Chairman Meow

I am currently cat sitting for a dear friend of mine. In the course of these cat sitting duties I am required to give her a daily tablet. It sounded easy enough when I agreed to do it, honestly. The cat in question is is soft to the couch, teensy tiny delicate and adorable to look at. I think I might hate her.

We got off to a bad start when I accosted her with a towel on Day One. The idea being I would bundle her up, open her little jaws and pop the tablet in. Weeelll not so much. The first part was okay - I bundled her up alright, or kinda, but she hissed and spat like a bitch and I was one part scared of being bitten and one part sorry for her so I let her go, figuring I'd wait a few hours until she was used to having me in her house, started to trust me and realised I was actually A Cat Person.

So we move to Day Two when I decided to get things off to a cracking start. I got the tablets out, opened the bottle, shook one out, snapped it in half, put the other half back in the bottle... only to realise belatedly that Miss Kitty knew all too well what all those sounds meant and was now hiding under the bed.

"Come on Maisie," I cooed, down on all fours "come on sweetie." Nuthin'

Then I made error number one, which was shoving some random crap under the bed to force her out. Er no, she didn't go for it but folded herself into an area the size of a hamster's rump and stared back at me with something I horribly suspected might be fear. Error two was trying to go back to Plan A.

"Come on, darling," I called to her, slowly and guiltily extending my hand beneath the bed in the universal sign of friendship, "I didn't mean to scare you, come to - oh fuck! fuck!"

The little bitch had shredded my hand. More than that she'd left one of her beastly claws embedded in my skin.

Right, I thought, two can play at this game. This was where things began to escalate and Go To A Bad Place. I decided to try a new strategy, reasoning that a month of trying to corner the little thing and stuff my fingers down its throat was going to be a long month indeed. So I simply I took all her food up off the ground, crushed a tablet into the bowl and mixed it up with a bit of fresh food. I put it down, the cat eventually emerged, sniffed it and retreated in disgust.

"I can wait!" I called after her retreating tail. And wait I could. But so, apparently, could she.

Returning home on the afternoon of Day Two (today) I found the food still uneaten. Only mildly concerned I could be starting down a bad road that ended with me starving a small, mostly innocent creature to death I emptied out the old stuff, crushed another tablet into the bowl and mixed it with some fresh food."Come and get it diddums!" I called. The cat eventually came, sniffed it and retreated.

Nevertheless I remained confident. I was, after all, a human and she was a mere feline. When it came to balancing on stuff or licking her armpits she had me beat but when it came to cunning and willpower I did, I felt, have the advantage.

"It's a battle of wills, now," I told Andy confidently. "What can she do? Sooner or later she's going to get hungry."

It was the 'what can she do?' that tempted fate, I believe. Because five minutes later I returned to the bedroom to find the little minx had shat on the floor, ignoring the presence of two clean litter trays. She paused to glance over her shoulder at me with an expression that clearly said Try Me, Bitch and disappeared under the bed.

The battle has begun...

DISCLAIMER: Lindsay, if you're reading this, er, don't be alarmed. I may have made a catskin windcheater out of your cat by the time you return but otherwise the flat is completely fine.