The Breakfast Bandit

I'm so sick of making food my kids don't eat.

This morning, as I do every morning, I asked them what they wanted for breakfast. And after vetoing all the stuff that they know that can't have but suggest anyway ("Fruit snacks!" "Cupcakes!" "Ramen noodles!"), they requested oatmeal (or "meat-meal," as Coby pronounces it, which makes my stomach turn every time). Only they can't make it simple, you know, and all want the same flavor. There's one request for strawberry. One for peach. One for blueberry - two packets, he insists, because he's staaaarving - and please Mommy can you make it extra runny like Nana does?

So I fill all the orders like a waitress, and I put the steaming bowls of goodness in front of them at the table, and then they eat one or two bites and then slide off their chairs and run around like madmen and decide that closing themselves into the bathroom and brushing their teeth with half the tube of toothpaste and getting it all over the mirror in the process sounds like a much better idea than eating their breakfast.

So there it sits. Getting cold.

... Until Mr. Goldilocks himself, my cat Thurman, makes an out-of-nowhere appearance on the chair. And this is how it always starts out. Notice how he looks all nonchalant, like, "Oatmeal? What oatmeal? I'm just sitting here trying to sleep, yo."

"I am at this table for no other purpose than to take a nap. See how convincing I am?"

And then it turns into this ...

"Why, what a surprise! There is a bowl of oatmeal in front of me!"

And inevitably, that will turn into this:

"Nom nom nom ... oooooatmeeeeeal."

And while I didn't take a picture, what happens next is just as inevitable. The barf. Because, you see, Thurman has always had a weak stomach and literally barfs up everything he eats that isn't his special "sensitive stomach formula" cat food. Yet he still insists on scavenging leftovers every chance he gets. Usually, that isn't very often, because due to my deep hatred of cleaning up bodily fluids I maintain a hyper-vigilance and shoo him away at the first inclination that he's creepin' on a bowl of something.

Anyway, all this goes on until I finally get tired of chasing the cat away and decide to chalk it up to a loss and dump the bowls of oatmeal (or omelets, or cereal, or pancakes, or other uneaten goodies) and clear the table. And then at like ten o'clock, one or more of the boys will wander in to the table and be all, "Wah!! Where's my breakfast?" and I'll be like, "Dude. You didn't eat it. I threw it away." 

And then, after a disappointed pause, they'll say, "Oh. Well ... can I have fruit snacks, then?"