Operant Conditioning

My cats are neurotic eaters. When I put down their breakfast in the morning (fending off butting heads, leg-tripping body-weaves, last-minute countertop leaps, and non-stop meowing), Maverick will quickly appropriate the first bowl, butting Mitzi out of the way. Mitzi is a slow, fastidious eater. As soon as my back is turned, Maverick, after wolfing down half of his food, will quickly move to Mitzi's dish and gobble up as much as he can. No matter how much more I give him, it is always the same. As poor Mitzi shifts to Maverick's old bowl and takes the first hesitant nibble, Maverick will suddenly decide that the bowl she's eating from is the better one, and he will shove her away. This may happen five or six times until I am almost dizzy from watching Mitzi race from bowl to bowl, frantic to get a mouthful. Although Maverick is generally a shy, gentle cat, when it comes to food, his manners disappear. Maverick had a tough start in life, so for a long time, we put up with his boorish behavior. But as he has gained in strength and confidence, I've decided he has to learn: I bought a squirt gun with a thin, sharp action. I now stand guard over their bowls and as soon as Maverick makes a move toward Mitzi's, I shoot. After a month, my aim has gotten a lot better and Mitzi can finally eat in peace.

The weird thing is that Mitzi doesn't seem to know what to do with herself now that Maverick isn't forcing her into a game of musical bowls. She will take a quick bite of her food, glance nervously around her, then quickly move to the side, as though anxious not to eat too much. Sometimes she will actually wait for him to push her away, standing by her bowl, watching. Years of being shoved away from her own bowl of food have left her emotionally scarred. She doesn't seem to know how to eat without another cat bullying her.

They remind me a little of two people we knew in Japan, Mr and Mrs Ono.

Mr and Mrs Ono were neighbors of ours, a couple in their sixties who ran a small business. I had talked to Mrs Ono on a few occasions before I met her husband and I was always struck by how quickly she spoke and how furtive her speech was, as though she was a political dissident fearful of government spies. I just assumed she was a naturally nervous person with an idiosyncratic way of talking -- until I met Mr Ono.

Mr Ono was a medium-sized man, but his voice was huge and he used it like a blunt instrument. A conversation with Mr Ono generally followed a certain pattern. He would ask you a question which you would then attempt to answer. Before you could get two words out, though, Mr Ono would finish your thought for you, then fire another question before you had time to recover. Around most of the Japanese people we knew I generally felt quite fluent, but around Mr Ono, I quickly turned into a gibbering idiot.

"Cold today, isn't it?" he would bellow. I would open my mouth to agree, but Mr Ono would quickly interrupt, abandoning the weather for a different topic. His garden patch, perhaps? The cold that was going around, and whether my children had caught it? I could never be certain just what he was saying: Mr Ono had a strong regional accent along with his rapid-fire manner of asking questions. He seldom made eye contact, repeated anything he'd said, or waited for a response. Conversations with Mr Ono were surreal -- not conversations at all.

Mrs Ono, a pleasant, sociable woman, got the worst of it. Whenever I ran into them together, a few minutes of 'conversation' with them made me dizzy. "How are your children doing in school?" Mrs Ono might ask, but before I could answer, Mr Ono would come up with one of his thundering non sequiturs. If Mrs Ono wanted to know where my husband and I were going to plant our morning glories this year, say, Mr Ono would begin to talk about the eels in the lake. If Mrs Ono wondered whether our next-door neighbors had come back from Thailand, Mr Ono would suddenly want to know if we were buying our kerosene from the same shop this year. Sometimes, Mrs Ono would begin to ask a question and before she could even get the words out, Mr Ono would bellow out one of his own. I privately began to refer to Mr Ono as Mr Oh No. Mrs Ono's face was always pinched and reflective, and she tended to walk with a slump. I wondered how she coped.

And then, quite suddenly, Mr Ono died. We were away at the time, and I didn't see Mrs Ono for several months. The next time I ran into her in the supermarket, I was astonished at how she had changed. Her furtive way of speaking was gone: she stood up straight and looked you right in the eye. A few times I saw her downtown, usually with friends, but always smiling. "How are those girls of yours?" she would cry merrily, and wait for an answer. We had real, conversations. Years of interruption had not traumatized her: the real Mrs Ono had been released.

I wonder if the squirt gun will eventually work for Mitzi? It's a pity Mrs Ono never had one.