Thought for food

A friend had a tomcat named Buster. Even though he was a burly specimen, he was a finicky eater. He would only eat premium canned cat food, never dry kibble. He could adore one brand on Monday and turn up his nose at the same variety on Tuesday.

One day when I was grocery shopping, I saw my friend slip into the market with a furtive glance, carrying an oversized handbag. Her manner was so peculiar; I shadowed her to the cat food aisle. She put down the bag, pulled out the cat and held him, dangling straight in front of her, his big yellow eyes inches from the tins of food. “OK, Buster, I’ve had it with you!” she said. “You choose!”

My cats are not like Buster. Maybe because both have suffered food deprivation, they’ll eat any kind of kibble I put in the bowl. When I first got Chloe, I only bought premium brands. I read every article I could find on cat nutrition and perused the small print on bags of kibble like I was deciphering the Rosetta Stone. When Annie arrived, she had been prescribed a special diet for cats with poor kidney function. The vet suggested I feed each, individually, twice a day to keep their different diets separate. While Chloe ate with a normal, healthy appetite, Annie inhaled her bowlful in one gulp. Then she vomited it up immediately. Weighing Annie’s need for a special diet with her need for any diet that would stay in her stomach, I switched to continuous feeding, using gravity feeders, for both cats, so Annie could have the security of a constant food supply. I tried to maintain two feeding stations, one for each cat, but gave that up when I discovered they both used the same bowl. As competitive as they are in other circumstance, they are patient when it comes to eating kibble. Each has her own schedule, eating a bite or two whenever she passes by the feeding station. Annie’s kidneys aren’t perfect, but they haven’t gotten worse. I suspect any harm that’s being done by feeding her a regular diet is compensated for by the fact that she no longer has to worry where her next meal is coming from. And while she vomits (“Some cats just barf,” said my vet), she limits herself to throwing up about once a fortnight rather than after every meal.

Still, Annie does have a food neurosis of a specific kind. Once or twice a month I roast chicken wings for myself. I marinate them in teriyaki sauce, sherry, grated raw ginger, garlic and green onions and then bake them in the oven for about forty minutes. It’s a great dinner, especially with a spinach salad with mandarin oranges, toasted almonds and a sweet and sour dressing. Part way through the meal I might leave my seat to grab a drink of water or a glass of wine. Quick as a flash, Annie leaps onto the table, grabs a chicken wing and scurries up the stairs. Since she only steals chicken wings from my plate, never beef, pork or fish, I think she is reminded of the wings from the bodega which she shared with Jane, her former owner, when they both lived in New York City. No matter where I checked upstairs, I couldn’t find the leftovers. For a long time I assumed she ate them, bones and all.

Then one day I decided it was time to turn the mattress in my bedroom. When I pulled the mattress and box spring from the bedstead, I found a hidden world behind the dust ruffle. There were the chicken bones, an entire graveyard. But that wasn’t all. I found the catnip mice that had unaccountably gone missing, all there. Single socks I thought I had lost at the laundromat had been carefully piled into nests along with scraps of paper and bits of yarn that Annie must have been collecting for months. What a mess! Thoroughly annoyed, I grabbed a broom and dust pan. And then I stopped.

Annie had created a home, a refuge, a safe asylum all her own. I remembered Jane, that generous, homeless hostess. Once when I visited her in New York, she and Doug were living apart. She was staying in a homeless shelter near Port Authority. I had reserved a hotel room.  “I’m sorry I can’t give you a place to stay,” she said regretfully. “I can’t offer you a room, but I can offer you a city, my city. Let me show you my favorite places in New York. That weekend was spent exploring hidden refuges in the city, pocket gardens, hidden parks: oases of quiet in the bustling urban landscape.

I cleaned up the chicken bones but left all the rest intact, placing the mattress carefully over Annie’s private space.  She came upstairs, took a dainty bite of kibble from the feeder and then, with a friendly nod in my direction, she ducked beneath the dust ruffle. Annie had gone back home.