Snow!!!

My view of snow is that it’s alright looking out at the white via a window from a snug room – or maybe for playing in on a Saturday late morning – but it’s no good for going out in on a work day. And since five days out of 7 are work days it’s a good chance that snow is just a cold, wet inconvenience.

Most cats I’ve had have felt the same way. Not Fancy.

She woke me up this morning before dawn , cold and wet and purring and so excited. I got up to pee (as my poor smushed bladder often calls me to do these days) and saw the glow through the bathroom window. There’s something unmistakable about the quality of even nighttime light when everything’s covered with snow.

Fancy ran down stairs and up again wanting me to accompany her into the garden. I waited until it was semi-dawn (that’s after 7 in London in January) pulled on my rubber boots and watched her galavant through the snow. I think this may have been her first experience of snow. She loved it. She even loved pawing the slushy pond and drinking the near frozen water.

She was so happy and having so much fun it made me see snow afresh through the glittering eyes of my excited cat. Well, that is until I had to trudge over slick sidewalks and through melting, gray London slush to get to the Underground this morning.

amateur kitty dieters

Despite our moderate success in kitty dieting, our cats are bush league dieters. They’re nothing compared the kitty candidate for slimmer of the year.

Willie the Cat – has lost almost 5 pounds – although his picture looks like he’s lost way more than that. (Of course, Willie’s standing up pose is well chosen to make him look trim. Is he sucking in his kitty tum there?)

My colleague – the one who from time to time likes to look at (and laugh at) this picture of Other Cat when she’s feeling down – sent me this news of Willie.

And although I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it – Willie the Cat is the typical fat American.

Ms Ebrahim, 43, who moved to Manobier near Tenby, three years ago, said Willie put on weight through lack of exercise when they were living in the US a few years ago. He was always a very big cat in size. We lived in America and he was primarily an indoor cat – we lived in an upstairs flat and he got bigger and bigger,” she said.

Oh dear. It turns out that after moving to the UK, he got more excercise and is now competing for the svelte cat crown.

England safe again…

…for fat pet owners. Or more politely, the owners of fat pets.

The case of the two brothers who owned a really, really fat dog who were charged with animal cruelty for overfeeding it has concluded this week in the conviction of the two men. But at least British justice is consistent, and the guys got merely a slap on the wrist. I think they had to promise not to be so generous with the kibble, but they received no jail time and no fine and they got Rusty the-not-quite-so-fat dog back.

Magistrates convicted Derek Benton, 62 and his brother David, 53, of causing unnecessary suffering after a £12,000 two-day trial. But they decided that the dog, Rusty – who was 11-and-a-half stone [160 pounds] at his heaviest – could be returned to the Bentons providing it was properly cared for. They imposed a conditional discharge on each of the men.

Whewwwww….the Vol-in-Law and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We have a fat cat.

Earlier the brothers’ lawyer, Ann-Marie Gregory, had told the court in Ely, Cambridgeshire, that the case had left the owners of overweight animals living in fear of prosecution.

You got that right. And our poor kitties have been on a diet ever since a co-worker of mine highlighted parallels in the pet rearing approaches of the Benton Brothers and ourselves.

The kitty diet update

Hey, after a slow start – the cats have actually lost weight. Fancy didn’t really need to lose weight, but she’d put on just enough that we didn’t think it would hurt her. But Other Cat, well – her lack of personal responsibility was putting us in danger of a court date. After following Melusina’s advice of 2/3 cup of cat food per cat per day, Other Cat is considerably lighter – though still “big boned” – and Fancy is down to an optimum weight which means we’ve moved them back to regular food, but we’re keeping a close eye on portion size. Other Cat already seems more active, so we’re hoping that her weight loss will continue – albeit perhaps at a slower rate.

Pic-a-day?

Squirrels on snark is posting a photo a day:

Thanks to Newscoma, I learned about an idea for taking and posting a snapshot a day for 365 consecutive days. I’ve joined a group on flickr called Project 365 and the tree at left is my first contribution. I took it about 8:45 this morning on a farm just outside Martin, Tennessee.

Me – I don’t think I have the dedication for a picture a day. Some days I click and some days I don’t. But I did today:

It’s a portrait of my little cat Fancy. The one with the bald spots on her shoulders.

Oops

My little cat Fancy has developed two little bald patches on her shoulder blades. I was just talking to her about them – in that “cute” little voice I have for the precious cat.

“Don’t go bald on your shoulders, Fancy. Don’t get little bald patches. It’s quite to distressing to me. No one likes bald patches.”

“Harumph,” goes my husband in the next room.

“What??” I say

“No one likes bald patches…on cats – I’m sure you meant to say.”

“Yes, of course.” I reply.

