Old cats, new tricks

So recently, Calle has been meowing at me with a particular volume and frequency that means something. To a cat, the meaning is perfectly clear, but to me it means one of the following:

• Feed me!
• No, with fresh food.
• I'm bored, pay attention to me.
• I'm going to throw up, where should it be?
• There is a dangerous intruder in the house, ready to steal all of our tuna and catnip ...
• or maybe it's just a beetle.
• Open this door, I forgot what's behind it.

Normally, I ignore these meows so that they don't set any more of a precedent than they already have, but given that there was, in the past, a similar sequence that eventually led to I can haz cancer (warning: may contain weepiness), I figured I should investigate more closely.

I put fresh dry food into the bowl. I sit down and watch the cat eat. It turns out that she's eating, well, like I did when I had my braces on. Carefully. This is somewhat good (she has energy, so if the big C has come back, it's still early) but mostly bad (because normally cats that like dry food will eat it normally).

Next test: tuna. I get out two small plates, put tuna on one and broth on the other (for some reason, Josie is one of about four cats in the world who won't eat tuna). Calle's tuna is gone. OK, that makes it seem like wet food might be an option. (She's 16. I'm lucky her teeth have lasted this long.)

So I stop at the store, and among other things, pick out three different types of wet food. (These cats are picky; more than a couple of types of food have been rejected.) I come home, and the Meow Parade returns. I open one can, split it about 60/40, and serve it.

All gone

Yep, this one too

Yeah, so that's pretty much definitive. Yes, both plates are pretty much clean, which means yes, Josie ate her food too. (Also, Calle went back to both plates after I'd taken the pictures, just to make sure they were really clean.)

Sooooo ... I guess we'll be buying wet food from here on out. So glad I just bought a big bag of Science Diet ...