Cat vomit

You shut up.
No, YOU shut up.
No, I throw up and you come around the corner and lick it up.

Ah, the grammar school exchange. A fourth grader's version of fuck off. Only relevant at the moment because I have two cats. One of them, the girl, Lily, just threw up in the hall. Our boy cat, Roman, immediately ran over and ate it. The embodiment of juvenile witchcraft. The hex made real and reenacted by cats.

The vomit isn't nasty, well, relatively. She does it semi regularly, and always right after she eats, so it still looks like dry food, just slightly digested. I'm sure there is a similar technique in French cuisine, where you soak meat in an acid for a moment so it is perfectly tender. No wonder why he likes it.

Not that I feel a tabby cat is the most discerning animal when it comes to food. We tried many kinds of cat food, fancy, expensive cat food, a variety platter of wet and dry, trying to find food they would eat. Turns out Purina dry food is their preference. The boxed wine of cat food.

Whatever. Works for me. But I'm not going to pretend the vomit eating isn't disturbing on some level, but at the same time, I have to some degree, fooled myself into thinking this small furry creature is a person in a cat suit. Sure they have different personalities, distinct things they do and "say," ways they express themselves. But I am convinced in some way that they share a friendship with me, that nuzzling and headbutts mean "I like you," when it probably means "let me mark you as my property, tall food giver."

They have never once offered to clean up the apartment when I'm at work. They seem to resent trips to the doctor, when I'm only trying to help them. No, they are not friends or surrogates for anything specific, only wild or wild-adjacent animals I have put up in my home, with food and water, and a litter box. Yes a wild animal shits in a box in the corner of my house daily. They have permeated the very fabric of my shirt. The lint trap is filled with a smattering of lint and enough cat hair to knit an Abyssinian.

Still I find myself seeking and comforted by their company. Regardless of how occasionally revolting I may find them. And I get an insight into parenting. Hopefully my someday toddlers will not eat vomit of any sort, regardless of how tasty it looks, or how Frenchly it was prepared.