not a step

Cuddly calico needs a visit with Richard Simmons

My cat, Calamity, has gained one and a half pounds since her last visit to the vet. While this amount of weight gain would be relatively insignificant in a non-supermodel human, for her it represented a nearly 10% increase. It's not hard to imagine how this happened, as Calamity hardly ever moves and when she does it's usually to get something to eat. An incredibly affectionate cat, she's basically a calico pillow whose daily routine consists of sleeping in the sunniest spot possible, occasionally waking up and meowing until someone rubs her tummy.

Though she will occasionally bat at her friend the toy mouse on a stick and has been known to glare menacingly at the pigeons that land on our air conditioner, on most days Calamity moves only slightly more than our couch does. I've actually left for work and returned in the evening to find her in the same spot. And while I can't prove that she never moved all day, nothing rules it out.

Though she shares her living space with a skinny, more traditionally beautiful cat named Noodles, Calamity hardly seems bothered by her status as a "big girl." Like a feline Delta Burke not burdened by a relationship with Major Dad, or a slightly hairier Roseanne, our chunky calico has apparently come to accept her situation.

Despite this very modern attitude and her slight resemblance to plus size model Emme, Calamity still needed to face her problem. Unfortunately, it's never easy to tell a loved one she has put on a few pounds and should probably go on a diet-a situation made even more complicated by the fact that while I speak English, Calamity apparently only speaks French. No one likes to hear that they've gained weight and being the bearer of this type of news often puts you in a bad position with whoever's on the other end of the conversation. This is especially true when that "person" has claws, sharp teeth and breath that could melt a steel door.

With that in mind, my fiancee and I braced ourselves for trouble as we took Calamity aside to tell her that it was time to go on a diet. As we feared--despite our best efforts at diplomacy and my use of all the high school French I could remember--our efforts met with nothing more than a blank stare. Perhaps most troublingly, Calamity stopped listening to us halfway through, ran out of the room and immediately began noisily eating. Given this total denial, our only choice was to put her on a forced diet consisting entirely of low-fat cereal and fish byproducts. While this sounds fairly awful, it's not all that different from what she ate previously. Actually, the low-cal food looks tastier than at least half of the meals in the "Lean Cuisine" line.

We don't expect Calamity to slim down to 9 pounds, we're just hoping to stop her from hitting 20.

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