kitty picking the kibble out of her bowl to eat it.
It’s pretty funny to watch. She’s so dainty about it, too. I have the cats’ food bowl on the file cabinet behind me in my office. When Sammy is particularly lazy she’ll jump up there and meow at me until I take 4 or 5 little bits of kibble out of the bowl for her so she can gobble them up. My husband and I call it “feeding the squirrel.”
Hilarious post, Karen! I have a picky eater too. My dog, Maximus, won’t eat brown dog food! He’ll go through and pick out all the brown pieces and spit them out on the floor. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find non-brown dog food?! We tried making him eat it, but he’ll go days without eating if it’s only brown food in his bowl…and I can’t handle him starving himself over colors. So we spoil him. Once he’s picked out the colored bits, we’ll throw the leftover brown ones >.<
Wow! That’s a new one on me. LOL. Is he okay with beige? The canned food we give Kinsey is beige-ish. Or at least the chicken flavor is. So is the dry food. It’s made by Solid Gold. Expensive, but she loves it, however she’ll eat pretty much anything except lettuce. You’ll find it in specialty pet food stores.
Aww, your dog is so cute. He has an underbite? 🙂 My sister-in-law has a dog like that. He’s part chiuahuah and part pug.
Ed Gumji, my cat, drinks water the same way and he taught the kittens to do it as well. We have a food tower for them and each one has their own way of getting kibble out of it. They are funny and always individual.