Administrator of Cat Affairs

By this point, if you've been reading the blog or following any part of my life, it's safe to say you know that a big part of my life is centered around the cats. If you somehow missed it, the cats are the BIGGEST part of my life; second to them is my very patient and loving husband. From the outside in, the cats and my husband are equally spoiled most days. To be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm equally spoiled, even if most days I don't feel like that's the case.

Gene - I keep him stocked with freezer meals, caffeine, a mostly clean house, his favorite snacks, running up the bills, and keeping him on his toes. The cats - spoiled beyond belief. I'm always sneaking in cat toys, even when I've been told there's no room in the budget for those sorts of things or they have enough toys. The older they get, the more spoiled. Currently, they are all on a very expensive diet of squeeze-ups, gravy pouches, Fancy Feast gems, essentially any wet food that costs upwards of $1.25 per serving. The in-between preferred snack is Temptations with the filled middles. I buy that in 48 oz bags that cost about $24 each. We go through one of those about every week and a half. Not to mention the all-day, every-day dry food. The cats definitely are attention-needy and will try to get anyone to believe they have been starved for the human touch. I promise - it's not true.

They get all the attention 99.9% of the time. Gene works from home, essentially never leaving the house. They all know if they are patient, he will let them sit on his lap, and he makes the rounds to give them pets and cuddles. On an average day, Gene has no less than 8 cats hanging out in his office. He's got two extra-large cat towers, a comfy chair for them, and a constant human in the room for 12+ hours a day. If they aren't in the room with him, you'll find them wreaking havoc in the house.

I recently started planning a little get-together with some close friends. When I mail out a batch of invites, I like to come up with a funny name for the return address. This time around, I used Administrator of Cat Affairs. It is absolutely fitting. Even though I'm not home as much as Gene or the cats would like, I spend quite a bit of time managing the cats.

How much managing could there possibly be? Let's start with the food and the picky senior eater. Smokey, being 19+ years old, eats a million small meals a day (like 3-6 bites at a time). She keeps me on my toes with just the food. What she likes today, or for the last week, may not be the flavor, consistency, color, or shape she wants. So I have to keep a wide variety of foods for her. Fortunately, when she turns her nose up, there's a line of others waiting for that perfectly good food. Since she's in such a picky mode, I now shop in-store for her food instead of online. Smaller quantities give me the ability to change almost as fast as her taste buds. It means I'm at the pet store weekly now (roughly $150 - $200 each week).

There's also the litter room—managing that is always a dreaded chore. I hate scooping litter. It's a process: scoop, move all the boxes, sweep up a box worth of litter, change out dirty puppy pads, reset it all. All while my supervisor, Dobby, follows me. If I dare to fill the boxes too much, she throws out litter by the pawful, no matter that I just swept the floor. I know I'm doing it right when she rubs her body against my legs and back as I'm scooping.

I also get the hard task of monitoring the health of 20 cats. Who is sneezing, whose poop looks off today, are they all eating/drinking enough, has anyone not been seen for 24 hours? Did Roughy get his supplements that are hopefully helping his upper respiratory issues? Who is throwing up - is it a hairball, food from gorging, or bile because there's another unknown issue? Keeping track of the things that we need to get done at the next vet appointments (abnormal blood tests we want to do on the next blood pull), keeping track of the specialists' requests and our regular vet's requests.

As a whole, we all keep track of who's fighting with whom. Is it play fighting, a real fight, guarding doors, or the litter boxes? Did someone just take over Smokey's food while she was still eating? Why are they all wound up—the full moon, stray cats outside hanging out on the porch, or taunting our cats by the sunporch windows? Bent because a human has been away too long (usually it's me), it's a whole thing—keeping the 20 cats in line. More than once, I've been told by my vet's office and friends that they have no idea how I notice the minute something changes. One vet told me it took her a week to notice her one cat wasn't eating as usual, and she has way fewer pets.

So, I'm just over here fulfilling my job as the Administrator of Cat Affairs, which includes setting up parties for the cats now. If you didn't get the invite to the cat cuddle party, message me for a private cat cuddling party.

Till our tails cross again,

Mel