There is a topic of considerable significance that I feel I must bring to your attention: my cat is fat. How did this come to happen? I hear you ask. Or perhaps you are thinking what a bad owner I am. In my defence allow me to offer an explanation.
Sufi-cat (for that is her name) was born in Kent, to a British Blue queen and a British Shorthair tom that had the biggest head you’ve ever seen on a cat. (There is a point, and I’m getting to it, I promise.) Thankfully, she mostly inherited her mum’s looks, but I haven’t the faintest idea where her character comes from. This is not irrelevant, because her character plays a key-role in the reasons for her fatness.
Sufi-cat is a diva. She is also a tease, a madam and seemingly suffers from OCD. She is very proud, very sensitive and is most definitely wearing the proverbial trousers in our relationship. She is fat because she decides how and when she ought to be fed, not I. Moreover, she’s fat because she likes to be acknowledged and treated like a person. For example, when I am eating I must share my food with her, regardless of whether she’ll like it or not. I must offer, and if she cares to (which she often does) she’ll partake. If I fail to offer, she will feel slighted. And under no circumstance do you want to slight Sufi-cat. So combine this state of affairs with her general laziness and naturally you get a fat cat, and a proud one at that. So proud in fact, that Sufi-cat has a signature way of doing things; it is called the ‘fatly’ way.
When she throws a tantrum, she will skip off fatly, with her undercarriage of excess fat wobbling from side to side, her nose in the air and her angry little ears folded backwards. When she’s in a good mood, she’ll fatly lie on her back and show you the glorious immensity of her belly and her roly-poly disposition. When she sleeps, she snores fatly, and loud enough to keep you up at night. She grunts fatly when she jumps down from barely-high places. And she glares at you fatly if you’ve wronged her. Fatly is just the Sufi-cat way and for that reason I can’t bring myself to put her on a diet.
Now I’m not deluded, and neither am I one of those crazy cat-women who post videos of their obese felines doing silly tricks onto YouTube. I realise that a random feline’s body mass is of little consequence in comparison to the global economic crisis, or the state of world politics at present. I know my fat cat doesn’t matter to others, and that no one could care less. I really do. But hear me out. I love my cat, and so it matters to me. And if what matters to one man, mattered to all men, then perhaps the world would be a more compassionate place full of understanding and universal love. And perhaps from our mutual interest in Sufi-cat’s state of being happy-fat, all things might become clear to us.
Elest Ali is our Eating Out editor, and she anthropomorphises her cat.
