What has happened is that Brave Sir Hogarth has discovered that he has a taste for cat food. Whenever he gets the chance (in other words, every time we leave the house), he avails himself of the opportunity to empty the cat's bowl. Now I'll grant that he makes more efficient use of the vittles in question than the cat himself does, given that the cat regurgitates roughly 30% of everything he eats in furtherance of his feline performance art project (for which he apparently is in the running for a hefty NEA grant given the devotion he shows to it), but it's causing problems nonetheless.
See, the cat resents it. Gets him all riled up, truth be told, and the cat has a touch of the vigilante in him. Took matters into his own hands, such as they are. Being as the cat food is of much higher culinary quality than the dog food, the "eye for an eye" approach of getting redress via the eating of the dog's food was deemed to be a non-starter. No, the cat has decided to even the scales by peeing on the dog's bed. This we cannot have.
The cat's unilateral and unsanctioned decision to discipline the dog having failed (because let's face it: there aren't many smells that are offensive to a dog, and I'm not convinced that Brave Sir even realized that the cat was attempting to punish him. "Thanks for the new scent, Buddy!" was more the reaction I saw), our hand was forced - we had to get control of the situation. Scolding, however, had no effect. Oh sure, we got the droopy ears and averted eyes, and we got the supplicating rolling on the ground in shame, but first chance he got to engorge himself on the cat's chow... he did.
So I raised the stakes. I told him that if he did it again, I was going to put a goofy cat hat on his head, take pictures, and post them on the internet with the expressed goal of humiliating him. And I meant it:
I hope this works. If it doesn't, my only recourse is to pack him off to military school or something.
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