We seem to have a theme going this week.

Berta, our fat brown tabby, is in the metaphorical dog house.

She is a very wicked cat (not as wicked as my cousin’s cat, but wicked nonetheless).

Since moving to our new house, Berta has enjoyed the privilege of being on the kitchen island.  Something she really likes.  We keep a glass of fresh water up there, she snoozes up there and she can come and bug me by leaning as much onto my keyboard as I let her get away with.  She can get her fat butt up there all by herself – provided the bar chairs are pulled up. 

I was amazed that she could jump up onto the bar chairs at all; and from there it’s an easy jump onto the island. 

Lately, I have been more strict about Berta’s food (she’s diabetic) and she doesn’t like that one bit.

Mind you, she’s not on a diet. She’s not being starved.  I get one-ingredient freeze-dried food (chicken, salmon or beef) and she gets that instead of dry food periodically during the day.

Murphy gets his food over on the kitchen counter.  He can jump to it from the floor or, if he’s feeling lazy, he gets on the island and jumps from there. 

We thought that Berta was not able to jump from the island to the counter – it’s a goodly distance, she’s not great at jumping, and she has a big fat butt.

We were wrong. 

Berta tried and discovered that she could, indeed make the jump between the island and the counter and thusly get some of Murphy’s deliciously carby dry food. 

WTF, Berta.

It should be noted that Berta cares about little in this life beyond pets and FOOOOOOOOOOD.  FOOOOOOOOOOD is her favorite thing ever. 

I tried to convince Berta that eating Murphy’s food was not a good thing.  She disagreed – vehemently.

She’d get up on the island, go to the edge – resolutely ignoring me yelling “NO BERTA”, and make the jump.  I’d go pick her up off the counter and put her back on the floor.

And repeat  …. And repeat …. (We won’t argue about which of us was the slowest of the slow learners.) And then I just waited at the edge of the island and would pick her up before she made the jump – still explaining “NO BERTA”.

The last time I picked her up pre-leap, she slapped me in the face, claws out, and left me with a bleeding wound from the inside of my left nostril to my upper lip.   Not a deep wound, but like all facial wounds I bled like a stuck pig. 

So now the chairs are all pulled away from the kitchen island.

Rotten cat.

(And you know she’s already forgiven, even if I do look like I have a red string coming out of my nose and stuck to my upper lip – I feel like I can make this work – right?)