Learning to eat

Last night was one of those times when something happened which my mind just kind of short-cicruits and switches off about if I think about it. I can still kind of creep up at the edges of it and look at and then it just goes all... weird. Nice weird. Definitely definitely nice weird.

After asking me what was for dinner, My owner told me it was now time to eat from my bowl and that the soup I was going to have was a good idea. When she said it, my heart just kind of stopped. I don't know why, I think it was the shock of it. She has a way of getting me to get ready for things and then leaving it just long enough for me to have put it out of my mind before bringing it up again, so its just a total shock again.

When I was sent off to go reheat the soup I was in a little bit of a daze and I had to really concentrate, and it was a slightly surreal experience pouring the soup from the saucepan into the dog bowl and then carrying it into the lounge by the PC and placing it on the floor. Well first of all I placed it on the table mat on the coffee table and then looked at it and thought... hmmm this isn't right, this isn't how puppys are... just as she had said to me earlier before. Placing it on the floor was again one of those strangely intense moments when something inside just seems to bend and makes you want to mew.

Looking at it there, knowing she knew I was going to eat and then trying to take the first few mouthfuls. It made such a noise... slurping with my lips and leaning into the hot soup (a beef broth and vegetable btw, yummy), getting each lump of meat with my lips and dragging it between my teeth. Very quickly i realised my glasses were getting in the way and if i didnt want to starve or didnt want to scratch them on the edge of the metal bowl they would have to come off... so they did, and this left me very blind, just able to see the bowl clearly. On my hands and knee's i started trying to eat properly but my neck doesnt bend like that so... i found lying flat on my stomach with arms drawn up either side of the bowl but not touching it worked best. Pushing my face into the bowl, forehead pressed against the top rim and getting my chin deep into the bowl so it dripped down it, tongue and mouth into the bowl and sucking and lapping and chasing food around. It was.. messy... but the more i did it the less i cared. I wanted to eat like this, like she had ordered, and everything else stopped mattering. I curled over on my side a little to chase it round more, moving the bowl back and forth with my chin, learning to spin it with my face rather than use my hands... not touching it. I was... shocked, how I responded.

That quiet passivity, that feeling inside of the world shrinking away and just this one thing being there... this one task at hand, being so hyperfocused... I guess that wasn't so surprising, the deep ache in my balls though and the tightening of them, that I hadnt expected at all. Then imaginging how I looked with my face buried in the bowl, wiggling around on the floor trying to get all the food I can... that had that wonderful sting of slight humiliation which I know always arouses me despite the prickle of redness on my face from a near blush... I know by the end my chin and nose were covered before i wiped them in frustration to put my glasses on so I could say i couldnt get to the corners... I chose too deep a bowl, it was all that was in the shop and its a lesson learnt. She kindly let me use a spoon to finish.

I don't quite know how I think about it, but it left a deep ache inside and didn't feel as strange or unnatural as I had expected. There was a certain click inside me I'm sure.