Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Cat burglars in my house..

I decided to keep the Easter chocolate low key this year. The boys are teenagers now and we have teenage friends staying with us at the moment and I don't think the boys would have got excited over mom embarrassing them with an early morning egg hunt wakeup call. So I bought each of them a giant slab of chocolate and that was that.
I decided to defrost my fridge on Friday as it was nice and warm. Inside the fridge against the element had grown an iceberg which was slowly engulfing the contents of the fridge and the freezer was just as bad. After switching off the fridge and removing the contents to the old fridge in the garage, I worked on the ice until there was just a big blob of ice left slowly melting inside the fridge and another big sheet of ice against the top of the freezer. This had taken the better part of the morning and I was hungry. I fetched a few items from the garage fridge to make myself a burger. Amongst these items was a brand new block of cheddar cheese newly purchased. After fixing my burger, I popped the fridge items into the defrosting fridge which was still cold even with the door open. While I was sitting in the lounge eating, a movement made me look up and there was Kittykie, the tortoiseshell, carefully stretching from the stove next to the fridge and climbing onto the fridge ledge, reaching for the block of cheese. I shouted and she darted out the door. Thats where I went wrong. After finishing lunch and still waiting for the iceblock to depart, I settled in to watch a movie. After the movie was finished, I returned to the kitchen to check on the iceblock and my first indication of a crime was the cheese crumbs left in the fridge as evidence. Outside lay the plastic clingfilm wrapper and the label. Of the brand new cheese block there was no sign. Oh how I screamed. A hardly used R17.00 block of Cheddar. My cats had selected their own Easter treat. Dael came to bash out the remaining ice as my patience was now exhausted and added insult to injury by saying "You should have put the cheese in a container!" And don't I know it. That sounds like something I would have said to him.
That evening I still baked biscuits to sell at the morning market. I baked until I was exhausted. The boys hadn't wanted to eat at the same time and I had left the pot of stew and rice on the stove for them to help themselves. After finishing up the last batch of biscuits, I fell into bed and the first thing I knew was a tapping on the door. It was early morning, still dark and my brother was knocking me awake. He and mom hadn't been able to raise me on my cellphone (not charged) so they had come round to see if I was all right. I threw on my clothes, grabbed the biscuits and locked up.
Later on that morning, about 11am when I returned home, the boys were awake. "Oh mom, the cats knocked off the (almost new) tub of margarine from the counter and a lot was wasted." Dael had scraped the clean marge back into the tub. First irritation! Then I discovered that whoever dished up stew last had not put the pot into the oven or fridge and the cats had eaten the remains of that too. Second irritation! Grrr! I can't blame the cats. They are opportunists and all they know is to hunt for food. But I hate to waste food especially if it can still be eaten by the human scavengers in my house.
Thankfully that was the last of the cat incidents for the weekend.

6 comments:

  1. Oh boy... What is it with cats and dairy products? My cat, Iris, adores cheese and margarine, too. Recently, after several years of her never going onto the counters, she has begun making her way up there and we have had to be far more diligent about putting things away or covering them up immediately. I even found her in the spaghetti the other day...
    Thing is, she leads a charmed life full of food water and freshly prepared boiled chicken every day and still she scavenges...
    good luck!

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  2. Amazing how something wild always remain in cats...always on the prowl for something to hunt...you just gave them some take-aways:)

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  3. Hee hee cats will be cats. I remember once walking into the kitchen and Storm had an entire chicken breast still hanging on her tooth!
    Hope you had an awesome birthday on Monday!

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  4. Shame Momcat, sounds rough! My kitty actually refuses to eat anything but pellets. When presented with something else as a treat she tries to roll on it and if it doesn't jump or squirm she gets bored and leaves it there.

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  5. My cats are similar to Louisa's - they only eat cat food. Except two weeks ago I found Sapphire on the dining room table tucking into the banana bread I had out for our church small group. Bizarre creature! She won't eat meat, but goes for the banana bread!

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  6. Alexandra - Cats do love dairy products. I dont go out of my way to give them human leftovers but they have their ways and means of finding it.

    Lynette - Too true, they will always be hunters. I could have made it a little more difficult for them, couldn't I?

    Forever - Oh chicken breast, a firm favourite of mine. If they smell it on my fingers, they try and eat my fingers! And thank you, my birthday was a restful time spent with family.

    Louisa - What a good cat you have! I have a multiple cat family and I think it breeds a lot of competition which gives them an incentive to eat faster or be the first on the scene. If you dont eat, you lose out. They soon learn to eat!

    Tamara - Like humans, kitties have individual likes and dislikes. My oldest cat and one of my youngest kittens love potato peels and pulp of gem squash and butternut. The littlest one will watch me peel potatoes and as the peel comes loose from the potato, he will grab it and jump down from my lap to eat it.

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