Food Mat

So, in case you haven't figures it out yet, I spoil my cats.  Haiku has taken to coming into the computer room, and crying, asking to be fed with food that is perfectly accessible in the kitchen.  It used to be she asked for food when her dish was empty, but now, she wants to be in the computer room with me, and have her food there.  Well, of course, Taki wants to eat in the computer room, too.  She sometimes stares and crowds Haiku to chase her off, but has gotten better about that, especially when I bring her food dishes into the computer room. 

Haiku sits on an office chair and eats, and is generally very neat. I tried putting Taki's dishes on her chair, but she just knocked them off, full, partially full, or empty. Taki is not a neat eater, and her dishes end upside down, or she does what Sake used to do:  take some moist food out of the dish, put it on the floor, and then eats some of it and leaves the rest.  At least, most of the time, Sake would eat off the plastic I keep under the food dishes in the kitchen.

Today, as I was out running errands, I was in Walmart and picked up a small mat on which to put pet dishes.  It is thicker that a place mat or towel, and has rubber or plastic rubbles on the bottom to give it some grip. It is machine washable.  I put it down, mid-afternoon, and Taki was interested in it, and moved it around, folded it over, and played with it. Okay, so it did not frighten her. This is good. At first. 

At suppertime, after Take ate in the kitchen and we adjourned to the computer room, I put Taki's dishes on the mat.  At first, she acted like she was afraid to get on the mat, so I moved her dishes to the edge of the mat. Later, she moved the mat so one dish was not even on it, the other was on the end opposite from her, and the mat covered her paws.  I repositioned everything, and she seems to have gotten the message. She has even eaten from the dishes on the mat.  I think we made some headway tonight.   We shall see. 

Sadly, Taki learns a lesson one day, and forgets it the next.  But that is okay, she is still a sweetheart.