Carpet Cuisine

Dinner is over. I have some scraps of chicken and steak left. So, being the nice guy I am I decide to share the scraps with the cats. I drop them in their dish for them to munch on at their leisure. I go about cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.

Within a few seconds, the cats heightened sense of smell quickly draws them to the food bowl like a tractor beam on an alien spacecraft.  Pulled relentlessly to the food bowl, the cats stop, staring at these meaty morsels of goodness.  Their noses waggle as their olfactory meters check out the newest snack.

Seems tasty.  Smells good.  Easy to eat.  All those thoughts race through their minds as their tiny mouths reach for a snack. And then the unbelievable happens.  They pick up the meat, wander away from the food dish, look for some carpet and drop their meat cube there to eat.  As I glance over and see this happen, I quickly retrieve the food and put it back in the dish. I tell them that is not the place to eat their greasy food.  They look at me with questioning eyes, glance at the bowl and back at me and then they pick up the meat and drop it back on the carpet.  Why?!

After another retrieval and placement of the food into the appropriate dish, the cats begrudgingly eat their meat.  They're not the happiest campers, if ever a cat would enjoy camping, but they eat it anyway.  And when they finish there's no "thanks" or acknowledgment of my kindness in their behalf.

So, I begin to wonder. What is it with carpets and food? Do the cats feel that adding carpet fiber to their meal enhances the flavor?  Is this their feline version of seasoning? Do they view it as a giant place-mat? Is it a fuzzy food dish?  I just don't know.  If there were no carpets in the house, would they carry the meat around in their mouths for minutes, hours, days or months searching for that one lone piece of carpeting upon which to lay their food?

It's similar with vomiting.  Why is it that when they get sick or have a hairball that needs expelled they always run to the carpet?  They could be standing on acres of hard flooring and yet if they felt the urge to hurl they'd hold it and run pell-mell as fast as possible to the nearest carpet upon which to discharge their internal refuse.

Cats have their own rules and ways of living.  I wonder what it would be like if I could crawl inside their brain and think like they do and see things the way they see.  I'd probably end up pouring my food on the carpet and eating dinner.