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The Rev. Colonel Sybil McButtons is a messy eater. Really messy. He eats dry food and, rather than chew and swallow his brown pellets, he breaks them into smaller pieces and leaves them scattered around his dish. In fact, I'm not sure he actually eats anything. Judging by the debris field scattered around the kitchen, like the sunken remains of a cat food cargo ship lost at sea, I'd say he leaves over half of his meal behind.
Because Sybil does this every time he eats, and he tends to graze throughout the day, there's really no way to keep that section of the kitchen floor crumb-free. The mice think that's just great. The radiator pipes come through the floor right near Sybil's dish, and there's a large gap in the floorboards around them. Sybil can often be found in silent and deadly concentration, fixed on the point of entry. This raises a rather unsettling question...is he making a mess on purpose? Is he leaving that cat food out as bait? If so, what does that say about his level of intelligence? And does it qualify as tool use? Amy has very cleverly placed a tray under his dish, in order to catch stray crumbs and make clean-up easier. No dice. Now he reaches in, grabs some pellets, and carries them off the tray for pulverization and scattering. He's a particular little beast, is our Sybil. He also manages, without fail, to drop one single bit of cat food into his water dish every time I change his water. Not two pieces. Not three. One. And always within a couple hours of my changing his water. The positions of the food and water dishes, the size of the target and the general pattern of the cat food debris field lead me to speculate that Sybil is doing this on purpose. I mean, he has to be trying to get a crumb in his water dish. If it was due to general sloppiness there would be more than one tiny piece. But why would he do this? I have a nagging suspicion that he's adding the fermentum, the little piece of the host that the priest drops into the chalice after consecration and fraction. I've always suspected him a ritualist, and now I'm sure of it. |
