Midnight: You are screwing with me and I know it for a fact, this is not a paranoid conspiracy, I'm on to you, and I have proof

Where is treats, daddy?

This is a note of complaint about our black cat, Midnight, He of the Predictable Name, who is screwing with me. Review the evidence and see if you agree that he is screwing with me. Here is how he does it.

1. On the rare days (eight times a week) when the cats demand special treats, I get two small bags of wet food out of the kitchen closet. Opening the closet door instantly attracts six large fuzzy sharks who circle my feet and yowl their heads off. I then get six Styrofoam bowls from the closet, by which time several cats have climbed the refrigerator and counter-tops and the space over the top of the closet to meow in my ears their immediate need for food because we are starrrrving, starrrrving, helllllp us, give us fooooood or we'll diiiiie, and it is impossible to hear yourself think.

2. I retreat to the middle bathroom and lock myself in, ignoring paws that come under the door, and prepare six bowls of treats. One bowl gets the most gravy and meat bits, then is put on the bathroom sink counter next to my toothbrush holder. This bowl is for Bandit, he who is known as the Large Barge, who will eat everyone else's food unless delayed by a big pile of his own food.

A second bowl (and here we get to the screwing-with-me part) with extra gravy is also prepared and put on a low shelf over the bathtub. This is Midnight's bowl. Midnight refuses to eat unless he is within sighting distance of his bestest best good buddy in the whole wide world, Bandit, so Midnight gets his own bowl near Bandit's bowel, placed out of sight of the other cats.

3. I pick up the other four bowls and open the door with my elbow, at which point Bandit charges in and jumps on the counter and chugs food right from the buffet table. A deafening cry goes up from the other cats, all eyes on the bowls as they prevent me from leaving the bathroom in their efforts to get a bowl and do like Bandit's doing. After pushing over, under, around, and through the mob, I set down the other four bowls in widely separated spots. Everyone digs in. The house is now quiet.

I wonder if it's time for treats. I bet it is.

4. Except for one thing, I am done. I go back to check on Midnight. He is sitting on the rim of the bathtub with his back to me, less than three feet from his food bowl, looking around as if he just popped in from another dimension and doesn't know what a bathroom is.

He is waiting for me to show him where his food is, the food that he can easily see and smell and probably even hear less than three feet from him. He waits for me on purpose. He knows where his food bowl is. He knows this for a fact, I know he knows it, and he knows I know he knows it. But he won't eat yet, oh no, not yet.

He looks around, sees me, and looks sad.

So... I go over, pick him up (myew), and relocate him to a spot two inches from his food bowl with his face right over it so the bowl is impossible to miss, and I put him down.

THEN he eats.

He won't eat unless I, his personal human peasant robot serf butler indentured servant, pick him up (myew) and put him RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS FOOD BOWL. EVERY SINGLE TIME, I HAVE TO DO THIS, OR HE WON'T EAT. AAAAUGH IT DRIVES ME MAAAAAAD AAAAAAUGHGH.

Daddy is doing laundry so it is definitely time for treats.

Scruffles has seen this and she thinks Midnight does this on purpose, too, but she of course thinks it is cute. It is not, it is obnoxious. She thinks Midnight has me kitty-whipped. Even though he is bigger than an overweight leopard cub, he will not feed himself so long as he has someone who will without fail pick him up and put him in front of his food. I guess that way he knows the food is really his and no one else's, or else he is just screwing with me, which is the correct answer.

I could just stop picking him up and let him starve, but he looks so pathetic and lost only three feet from his food bowl, like his brain fell out, it just tears me up. I have to pick him up. I have to. If I don't, the dopey cat will starve and Scruffles will be annoyed. It is better to pick up the cat. I am kitty-whipped, I am kitty-whipped, I am sooo kitty-whipped. Damn cats.