For the most part, our fat, gray cat conserved his energy.  In his years as primarily an outdoor cat, he would try very hard to emulate his lion-ancestors and snooze for at least 22 hours a day.  After all, hauling 18 pounds of feline cuteness around every day was tiring work.

His daily spurts of energy were confined to the dinner hour.  He knew the rattle of the dry food bag intimately.  If you stood outside on the patio and shook the bag, he would come warping from the farthest corner of our Concord lot whether he was in the middle of stalking mice or not.

It was with great concern that I came home one day and shook the bag, and ... no cat.  I shook the bag again with the same result.  I then decide just to go into the garage and set up dinner: dry food, milk and water.  I opened the door from the kitchen to the garage and was greeted with a blizzard of feathers.  It looked like the set from a sitcom episode.  There were feathers everywhere.  In addition to the feather storm, there were a few identifiable bits of what may have been wings, feet and head.  I finally figured out that what I was looking at was the remains of a battle between cat and bird.  The bird was definitely not the winner; but where was the cat?

I walked out to the patio again.  There, sprawled in feline repose with distended tummy and four paws sticking up in the air was my fat gray cat.  His eyes were large and glazed as he struggled to move his head.  If he could have spoken, I sure he would have said, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!"