No Pain, No Gain

My mom and I were listening to the radio a few nights ago while driving home from Seattle where we had just heard Maya Angelou speak. John "Intelligence for Your Life" Tesh, my nighttime airwaves guilty pleasure, was doing a story on pet obesity. "If you think your cat or dog could stand to lose a few pounds," he said, "cut back on their food and make sure they are getting the proper amount of exercise." My mom and I exchanged incredulous glances. It was as if the Tesh was addressing us specifically. It was time.

It's not that we feed Taffy as much as she wants, or whenever she wants. She receives less than a cup of dry food total each day, spread between breakfast, lunch, and an early dinner. (Feeding her three times a day is said to help with digestion.) She's been eating the "reduced calorie weight loss formula" for years. According to the vet, we do not overfeed her. She simply has a metabolism slower than a game of Monopoly.

But she is overweight, this we know. Whenever we have company, they feel the need to alert us to the fact that Taffy is gigantic, as if we had no idea. My brother usually joins in the teasing. My mom whispers, "We're working on it" so quietly you'd think she was trying to spare Taffy the humiliation. I'm the only one to scratch her behind her ears (Taffy, that is--not my mom) and coo, "I think you're perfect, Baby." Which she is. But we want her perfection around for a long time, and thanks to the Tesh we have decided to take her future into our hands. Yesterday we significantly lowered the line drawn on the blue plastic cup we fill with food every morning. Today she got her first taste of Margoshes Boot Camp--a grueling, cardio-heavy workout consisting of Taffy chasing and gnawing at a silver ribbon that was once wrapped around a Christmas present. Aside from the small stuffed cat she carries through the house whenever she's lonely and the tan catnip-filled mouse that is now stained green, the string is the only toy Her Royal Highness deems worthy of her time.

Day 1 of Margoshes Boot Camp lasted a mere 20 minutes, but 20 minutes was long enough for me to see that my cat is no different from the contestants of every weight loss show ever created. The first five minutes were fine--enjoyable, even--but after that is when I imagine she realized that there's no such thing as instant gratification in weight loss. "Drop and give me 20, Taff!" I would command, but she chose to just hear "drop." "If you don't get off your behind and get those paws in motion, I'm tacking on two more minutes of this torture." No surprise, that failed to inspire. "No pain, no gain, Taff." "I want to see that flab swing!" "Move it, move it, move it, girlfriend!" (Side note: My sassy black woman impersonation is going to get me shot someday.) My mom, who was in the kitchen mending some chair cushions, warned me not to work the cat so hard that she had a heart attack. She erupted in laughter, what remained of Taffy's "concentration" was broken, and I was not amused.

It was clear from the way the Queen cowered under the dining room table, following the string with nothing but her eyes (they got quite the workout), that Margoshes Boot Camp was too soft on the doughy, sleep-loving feline. I pushed her for an extra three minutes and spent the entire time walk-trotting with her in between my feet, kicking her and shouting, "Up! Get up, demon!" every time she lay down. I was like a freaking exorcist of excess fat. By the end, Taffy was running from the string.

Her Royal Highness bogarting my beanbag chair.

Her Royal Highness bogarting my bed.

It is now 4:45 and I just heard her yap to my mom, and my mom respond, "Taff, you want dinner? You didn't work very hard today."

Our downfall is that we're absolute suckers for her face, a perfect white triangle on her nose separating the brown left cheek from the black right one. The creature is a work of art. I am certain that if she were any less cute, we would feel not one ounce of guilt for "forgetting" to feed her lunch. That cat better be thanking her lucky stars that she's so freaking adorable. Whoever said looks aren't everything was obviously never an overweight feline.

And even after all that work, I think I got more exercise than the cat.