Poor Mistreated Yodi

When Yodi leaves us a furball treat, we go through a routine that makes him very unhappy. Though he used to love them, he has decided he doesn’t like his furball treats as cats are want to do, so we have to give him no choice.

We take up his food and put four furball treats on his tray. He looks at them, looks at us, and looks back at them as if they may have disappeared. When we don’t respond, he uses cat sign language by making motions as if covering them up like he does poop in his litter box. When we still don’t respond by taking them away, he walks away. He will beg us all day and we will keep tapping on the treats and telling him he has to eat his treats before he will get his food back. He will whine and beg all day and we just keep pushing the “replay” button. Sometimes, the treats disappear one by one until they are gone and sometimes we feel sorry for him and say we will give him “just a little” food. He knows at that point he’s got us and I end up throwing away the treats.

Recently, I bought one of those cute little treat dispensers that in theory was a great idea. It rocks back and forth when bumped and has a hole where treats will fall out when the cat knocks it over. It had flexible cheese straws threaded through the top which was the thing that attracted me to it. Yodi will eat any kind of string he finds so I have to be careful not to leave any laying around and he likes cheese so win-win, right? Not so, he has no interest in the cheese straws, he just wants the treats but is either too lazy to get them himself or too dumb to figure out how it works. It is filled with the yummy treats he loves not the ones that he rejects so what is the problem?

This morning after finding food he had yukked up, I took up his food and put down his treats telling him that he could have his food after he ate his treats. He proceeds to “cover them up” and in a few minutes, I turn around and see this:

Yodi waiting for the treat goddess to kick his dispenser so he can have treats.