My husband and I have to travel in a few weeks and I was thinking about the places I’ve lived and people who were pet sitters for my cats.
Long ago, one of my friends used to live in a tiny, tiny little house, before tiny houses were a thing. She and her partner didn’t have a washer/dryer nor did they have a television, so when I was gone, she’d cat sit and do laundry and they’d catch up on some television. This was one of my selling points to have them come by!
Anyway, one day, her partner goes through Taco Bell and gets a burrito. My orange cat wouldn’t not leave him alone. When she tells me this, she just says she doesn’t know what was wrong with my Iggy Cat. And she talks about how he was all over her partner. And I’m hmm… maybe he was lonely? Then she says her partner could hardly even eat his Taco Bell burrito.
It all became clear to me. This cat had always been fat (hence my publication name, My Big Fat Orange Cat) and always wanted what I was having. I used to feed him strips of lettuce from the top of tacos from Taco Bell so he started associating the smells of Taco Bell with getting food. As he aged and I wasn’t as careful about what he ate, sometimes I’d offer to let him lick some of the beans from a bean burrito, which he also loved. He never got people food otherwise, and, in fact, wasn’t as interested in other people food but this cat had developed a taste for Taco Bell.
I laughed so hard it took me almost ten minutes to explain to her that odd as it sounded Taco Bell was this cat’s favorite treat. Not that he was allowed to have it on a regular basis.
Cats are strange. While I understood that cat, I still haven’t figured out my little Gemini girl.