My ancient cat is always hungry, may try to eat me

Flannery has been stone deaf for years, but somehow, she still knows I’m headed to the kitchen.

From what I can tell, our household’s eldest cat is dead asleep … or possibly just dead … atop a pile of clean clothes I’d been meaning to fold for days and will now have to rewash to remove all the fur and feline skin flakes. A few moments of silent staring verify the subtle rise and fall of her belly as she breathes. Just asleep, then.

I wonder if I can make it to the kitchen, directly past where she’s resting, without disturbing her. It’s a task more challenging than it seems.

Despite being incapable of hearing, if one were bearing down on her, an exploding dump truck packed with fire crackers, glass bottles and balloons inflated by the screams of the damned, Flannery somehow senses my intentions. She raises her head from her nest of towels and underwear. I wonder — not for the first time — how she knows. Perhaps the loss of her hearing has enhanced the cat’s other senses beyond their natural limits. Can she feel the subtle shifts in the dust motes as I rise from the couch? Detect the gentle flex of the floorboards as I lift my left foot? See through the thinning skin of her closed eyelids the changes in light as I slowly pass a window? I’m unsure.

What’s certain is, no sleep is deep enough to prevent Flannery from recognizing minute changes in her environment that alert her that one of the household’s humans possibly might maybe be considering potentially heading to the kitchen at some point. Regardless of whether she has been so enraptured by the empty boxes and scraps of paper littering the neighborhoods of Kitty Cat Dreamland that I have to check to ensure she hasn’t passed away while wandering its streets, the moment I consider grabbing a snack or a glass of water, Flannery somehow knows it and awaits my arrival.

It’s food she wants. Always food, and she always wants it.

For the 18 or so years she’s lived with us, Flannery has been a lithe cat, prone more to snacks than meals. Sure, she might pooch up a bit during the winter months, when her desire to stay warm surpasses her love of rending the flesh from small critters in our backyard, but that weight quickly disappears with the cold.

As she’s aged, Flannery’s body has shrunk even from its natural, slender form. Contradictorily, the volume of food she consumes in a day has grown significantly. She’ll down a half-can of the odorous mush Blue Buffalo claims is cat food and be begging for a second course by the time I’ve polished off my first fistful of Cheez-Its. Lord help me if I’m pouring a bowl of cereal; the moment she spots my hand in the general vicinity of a carton of milk, she goes into a froth-mouthed frenzy.

I know it seems ridiculous, but deep in the recesses of my lizard brain, there’s an illogical but persistent fear that she may one day attempt to eat me. That as she continues to age, her preternatural senses will grow increasingly keener and her appetite along with it. How long before the only sound she can hear is the siren song of her insatiable hunger?

I’ve begun sleeping with a spray bottle full of water on my nightstand. You know, just in case.

As I pass by her nest of previously clean laundry, Flannery’s eyes, still heavy from slumber, drift open. I pause, hoping she might lower her head again, knowing that she won’t. The ancient cat, growing more powerful with age, yawns, flashing rows of yellowing, still-sharp teeth.

She looks at me and licks her lips.