Standoff
Beorn and I are currently in a standoff about his water bottle. My parents watched him while we were away. When I dropped him off at their house, it was clear that the water bottle was missing the o-ring that went inside. It had dropped into the sink in my haste, and I walked out of my home without noticing.
So, I ran to a nearby pet store and bought a new water bottle. Beorn tried it, realized it was not his normal water bottle, and immediately rejected it. Beorn, like me, does not like change.
But it was arguably a better water bottle.
While we were away, he refused the new bottle, and my parents indulged him by wetting his vegetables and giving him cucumber slices. The pig is so spoiled when he goes over there, so much so that he completely ignores us the moment he’s with his grandparents.
We brought him home, and he refused the new water bottle. So, we have entered a standoff. I reassembled the old water bottle, and I will likely cave today because he has a stronger will than I do. But I cannot believe how long he’s willing to refuse the water bottle just because it is new and shiny and not dented from years of chewing on the end.
That pretty much sums up my life.
4 comments
My parents cat sit for us when we travel and their grandcats are ridiculously spoiled and indulged in all the ways. My very first cat, who was also spoiled by cat sitters, went on a food strike once when we returned from a trip. Cats are known for their stubbornness and our vet told us to not expect her to cave, despite being hungry. Our standoff ended with me buying endless different cans of wet food, lunch meat, tuna – anything I thought she might try, until I found something acceptable to her. Our cat who had previously only eaten dry food had wet food on demand for the rest of her life because I am too weak for the will of a cat on a mission.
Awww, spoiled and stubborn Beorn! I can relate to not wanting new, but it’s kind of funny that it’s a better water bottle and he’s still like NOPE, get that aberration out of my habitat.
Our old cat, Snotz (long story), was freakishly picky about food.
There was a time when Snotz stopped eating and appeared to be ready to die – because the food was the wrong brand. For a couple of weeks, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. We thought there was some underlying terrible health issue – took her to the vet that couldn’t identify anything. We tried buying soft food for her. We tried giving her human food (cheese). (Where I grew up, the were lots of street cats who ate pretty much anything you gave them but were particularly excited about cheese.) Nothing helped. My husband force-fed her for about a week.
Turned out, she would only eat 1 specific type of cat food from Costco. A few days before she went on her hunger strike, we were running low on her food but didn’t have time to go to Costco, so I got her some other food from the grocery store. It is still mind boggling that she would starve herself to near-death rather than eat another type of food. It goes against everything I hold dear 🙂
(Now, both my husband and I come from families where the attitude about food is something along the lines that children eat whatever parents put in front of them. Our kids eat pretty much anything and it wouldn’t in a million years occur to them to demand a specific brand of, say, pasta, or oatmeal. So yeah, super funny that our cat won that particular battle of the wills.)
Stay strong! He can’t absorb water by osmosis from the air forever! And give him a stern talking-to. Sometimes we have to change, and it ends up being a good thing.