three in the morning

[donq]

There was a time when my cat (not really mine, but my brother's) ate so little and wasted its food. But recently, it eats so much. Every night when I go out to the courtyard to stretch my legs, it would come asking for food by continuously making loud meows. If I don't give it anything, it will be waiting and crouching near its dish (kind of protest) and doesn't go anywhere.
Finally, I got an idea from the Parable of the Monkeys by Chuang Tzu (476–221 BC):

A monkey trainer tells his monkeys that he will give them three nuts in the morning and four in the evening. The monkeys are outraged. So the trainer changes course. He offers the monkeys four in the morning and three in the evening. Now the monkeys are happy.

So, I give my cat more food when it asks for it at night. But just a quarter (or less) of its ordinary meal (which I already reduce it).
The two arrangements were the same in that the amount of food did not change. But in one case the animals were displeased, and in the other they were satisfied.
And my cat has stopped meowing for more in the night after that.

Sure, Chuang Tzu didn't really mean how to trick the monkey (or cat, in my case). Here are some of its commentaries:

No discrepancy in name or reality ever occurred, yet pleasure and anger occurred as if there had been—and this also is to follow “it is.”
The manner in which one of perfect comprehension engages with the unity of all things is such that how could it be a question of ever belaboring the spirit about it! If one has to belabor the divine intelligence in order to deem things one, such a one is not worth relying on, for he is not any different from someone who fails to regard things as one. He also suffers from the same confusion as that of the monkeys, for he follows that which gives him pleasure and deem this “it is [so].”
In such a way the sage brings about harmony by taking “it is” and “it is not” and lets them rest on the potter’s wheel of Heaven (tao).
Such a one never employs them [“it is” and “it is not”] unilaterally. Therefore, he consigns them to innate equilibrium, where they come to a stop.
This is called the two courses approach.
That is, one employs the “it is” and “it is not” of everyone in the world.

......................

It might be great if we can feel the same with "it is" and "it is not". Still it's easier said than done, isn't it?

[gruntal]

I remember when a store was going out of business and everything was 10% off. But do you figure that in before or after the sales tax? As it turned out the net sum was the same either way but the customers presumed it was to their advantage to discount before adding the sales tax. It was much easier for the store employees to just do the normal calculations and discount 10% in the end.

And don't get me started on bags of potato chips versus those neatly stacked in little cardboard cylinders.