Saffron the Cookie Thief

My little orange cat, Saffron, loves people food. She will eat just about anything we eat and begs any time we are in the kitchen. Her favorites are chicken, turkey, steak, pork, cheese, and potatoes of any kind, especially Arby's homestyle fries. What I didn't know until recently is that she will do anything for sugar cookies!

A couple of weeks ago, I made Michigan-shaped cookies for Roger's Michigan History class. I have lower- and upper-peninsula-shaped cookie cutters and between those and Pillsbury, I had cookies in no time. I put the first batch on wax paper on the kitchen table to cool. When I went to take the second batch out of the oven I heard a "Mur" (Saffron's most frequent vocalization) and looked over to see her standing on a chair, her front paws on the kitchen table, licking a cookie! I was stunned. She's never done that before! I nearly burned the second batch chasing her away from the first one. Needless to say, the cookie she licked was then hers alone. (Yes, I know I reinforced bad behavior.) I probably haven't made cookies since last Christmas, so decided that maybe they were just a novelty that she found interesting.

Today I made my grandma's date-filled sugar cookies. The dough is less sweet than regular sugar cookies but apparently Saffron's attraction to sugar cookies is not NOT a novelty. This time, while the cookies were cooling on wax paper, I sat between them and the buffet behind the kitchen table (where Saffron likes to perch). Poor Saffron paced up and down the buffet, begging for cookies and pawing me like a dog, but I was strong and didn't give her any cookies. Imagine my surprise when she leaped over me, over my laptop, and landed amist the cookies without touching anything in the process! I quickly scooped her off the table and put the cookies in a Rubbermaid container. She's not dumb; every time we open that container she appears, begging for sugar cookies. She wins. Like everything else I eat, I give her a tiny bit. I just wonder how a cat who eats so much never gains weight. Must be nice!

My friend's cat, Mia, loves Twinkies (the cake, not the creamy filling), but I had no idea sugar cookies were so appealing to cats!