# A Pizza Dinner in a Multi-Cat Household



## NRD (Mar 31, 2010)

I do not eat pizza often, maybe 10-12 times a year. Last night I decided to heat up a frozen pizza I'd bought a month ago. Pretty mundane event, right? Wrong. This is the story about my pizza dinner last night.

I live in a household with four cats--a girl and three guys. Snowball doesn't care what I eat. She may sniff at it briefly, but all she wants is to qwwww2 (please excuse, that was Blizzy's keyboard addition to the story, and he doesn't like Snowball)--all she wants is to lie down in my lap while I eat. Blizzy will kill for treats, but people food is only of modest interest, so he watches from a distance. However, the Brown Brothers--Hersh and Little Hersh--are fiercely determined, not easily deterred, single-minded, food stalkers--you get the picture.

I have made pizza before, several times. Just not recently. They had all eaten, plus I gave them treats. No matter. When I opened the freezer and took out the pizza, it was as if I had called cat reveille. All on the counter, watching. Hershey decide I needed help opening the package. Down, Hershey! Down! I opened the seal, lifted the pizza out and prepared to place it in the oven. Oh, for joy, three cats dancing around the oven! Down, guys!

Twenty minutes later, the pizza was ready. All I had to do was remove it, cut it into pieces, and set it on the table together with my drink, which I had poured ahead of time and put in the fridge. Out came the pizza, and out came two dancing cats again, Hersh and Little Hersh. Placed the pizza on a plate on top of the stove. Cut the pizza, in between cries of "Down, Hersh! Down, Little Hersh!". OK, now I had three slices of pizza, what to do with the other half. The oven was still too hot--ok, put it in the fridge, briefly. But I had to hide the slices I'd just cut, in order to have two hands to open the fridge and insert the remaining pizza. Hid the slices in the microwave. I then opened the fridge, and Hersh jumped onto the adjoining counter.

Hurry, I thought, and tried to jam the dish and pizza into the fridge, thereby tipping over a half-full can of diet soda in the back that I'd forgotten about. The soda proceeded to spill all over the back of the fridge. Great! Quick, grab a sponge! But wait, first I have to put the pizza someplace else. But I don't have anyplace else, other than the counters! OK, no choice, I had to put the pizza back into the hot oven. 

I then had to pull out several bottles and bags of things that had gotten wet from the spilled soda and put them on the floor. "For joy, for joy!" went the Brown Brothers. "Food galore for us to attack!" "Back, Hersh! Back, Little Hersh!", I said, several times, all the while reaching for the back of the fridge. Did you know spilled soda finds every last nook and cranny to flow into? Of course you did. Oh, no! Drops of soda were spilling through the glass shelf, into the vegetable bin below. And I can't pull the bin all the way out and remove it, because the French door won't open far enough, unless I move the entire refrigerator away from the wall. I am NOT moving my refrigerator in order to be able to sit down and eat my pizza! So I slid my arm into the vegetable bin, as far as it would go, reaching towards the back where the drops of soda were sticking to the top of the bin, underneath the glass shelf. It was at that point that I asked myself, "How on earth did I end up in this position, in order to eat a pizza?"

But at last, I cleaned up the soda. I decided to leave the remaining pizza in the oven--if it burns, it burns, I ain't opening the fridge again! I then removed the pizza slices from the microwave and--whoops, I have to open the fridge to get my drink. As I did so, Little Hersh made a dash and leap onto the counter. "NO, DOWN Little Hersh," I said, catching him just before he hammerlocked a slice of pizza. And down he went, onto the floor, but not before pricking the tip of the index finger on my left hand, like a needle that diabetics or a technician in a Dr's office uses to get a drop of blood.

So I grabbed a paper towel, to serve as a napkin and also to stop the bleeding, my pizza, and the drink and sat down to "enjoy" my dinner. Of course, the Brown Brothers were still deeply interested in my food. Every minute or so, Hersh or Little Hersh (who has learned from his elder "brother") would stand on the chair back and peer over my right shoulder, as if to say "are you still working on that?" But I ate in relative peace, the operative word being "relative". 

Before I adopted my Fab Four, a mere year ago, I would not have given a pizza dinner, or any dinner, a second thought. Now, fixing such a dinner means running a gauntlet, potentially facing a cascading comedy of errors, and feeling surprisingly fatigued for someone who had done nothing more than open a frozen pizza and cooked it. What's such a big deal about that?

What, indeed.


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

Whoa! I'm exhausted just reading that! 

And now I want pizza. Thanks.

Reminds me of the first time I made lasagna after the twins repossessed my home. I really, really wish my kitchen had a door.


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## Hitomi (Nov 15, 2010)

I put Boo in the wash room when I eat and Harvey(dog)in the fenced in backyard.Otherwise I don't get to eat.


