Kato, as I originally described him, is an interesting cat to own. Part of what makes him so interesting is that, for being such an insanely and obviously intelligent animal, he is really, really dumb. This cat is so stupid. He also provides us with the best stories. One of my all time favorite Kato stories is how we ended up buying an expensive fountain-style water bowl for the cats.
We originally had this heavy ceramic pink bowl, deep with a little golden paw print on the bottom of the dish among other gold details. It was a cheap find, probably something we scared up from the clearance area of Pet Supplies Plus or Meijer, and it served its purpose very well. Except for one glaring issue. Kato loved knocking it over.
Cats are known to not like still water. In their minds, it means the water may not be safe to drink and they will frequently bat at the surface of standing water to make it move, somehow determining in the ripples if it is safe for them to drink from. Kato, however, took this to the extreme. We would find the water bowl tipped over, its contents extended far across the floor or soaked into carpet. We once tried fitting it into a heavy casserole dish with a towel to keep him from spilling water everywhere, but he was smart enough to pull it out and dump the water out anyways.
The day that finally encouraged us to give up hope and buy the motorized moving water dish was, when I got home from a long walk around town, discovered that the water dish was not just knocked over; it was nowhere to be found. After several minutes of confusion and searching, I found it clear on the opposite side of the apartment, upside down. While it was much farther than he would usually pull it (even now, he’ll pull the motorized water dish away from the wall for no apparent reason), it wasn’t uncommon to find the water dish somewhere that wasn’t the kitchen, but this seemed excessive to me.
It was while I was going back to the kitchen with his water bowl to refill it that I noticed what else he had done. Our red Keurig, usually pushed far back on the deep countertops of our small kitchen, was pulled forward to the point where only a few inches kept it from toppling to the kitchen floor, the top flipped open.
This cat, too stupid to realize that he would have water available to him if only he could resist the temptation to tip over his water dish, had realized that, in the absence of water in his bowl, he could find it in the back section of the Keurig, where he had seen us put water many times before.
We went out that night to purchase the motorized dish. There have been no further incidents of bowl flipping, though he has managed to push, pull, and upset the bowl enough to splash all of the water out, which creates a terrible noise of the small motor running with nothing going through it. I’m sure our neighbors absolutely adore the noise.
Lemons and Spoons 