The only time I ever hear from the libs next door is when they want something. That's fine. They went through four cats - three eaten by the local coyotes, one hit by a car - before it finally occurred to them that letting them run loose is probably not a good idea. So they have another one, and they keep him indoors. Great idea.
But they planned on a vacation, and their cat came down with a "goopy eye" problem, so they took him to the vet, and returned with some eye-drops. Naturally, they came over to ask if I knew how to administer eye-drops to a cat, and if so, would I be willing to do that while they were gone.
Now, if you can do that with a full-grown lioness, you might be able to figure out how to do it with a house-cat. Whatever. I always try to play nice with these folks; sensitivity and all that. So, okay.
Not good enough. They wanted to know how I would medicate their cat. They even pantomimed how they did it. Really? They also want me to feed the cat, which is fine. Then they gave me a schedule: their cat expects to be fed at 7 a.m. Really?
Just who's running the show over there? I don't give a rip what the cat expects, or when. So I went over there today to feed and medicate their cat. Got there around 9.
Here's the deal: all cats respond to one thing, and one thing only - food. House-cats will tolerate being petted or whatever, but that's only because you're the food-source. You can condition lions and caracals and other felids to work with you, but it's not because of any attention; it's about food.
So here I am, a complete stranger at the neighbor's house, and a couple of hours late for the feeding. Suddenly, I have a new best friend as I pick up the dish and start putting some food in there. I picked up the eye-drops bottle, set the dish of food on a table, picked up their cat so he could see and smell it, and poof! Drops in the eye.
Dish and cat back onto the floor; no damage to anyone involved. Funny how that works.
