Ode and Plea to Cat

Dear Cat,

Cat, I love you. I truly adore you. How could I not? You writhe and jump about in bids for affection without equal. You gently prod with face and limb--not for food, but for affection. How could you not be loved? You bathe me, and at times I let you, because I know it comes from the love center of your brain the size of a walnut.

For years, I counted among your most adorable and lovable habits your interest in cellophane. If it was crinkly and clear, it was in your paws. It was killed as if it were a mouse. You would parade around your meager living space, head held high, mewing your triumph through your clinched, plastic-clutching jaw.

But, recently, you have taken on a new, not so adorable, not so lovable habit. Your infatuation with plastic has, shall we say, matured. Like a girl with boys, you have graduated from wanting to experience your object of desire purely with mouth and hands to wanting it inside you. And as your father (of sorts), I entirely disapprove.

This is not because I do not want you to be happy. I was brought no small amount of joy when it was simply a proud strutting and shouting, plastic in mouth. But your new level of interest has become a problem.

For you see, Cat, when you eat plastic, you do not digest it. You swallow large sections of wrapper and they are rejected by your digestive system. They are not, then, deposited in the designated plastic pan, but on my floor, among other stomach contents, which, as a mere animal layman, I am only able to identify as "nasty stuff."

Dear Cat, I implore you: stop ingesting prophylactic wrappers. Stop eating the wrappers of DVDs and other things in wrappers. If I could take you to an obedience school to teach you that the trash can is not a place to fish for toys, I would. Alas, your brain is large enough to lovingly bathe me, but it's not large enough for much else. So, dear Cat, I will write you a letter on the Internet, in the (futile) hope that you will stop eating the plastic from my garbage and throwing it up on my floor.