How We Got Our Speckled Furniture

Annie Cat is old. No one knows how old she is--not even she--because, at the shelter where we got her, they guessed she was "about six". And that was about ten years ago. So she is "about" sixteen.

A few months ago she suddenly lost a lot of weight, and since it was my turn to guess, I guessed that Annie might be nearing her demise. All of our cats, over the years, have eaten dry cat food, and I wondered whether I ought to see if that was a problem. A vet advised me to give her food intended for young, growing cats.

Fooling around in that ultra-scientific, somewhat hearsay way, we have come to this: Annie loves whole milk, with a little canned cat food containing krill. "Krill", I thought. "Why not? It is a staple in the food chain. Maybe it is working.

But milk is a problem. Sometimes Annie sits near her food dish, thinking about Kant and Descartes, not noticing that her tail is dipped into the milk dish. Eventually she notices, and waves it around, muttering something about being and nothingness and the cat-egorical imperative, and that is how we got all our speckled furniture.

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