ANDRE BEGIN

I was standing in the kitchen one day, looking out the kitchen’s picture window, contemplating my next move in my wrestling match with words while enjoying a bag of very crispy potato chips.

As I paced around the kitchen table, I accidentally dropped a couple of potato chip crumbs.

It didn’t take long for our feline blood hound, Ivy the Wonder Cat, to pick up on the scent and to turn into our personal hand vacuum.

It was when she meowed and looked up at me that I realized she was saying, “That was good. More please.”

“Oh oh!… What have I started?” I wondered to myself.

Even though a couple of tiny, unflavoured potato chip crumbs would probably not harm a cat if ingested once, the relentless voice of parental guilt chimed in: “Do you thing her vet would approve?”

As a responsible pet owner, I knew that this was not to become a habit.

But I could see in her eyes that the damage had been done and the attraction had been established.

As a very food-focused kitty, the sound of opening a can of food is already enough to have her running from any corner of the house to the kitchen.

Now, new sound effects indicating “Food!” had slipped into her repertoire. Whether it was the rustling of a bag of chips or the rattling of the tube-style potato chips, she started running to us whenever one of us would indulge.

In the days that followed, it was practically impossible to enjoy chips without her looking up with her sad eyes with her pitiful little begging meow as if to say, “I’m sooooo hungry. Could I have some chips, please?” (…the hungry part is a complete lie, by the way.)

When her attempts are denied, it’s the way that she glares at us like she is shooting lasers from her eyes, projecting a look of, “How dare you eat those and not include me in the process” that is a little unnerving.

It is so unsettling that I am getting to the point of waiting until she is asleep for her afternoon nap (and preferably, deeply into her REM sleep cycle), to ever so quietly open the pantry door like a safecracker, and to remove my container of chips without making a sound. If I am successful in doing this, then I can retreat to one of the rooms nearby, close the door and then enjoy a handful of chips.

Call it selective hearing, but even in the deepest of sleeps, if I do make a sound along the way, she has been known to suddenly wake up and come running in the hope that another crumb will hit the floor.

Cats are weird and funny that way.

Either way, the only way around this is to ignore her in the hope that with time, the fascination with potato chips will eventually fade.

What is interesting is that throughout her eight years with me, she was never attracted to potato chips before.

When she was very young, she was drawn to dairy products. As a rare treat, I occasionally served her a spoonful or two of milk or cream… until one day when she developed explosive diarrhea whenever she had dairy. I quickly put an end to those treats and eventually, the phase of following me around like my shadow and hounding me for dairy passed on its own.

Ever since the dairy incident, it has been a hard no in offering her any “people food”, the only exceptions being plain, unseasoned cooked chicken or salmon. And even then, she might only get half of a teaspoon, just to keep her from making a scene at the table, as seen in the picture above.

Anyway, the lesson has been learned: going forward, I will need to be much more mindful and careful in ensuring I don’t drop any more potato chip crumbs. Her weight and health depend on it. And until her attraction to chips fades away, as it did with dairy, I will have to be a strong parent and ignore her requests even if that means hiding from her to enjoy some myself.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André