Cats
Several years ago friends of mine left the country for a month and offered to let me use their house as a daytime writing studio in exchange for taking care of their cats.
“Taking care” overstates my responsibilities.
The cats (there were two of them) had an automatic feeding system.
It worked like a Mr. Coffee.
Once a week, you filled it to the brim with edible pellets it dispensed twice a day on preset timers—once at 9 a.m., for breakfast; once at 5 p.m., for dinner.
Besides that weekly refill, I had nothing to do except clean the litter box and freshen their water bowl every day or two.
In theory.
*
My first day, I arrived at the house, set up shop in the second-floor office, and started work at 9 a.m.
The cats ignored me and vice-versa, though from time to time I heard them purr softly or scamper up or down the stairs.
A little after noon, I took a break for lunch.
I walked downstairs, but then, concerned and curious, descended another floor, to the basement, where the feeder was set up.
Was the automatic system working?
I flicked a switch and examined it under the illumination of a bare bulb.
The food storage canister looked full save a few natural air pockets.
The food tray was empty except for a patina of pellet dust around the base and rim.
Excellent.
And yet…
*
On the one hand, what I was seeing made perfect sense.
I’d just gotten there.
The canister should be full.
The morning feeding had been hours earlier.
The tray should be empty.
On the other hand, wouldn’t the exact same scene present itself if the system wasn’t working?
Then the canister would be full because it had dispensed nothing.
And the tray would be empty because it never got filled.
I stroked my chin, pondering this seeming paradox.
*
I knelt to the basement’s cold concrete floor.
I examined the litter box—spotless—and then the feeder bowl more carefully.
I squinted.
I sniffed.
Was this fresh food pellet dust?
I wasn’t sure.
I didn’t know how anyone without a scanning tunneling microscope could be sure.
At this moment the cats bounded downstairs.
They circled me and the feeding system, mewling loudly and sometimes rearing up to scratch the canister.
Were they territorial, defending their domain?
Merely opportunistic, cadging a bonus meal?
Or were they genuinely hungry from not having been fed, and imploring me, their temporary guardian and caretaker, to fix things?
We stared at one another for ten long seconds.
And then my own stomach growled.
I stood, unscrewed the lid of the canister, grabbed a handful of pellets, threw them in the dish, and rescrewed the lid before escaping back upstairs for lunch.
*
I arrived promptly the next morning at 8:50 a.m.
With no pretense of working first, I proceeded immediately to the basement.
The litter box needed cleaning, but that told me little.
Had the cats been fed three times yesterday—or once?
I could wait ten minutes and watch the 9 a.m. automatic feeding.
That, though, would require trusting that the evening timer was set correctly.
I removed the batteries, reset the system, and programmed in the 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. feeding times myself.
There.
Perfect.
But it was now 9:02 a.m.
I fed the cats manually again and set a personal alarm to come down again at 5 p.m.
*
Days passed. Every few hours, new potential problems with the automatic feeder occurred to me.
The cats pounced on the food pellets the moment they were distributed, for example.
My second afternoon in the house, even with my personal alarm, I’d come down too late to see them eating.
In response, I set the alarm earlier.
How fresh were the feeder’s batteries?
Might they run out mid-month?
Just in case, I went to the hardware store and bought new ones.
Had I set both the feeder’s clock and timers correctly?
A single errant a.m./p.m. flip could force a 20-hour gap—9 a.m.–5 a.m. or 9 p.m.–5 p.m.—between meals or oddly nocturnal—5 a.m. and 9 p.m.—feedings.
At least once a day, every day, I visited the basement to check the systems or reset everything.
This was all investment, I told myself.
The automatic feeder should be my greatest ally.
It offered everything necessary for the cats’ survival.
All I had to do was let it.
*
By the middle of the month, my system for checking the automatic system was quite robust.
Whenever possible, I brought breakfast to the house and ate it in the basement, sitting cross-legged on the floor for a solid 20 minutes leading up to the 2–3-second span the cat food was distributed and consumed.
Afterward, in the office, I listened morning and afternoon for sudden movements that might indicate the cats were heading to the kitty litter box—at which point I’d leap up, dash down to the basement, and try to catch them in the act.
Several nights a week, I asked my wife to plan on dinner without me and instead ate a cold early supper, as I had my breakfast, on the basement floor with the cats, better to ensure the evening timer was zeroed-in, tight and right, exactly as expected.
Even my dreams were productive.
In bed, at home, I’d wake at all hours with fabulous ideas:
Chalk marks on the canister to identify possible pellet jams.
A webcam to watch the basement scene remotely.
An infinity pool water bowl that never needed refilling.
I slept less and less, yet hurried to the writing studio each morning with more and more energy.
*
I was still getting new ideas my last afternoon in the house.
Sweeping, vacuuming, boxing up my belongings, I felt a grateful melancholy.
I’d come here to plumb my own imagination and ended up contributing to something far larger.
Yet inspiration only matters when joined by the ability to take action.
So be it, I told myself.
This was not my house.
These were not my cats.
I had to trust my friends to take care of things again, as they had trusted me.
*
I carried my books and papers, laptop and printer to my car.
Back inside, there was no sign I’d ever been here.
And that was the magic of the system I’d set up, wasn’t it? I thought proudly.
Thanks to my vigilance, everything, all month, had been exactly the same to the cats, whether or not I’d ever existed at all.
I returned to the basement, checked the kitty litter box, topped up the water bowl, and installed fresh batteries in the feeder before setting the clock and timers one last time.
I turned to pet the cats, but they had already scampered off, in their unique and ultimately inscrutable way.