catching cats to medicate them | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

The pancakes I made with the ripe bananas, well, I decided to eat them in the front room. Too many things in my hands… Yep! Pancakes, butter, syrup all over the little desk by my computer and the box the boys loved. Past tense.

I tossed the dumped pancakes, box, and cleaning stuff in a new trash bag and consoled myself : Mess that it was, at least it wasn’t pasta in a sloppy marinara sauce I dumped!

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In other “news”, Andy proved to be a cagey adversary this morning. He anticipated my next three moves, avoiding the inevitable dose of kitty blood pressure medicine.

Yep, south end of a cat running north! I saw lots of this view today while trying to lure Andy for his medicine dose.

When Andy plays his hard to catch game, the most workable strategy is to fix something for me to eat (“the banana pancakes”). His curiosity aroused, he comes by, letting down his guard to let me scratch his ears and rub his face. This is when I grab him, right?

Yes and no. I decided a long time ago that scruffing him isn’t a good idea, that I have to catch him without hurting him in any way. That means maneuvering him into a position where I can hold him down with one hand and scoop him up with the other. That requires diverting his attention from my plan to catch him, which he seems to work out three steps ahead of me.

Today, I used a stick of butter. Yep! Mean old me held it where Andy could sniff it from afar but was blocked from escape on all but one side. He never saw what happened!

“When do I get the butter?!”
Andy, moments before I gave him his medicine. Good kitty!

It’s difficult holding an unhappy cat and taking his photo at the same time. This was the best I could do under the circumstances, yet it somehow captures the pathos of the moment…!

I’m waiting for Andy to stroll by me so I can snatch him up and give him his medication.

The game’s more involved with each day, where to just reach down and grab him while he gets a drink at the fountain no longer works, and I’ve had to set up a crisis room where my colleagues and I (…me, myself, and I) strategize best ways to disarm the wee rascal with charm and diverted attention. Kitty, I am retired! I have the time to outwit you!

Andy begs to differ! He’s a cat. Cats have no time sense. He can outwait me because he lives in the now, not as a slave to a clock!

Yesterday, to completely change the subject while I wait for Andy’s grand entrance, I was in the mood for poached eggs and toast. I opened the cabinet door, the one Andy likes to open, to get the poacher out. Couldn’t see or find it!

After having a little tantrum, I decided then and there was the time to do something I’ve meant to do since my brother was here a year ago: clean out and reorganize this dang cabinet! How long could that take, and, besides, I couldn’t poach an egg without the poacher, buried somewhere in the clutter in the cabinet? [I always mess up actual poached eggs, but not the steamed ones the “egg poacher” makes.]

I pulled out plastic lids without plastic bottoms, plastic bottoms without plastic lids. I pulled out a pan that had once been coated with Teflon (TM) that now was mostly worn off. I pulled out mystery plastic thingys that had some indiscernable purpose. I pulled out gizmos that either my mother or I bought because they looked like a good deal for some small task but proved to be more effort when you used the gizmo or the gizmo proved to work less well than a simple knife or one’s hands.

That's the egg poacher on the far right, bottom shelf, the pan with the glass lid. Yeah, the eggs and toast were yummy!

That’s the egg poacher on the far right, bottom shelf, the pan with the glass lid. Yeah, the poached eggs and toast were yummy!

In time, I pulled out a waffle maker that had been inaccessible because of the clutter, cookie baking sheets and cooling racks, a new set of frying pans I’ve never used that have non-stick coating of some sort that supposedly is better than Teflon (TM), a roaster I forgot I had, and…the egg poacher! Mission accomplished!

While pulling things out, I sorted them into toss/save piles. “Toss” items filled a large trash bag. “Save” items barely filled a suddenly large cabinet!

So, because I wanted poached eggs and toast for breakfast, I got a cleaned out and organized cabinet I’ve intended to work on since a year ago plus poached eggs and toast.

Unintended consequences can be good!