Separate Tables

One of the projects that I completed while I was without a computer was to address Alex’s desire to dine only at a table. A sophisticated, urbane, and cultured cat such as he decided it is just too crude to eat from a dish on the kitchen floor. Therefore, he developed—with my unwitting assistance (with my bulk I found that placing his bowl on the table was easier than on the floor)—the practice dining only on my table.

Of course, the problem for me was that Alex soon decided that the table and whatever was on it—including my meals—belonged to him. My dining became an exercise that usually found me holding plates and bowls at arms reach from my cat, discarding the contents of glasses that had been investigated by the same paws that had recently stood in a litter box, and discovering white cat hairs floating in my tomato soup. With no computer to distract me, I had the time to solve the problem.

So I created for Alex his own, personal dining table, two feet off the floor and complete with its own place mat.

I wish I could say that I no longer share my table with Alex. However, there are times when he leaps upon it and catches me by surprise. My solution to that has been to rearrange my eating schedule so that I now dine primarily when Alex is catting around out-of-doors.