In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
... is called off due to holiday traffic. Grrr!
In other news, I left the kittehs with 7 days worth of kibble, and was gone for four days. Their food bowls were not only empty when I got back, but they'd dumped over all the trash cans looking for anything else edible. Siiiiigh... what a pair of chow hounds!
-- Badtux the Tired Penguin
Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.
WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
7 days of kibble? You thought they'd ration it out on their own? Oh my. When you leave town the idea of a diet must go out the window. Leave enough for a month, or prepare to be dinner when you return. I'm surprised you still have all four limbs.
ReplyDeleteYou do still have all four limbs, right?
They're cats, not dogs, Dope. They'll eat until they're not hungry anymore, go away, and come back and eat again when they're hungry again, unlike dogs who will eat until they literally explode if you put enough food out at one sitting. Thing is, they seem to be getting a bit hazy on that "not hungry" thing in their old age... and I suppose the cooler temperatures don't help either, I left the inside of my house in the mid 50's when I headed out, they got fur coats so that's all it needed to be, right? Except they don't seem to understand that they have fur coats either... when they're not huddled up against me for warmth, they're sitting on the furnace grates getting warm air blown up where their balls used to be. Fur-bearin' varmints just bein' contrary. But they're cats. So I guess that's par for the course.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin
Not all cats are sensible. We have a brother-and-sister pair we adopted from the Oakland Animal Shelter in 2004. The female, who would have been the runt of a litter, is skinny and eats like a cat. The male acts like a dog. He gorges everything in his bowl so fast, usually without chewing the kibble, that he sometimes vomits it, with all the crunchy chunks still in recognizable, unmasticated form. Then he looks for more. If we put down 7 days' worth of food and went away, he's eat six days of it by Day 2, the girl cat would get one days' worth, and they'd both be starving amidst piles of boy-vomit when we returned.
ReplyDeleteWe've worked at cultivating good cat-sitters in Australia and here. In Oz, it was this odd but wonderful older male nurse who occasionally worked on my ward. He was born in Rhodesia when it was still apartheid, and had lived all over the world after his family fled the post-colonial chaos. He liked to talk about American life and politics with me, loved kitties, but couldn't have any in the cramped flat where he lived. So when we'd take off for a month in Europe, Uncle Phil was delighted to live in our comparatively spacious rented house for the whole time. He didn't even want any money!
Up here, the neighbours next door have a 14-year-old girl who's looking to earn money to buy a laptop computer. We've been trying to get friendly with as many folks as we can, because if there is a massive collapse, what's going to get people through it is having a network of people who will watch your back (as you watch theirs.) This family has relatives who live on one of the agricultural islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island, so her pantry is jammed with home-preserved produce. On her front porch, she puts out boxes full of apples, carrots, beets, whatever her kin have grown. It's known around the neighbourhood that anyone can help themselves. So we're chummy, and we're happy to return a favour by paying the girl $10/day to drop in a few times to feed the kittehs while we day-trip. Win-win all around! Maybe you could find someone trustworthy with more time than money to cover M&TMF, eh?
Foodie Kittehs! Gotta love'm.
ReplyDeleteBukko, you've made me blow my morning tea out my nose.
ReplyDeleteWe get the undigested crunchy barf laid out in a line in the bedroom, on the porch, in the bed.
My favorite cat barf is after they've eaten a bird & need to rid themselves of the undigestible parts. You can see a beak, claws, feathers, all compacted into a small-ish chunk of puke. It's really quite amazing.
My favorite cat barf is after they've eaten a bird & need to rid themselves of the undigestible parts. You can see a beak, claws, feathers, all compacted into a small-ish chunk of puke. It's really quite amazing.
ReplyDeleteCool! In a gross-but-scientific sorta way. Our current cats are all-indoors, so they can't do that. I used to have an indoor-outdoor cat who was a great rat-catcher. Tons of woods rats in Florida. She would leave bits on the porch as offerings, and the most amazing thing was how she would often leave just the face behind. Eyes and nose attached to fur, almost nothing else, right in front of the door. The Hannibal Lectress of cats...
Bukko, the other kitteh won't clean up the piles of boy-vomit for ya? When Mencken does his ralph-and-puke act, The Mighty Fang goes right over and laps it up :).
ReplyDeleteAll I can guess is that the lower temperatures make my guys want to eat more. The cup of food I left them a few hours ago is now pretty much gone, and they'll have licked the bowls clean by the time morning comes around and beg me for more. Will have to see how that all works out, sigh...
Regarding the regurgitated animal parts and "gifts", mine are of course indoors boys (other than The Mighty Fang's occasional supervised excursions with harness and leash, which never extend beyond the back yard), so I don't have to worry about that. I did once have a cat when I was a kid who loved leaving "gifts" though. One day he brought in a baby water moccasin and dropped it at my mother's feet, she had just opened the back door, which opened into the laundry area. Now, understand, my mother is a hefty woman, but I swear that in addition to emitting a blood-curdling screech, she did a standing long jump of at *least* ten feet! Then she shouted, "Snake! Snake! Your damned cat just dropped a snake on the laundry room floor! Get it out! Get it out!" But the snake, which was very much still alive, had already scampered under the washer and dryer. Neither my brother nor I ever *did* find that damned snake. Though my brother later capitalized on it by leaving a rubber snake on the kitchen floor, which resulted in *another* screech and standing long jump the next day, at which point my brother picked it up and showed her it was rubber. At which point she accused *me* of training my cat to fetch snakes to drop at her feet, at which point I was laughing even harder than my brother at the thought of training that ornery tomcat to do anything he didn't want to do...
- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin