An open letter to my cats

You know mama loves you. That's right, I do. I understand that you need me to play with the string now, Val. I know you only like to play with it in the bathtub. I understand, Tinkerbell, that you can only be put on the left shoulder or else your little world starts to fall apart and that Val needs to check under the covers every night to make sure there aren't any monsters there. (Thanks for keeping us safe.) I go out and buy you the feathers-on-a-stick contraption that you love more than life itself - even though it costs $15 - and I know that sometimes a cat NEEDS to get out into the hallway, even though there are doggies on this floor and Val has never actually seen a doggy and the terror would probably give her a little kitty heart attack and the guilt of that would nag at me for the rest of my life, but I understand.

But I will not mush your food into a paste just because you like it that way. I'm sorry I bought the "wrong" kind of food. I didn't know you didn't like chunks. I was sucked in by the delicious sounding names (Hunter's Stew!) and figured that you'd enjoy something new. Perhaps I shouldn't have bought four flats of it but it was on sale. Please eat the cubes. Stop only licking the gravy off and then freaking the hell out because you have nothing to eat.

Thank you.