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## Susan (Mar 29, 2010)

Awww....the poor little starving cats. You're such a meanie! You really need to learn to share.


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## kittywitty (Jun 19, 2010)

I just had pizza last night and none of that happened with my fab 2 kitties. Luckily my cats don't beg for human food too much. Unless it's deli turkey or ham. Thanks for sharing that cute story. The details gave me a great visual of what happened with the fab 4 and your poor pizza meal.


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## MowMow (Nov 6, 2010)

LOL. Mow's always after my dinner but a grumbling "Psssst. Knockifoff." Runs him off...UNLESS.... I'm eating ice cream.

I don't eat it very often *at all* but when I do I have to eat it standing up in an area where he can't climb on anything and reach me......

Yes, I know it's bad for him but yes...he does get to lick the bowl when I'm done.....


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## Heidi n Q (Nov 22, 2006)

Oh boy! I'm so sorry, but I giggled all through your tale. Our little deaf kitten is like that with our people-food. An added plus, is she can't hear us 'warn' her so we have to constantly physically move her to where she is supposed to be. Lately, I either close her into another room or put her in the medium-sized crate in the Living Room.

We let her have treats, but we always offer them in such a way as she does *not* see they came from our plate. I am going to *have* to figure out a way to communicate "no" to her or she'll be a monster when she is full grown.


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## NRD (Mar 31, 2010)

Heidi n Q said:


> Oh boy! I'm so sorry, but I giggled all through your tale.


And that, of course, was the point of writing it. You don't think I was fishing for sympathy, do you? Just the recognition of an all-too-common experience.

On the positive side, I have in fact trained them, over the course of several months, to stay away for the most part while I am eating, once I have run the gauntlet while preparing the meal. So I have gone from eating meals standing up--not a good long-term strategy--to eating seated at my table, more or less like normal people who don't have cats! 

In seriousness (briefly), I do realize that even the most food-centric cat can be trained, over time--to a certain degree, anyway.


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## Babyblue033 (Feb 1, 2011)

Cats may be trainable, but how about SO? Inbetween yelling "Off the counter!", "Get out of my kitchen!", "Why is there a paw on my plate???", I also have to add "Stop feeding them that!" to my hubby who spoils them on the weekend and leaves me to deal with the unruly mob for the rest of the week by myself  Try fighting off 7 cats (3 of them physically disabled but that doesn't seem to help any) just to have a meal. I'm only a small woman!


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

This is so funny because neither of my two cats have been the slightest bit interested in human food. Murphy is such a non-threat along these lines that we actually seek him out to smell our food, just to give him something to do. "Here Murph, _smell this_!"


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## NRD (Mar 31, 2010)

October said:


> This is so funny because neither of my two cats have been the slightest bit interested in human food. Murphy is such a non-threat along these lines that we actually seek him out to smell our food, just to give him something to do. "Here Murph, _smell this_!"


OMG, you and I must live in a parallel universe, where up is down and everything is in opposites. I recently started giving my kitties dental chew treats. And they get so excited, including Blizzy, that they grab them and the guys run into different parts of the house to eat them without being challenged. Little Hersh even emits little growls over them.

OK, I guess those treats are not human food, so maybe that is not a valid point, though their texture is as unappealing as any treat I've ever seen.

I have referred previously to Hershy as the hamburger roll Hamburglar, and it's also true for Little Hersh, bread or bagels of any kind. The notion either one of them could "just sniff" my food is unthinkable--more like KIBB (kiss it bye-bye!).


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

_Funny!!! _Murphy does pounce on the treats, make no mistake. It's just human food he couldn't care less about, including things like chicken, turkey, milk, or anything that doesn't come out of a Trader Joe's can or Wellness bag.


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## Mimosa (Dec 2, 2010)

Whenever we order pizza Flynn will quickly lie down on the box because he loves the warmth. And my husband is so fond of his favorite cat that he will let Flynn enjoy it for a while, even though that means he has to wait to eat his pizza.

Couldn't find the original pic but I had it on ICHC:










Hubby's troubles are not over once he manages to open the box:










Most Somali owners I talk too tell me their cats are the same when it comes to their extraordinary determination when they spot junkfood. I know a Somali breeder who has 14 cats and when they eat fries she has to throw a handful of fries into the livingroom every so often to keep the rabble at bay.


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## Jan Rebecca (Oct 14, 2010)

Wow - that pizza better had been REALLY good after all that work!  cute story.


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## Heidi n Q (Nov 22, 2006)

Mimosa said:


> ... she has to throw a handful of fries into the livingroom every so often to keep the rabble at bay.


ZOMG! That made me LOL!


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