hungry cat – Pain In The Bud

I’m pretty sure Buddy regrets teaching me all about animal cognition and emotion, which led me to adopting a vegetarian diet in 2015.

He’s never gone on the kitchen counters (such a good boy!) and when he does express interest in the fridge, it’s more of a rote status check, a defeatest confirmation that there’s nothing of interest for him in there aside from cheese.

But Bentley has no such scruples. The feisty feline from Oregon got his greasy little paws on a pizza one night and loved it so much that he’s become obsessed with the microwave, which is where he found that fateful slice.

Bentley’s human, Britney Shizo, said she put the leftover pizza in the microwave, then forgot about it until she returned to the kitchen and found Bentley happily feasting.

“The microwave is wide open and the pizza is on the floor and it’s gone, pretty much,” Shizo said.

Footage of Bentley, which has since gone viral, shows him determinedly trying to open the microwave door, gripping the handle with both front paws and using all the strength in his little body to get to that sweet, delicious pizza.

But, alas, he’s foiled by a child safety lock, which he refuses to accept as he strains, pulls and pushes the microwave in the hilarious footage:

The star of the internet’s newest viral cat video knows what she wants, and she isn’t going to part with it easily.

In the video below, kitty growls at the humans who want to take away her delicious chicken wing. Ultimately it requires three people to take the wing from her, and she licks her lips before the evil humans can wipe the hot sauce away too:

@coachmeeks

#question from @coachmeeks

♬ original sound – Tomika

Personally I’d have let her keep it. It’s already in her mouth. Clearly she’s not bothered by the hot sauce. And maybe it’ll be a good lesson if she eats the wing and doesn’t feel well afterward, so she won’t go for a plate of wings next time.

This reminds me of the time I made a late-night Burger King run when Bud was just a kitten, before I went vegetarian. I came home, unwrapped my burger, removed the fries from the bag and went to the kitchen for napkins or ketchup or something, only to return and find the burger had vanished!

Bud left a trail of discarded pieces of bread leading to his eating nook, where he’d unceremoniously dumped the rest of the bun.

It was my fault and it was funny, so how could I be mad at the little guy? I don’t remember if the burger upset his stomach, but I do clearly remember he paid dearly and learned another kitten lesson when he scarfed down a bunch of pistachios. He even ate the closed nuts, shells and all! Several hours later he was in his litter box, straining like someone who’d taken three times the recommended dose of ex lax and hadn’t pooped in a week.

Sometimes you can’t teach things. If an upset stomach or a rough evening in the litter box is the price of a lesson, and the food isn’t going to kill your feline friend, why not let them learn the hard way?

As for Buddy, would he have turned into the strapping and meowscular cat we know today if he hadn’t learned those lessons?