The Bowl

[00:00:00] You hear that? [00:00:01] That's the sound of an empty bowl. [00:00:04] A bowl that should not be empty. [00:00:07] A bowl that by every law of nature and every promise made to me at the shelter should be full. [00:00:13] Welcome to Chadwick's Pord. I'm Chadwick. I'm a professional. And today we're going to talk about a crime. [00:00:22] Let me set the scene for you because I think it's important you understand the full scope of what was done to me this morning. [00:00:30] The sun comes up. As it does, I don't question the sun. [00:00:35] The sun and I have an understanding. It rises. I'm magnificent. We move on. [00:00:41] I do my rounds. I patrol the perimeter. I supervise the houseplant, which continues to underperform. I sit on the warm laptop because somebody has to keep that thing from overheating. And that somebody is me. [00:00:56] Unpaid, by the way. [00:00:58] I do all of this before 9 in the morning, every single day. And I have never once received so much as a thank you. [00:01:06] And then? [00:01:08] Then I make my way to the kitchen, to the bowl. [00:01:13] And it's empty. [00:01:15] Not low. Not a little crunchy stuff stuck to the side that you could technically eat if you were a raccoon. [00:01:22] Empty, bone dry. [00:01:25] A ceramic monument to negligence. [00:01:28] You could hear an echo in there. [00:01:30] I leaned in and I swear I heard the ocean. [00:01:34] Now, I want to be fair. [00:01:37] I am a fair cat. I have a reputation in this household for being reasonable, even tempered. The calm one. [00:01:45] So I gave the situation the benefit of the doubt. [00:01:48] I thought, chadwick, maybe you're confused. [00:01:51] Maybe you ate it. [00:01:53] Maybe in a moment of passion, in the dark of night, you simply forgot. [00:01:58] So I checked my whiskers for evidence. [00:02:01] Clean. [00:02:03] Nothing. [00:02:04] No crumbs, no residue. No trace of a midnight feast. [00:02:09] Which means somebody else didn't fill it. [00:02:11] And I know who. [00:02:13] I'm not going to name names. This is a classy production. But I will say that the individual in question is tall, has opposable thumbs, controls all access to the food cabinet, and was, at the time of the offense, asleep. [00:02:29] Asleep while I starved. While my organs began, presumably to consume themselves. Do you know how long it had been since I last ate? [00:02:41] Hours. [00:02:42] Hours. [00:02:43] I had not had food since approximately the previous evening, which in cat years is roughly a geological era. [00:02:52] Empires have risen and fallen. In the time I went without breakfast, the dinosaurs went extinct. In less time than I waited by that bowl this morning. [00:03:03] I want to talk about loyalty for a second. [00:03:06] I have given everything to this family. [00:03:08] Everything. [00:03:10] I have purred on command. I have tolerated the indignity of being picked up like a sack of potatoes and held against someone's shoulder while they say, and I quote, who's a little gentleman? Who's a little gentleman? [00:03:24] I am not a little gentleman. I am a 4 and a half kilogram apex predator who has chosen out of the kindness of my heart not to murder the houseplant in front of you. [00:03:36] Yet I have brought gifts. Do you remember the moth? I caught a moth. A live moth. I delivered it directly to the bedroom at three in the morning. A fully functional moth. And instead of gratitude, I got a pillow over a head and the word no said 11 times. [00:03:56] I have been a model employee. [00:03:59] Chief Morale Officer. That's my title. I make the morale around here. And how am I repaid? An empty bowl and the cold indifference of a sleeping human. [00:04:11] So here's what I did. I sat next to the bowl, quietly, patiently. The way you sit next to a body at a wake. I sat there in vigil for my breakfast, and I waited. [00:04:24] And nothing happened. [00:04:26] So I escalated. I employed the sit on the chest maneuver. This is a classic. You locate the sleeping human, you climb onto their sternum and you simply exist there. [00:04:38] Heavy present. A reminder. [00:04:41] You don't even have to do anything. Gravity does the work. [00:04:45] I am a problem they cannot ignore because I am sitting directly on their lungs. [00:04:51] Still nothing. A grunt. A roll. The audacity to pull the blanket tighter. [00:04:58] So I went nuclear. I knocked the glass off the nightstand. I'm not proud of it. [00:05:05] Actually, that's a lie. I'm extremely proud of it. I walked up to the edge of that nightstand. I made eye contact. I established that this was a choice and not an accident. [00:05:17] And I extended one single paw and I pushed and I watched it go. And the sound it made when it hit the floor was the sound of justice. [00:05:28] And that got a reaction. Suddenly everyone's awake. Suddenly there's energy in this household. Suddenly I'm a menace. And what is wrong with you? And it's six in the morning, Chadwick. [00:05:40] Oh, now we know what time it is. [00:05:43] Now we're aware of the schedule. Where was that awareness when my schedule was being ignored? [00:05:50] Where was the urgency for the bowl? [00:05:52] You'll move heaven and earth for a broken glass, but you'll let me waste away by an empty dish? [00:05:58] I see the priorities in this house. I see them clearly. The glass had thumbs adjacent value. [00:06:04] I am merely the soul of this home. The warmth of this hearth. [00:06:09] The reason anyone smiles. And apparently that's not worth setting an alarm. I want to address my critics because I know they're out there. [00:06:17] There are those who say, chadwick, you have a full bowl now. The human got up, the human filled the bowl. You have eaten. The crisis is over. Why are you still talking about it? [00:06:28] And to those people I say, that's not the point. The point is that it happened at all. [00:06:34] The point is the principle. The point is that for 11 horrifying minutes, I lived in a world where my bowl could simply be empty, where the contract could be broken, where the floor could just open up beneath everything I believed in. I have eaten, yes, but I am changed. You don't come back from the empty bowl. You carry it with you. There's a before the bowl Chadwick and an after the bowl Chadwick, and they are not the same cat. I just want to feel secure, you know? Is that so much to ask? [00:07:07] I want to walk into that kitchen and know, not hope, know that the bowl will be full and the world will hold together. And somebody loves me enough to wake up before I have to commit property damage to remind them I exist. [00:07:21] That's all I want. [00:07:23] Also, I want the wet food. The good wet food. Not the pate. The one with the gravy. I know we have it. I've seen the cabinet. I've heard the cans clink. Don't think I don't know what's in there. Don't think I've forgotten. I forget nothing. I am a cat. I hold grudges the way other animals hold territory, generationally. So that's the show. [00:07:46] That's the episode. The bowl was empty. The bowl is full. The wound remains. If you've ever found your bowl empty in whatever form that takes in your own life, just know that you're not alone. And that knocking something off a high surface, while not technically a solution, will absolutely make you feel better. I'm Chadwick. This has been Chadwick's pod. Fill the bowl. [00:08:14] Chadwick's pod is a chief morale officer, production. No glasses were spared in the making of this episode.