Yep, the Vol-in-Law is so virile and testosterone laden that he’s got a touch of the classic male pattern baldness – and the sensitivity that goes with it. But it’s true, better a balding husband than a balding cat.

kitty diet update

For those of you curious about our attempts to slim down our fat cats, we have a kitty diet update. It’s not going well.

ViL: The cats are fighting
Me: They’re probably hungry
ViL: Have you fed them again?
Me: Not since this morning.
ViL: Do you think that’s enough?
Me: Probably not, but they’re supposed to be on a diet.

Well, we’ve tried to have our cats on a kitty diet, but I don’t think it’s working out too well. They look hungry, they look sad, and they are begging for snacks. And we are very weak.

We bought two big bags of “light” or “senior” cat food as the first step in our kitty diet. The first bag we served up was French and appeared to have a high proportion of hay. During the Bible reading of the carol service we attended on Sunday we heard “and the lion shall eat straw like the oxen”. I thought of our poor little lions at home eating French hay.

Trouble was, the kitty cats actually liked the French hay and I think they worked on us separately to get us to refill their bowl more frequently. “Miaow, miaow feed me,” they said. And we would. Or we’d say “Aww, it’s Christmas – let’s give them a little more.” We were not very consistent. We were bad pet owners.

But they’ve eaten all the French hay now and they’re on to English diet cat food. I thought that England was a nation of animal lovers, but I guess the traditionally shoddy approach to English food has overridden that natural love and the poor kitties don’t find their new food quite so tasty. In fact, they’ve eaten a lot less of the English food and begged for more human treats since we opened the new bag. This isn’t the end of the world – because the really fat cat, the one who actually needs to lose weight – isn’t allowed to eat human food because she has a whole series of weird food allergies that cause her to itch and scratch until she literally bleeds. So even though I do love to see cats dance on their hind legs for treats – it’s not really worth having a disgusting scabby cat as the price.

oh tannenbaum

We finally got the Christmas tree up. Vol-K was visiting London on business and she came down to the house yesterday. I made her decorate the tree and then make me dinner. You should come more often, Vol-K.

I wasn’t the worstest hostess, though. I bought Ferrero Rocher and made spiced apple cider and tossed a salad to go with Vol-K’s stuffed cabbage leaves. I put on Christmas music as she requested – so that she could decorate the tree.

In this view, you can’t see the clutter

Here’s Fancy, taking her place under the tree – the stones are to stabilise the tree. It’s part of our defensive measures against Fancy’s war on Christmas.

Here’s what she did last year

Kitty diet

Prompted by this post – and the not yet dangerous or unsightly, but growing paunch of our slim cat – the Vol-in-Law has decided that he is putting our cats on a diet.

The first step was buying “senior, low-activity”, i.e. lazy fat-cat cat food. We have switched from an apparently deee-licious imported American brand of cat food to a probably far less tasty brand of low-cal “la ligne” preserving French cat food. I think it might be mostly made of hay.

The second step will be PORTION CONTROL. This may be where we have been going wrong in the past. According to the diagram on the French bag of cat food (which shows one sleekit cat and how much it should eat and one fat cat and how much it should eat) – we may have been feeding our cats too much. Let’s refer to the picture again:

It’s quite likely that we’ve been feeding our cats too much.

Unfortunately all the European recipes and portion sizes are in grams – a weight measurement – which means scales. This includes the cat food portion sizes. After 10 years in the UK – I still use American cookbooks because I use cups – a volume measurement. Using scales seems faffy and pointless – but I do have a scale somewhere. The Vol-in-Law must be serious about slimming these cats down because he:

1. asked me where the scale was
2. ventured into the chaotic pots and pans cabinet to find the scales (I heard the clanging from the other room and held my breath against breakages)
3. did not find the scales, but is determined to look in the cabinet above the oven (which is where I thought it was all along). That is the hard-to-reach storage space for disposable cups and plates, never-used and rarely-used nice tablecloths and cloth napkins and our collection of national flags for display on national holidays and the occasional international sporting events. (please don’t ask why scales are in there)

Anyway, since we’ve not yet found the scales the cats have about a day or two left of the tasty American cat food (at least in terms of their current portion sizes) before they’re put on the French hay.

Soon to be hungry

Fat cat

Two brothers are facing a private prosecution in the UK brought on by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). What’s the charge? They let their dog get fat. Real fat.

Alex Wylie, a vet from Bury St Edmunds who treated Rusty, said that the dog suffered from painful joints and breathing problems. “He did literally look like a walrus. There were times when he couldn’t get up.”

This being a nation of animal-lovers, the story is getting quite a bit of coverage.

I was looking at this picture of my cat on my Flickr account when a colleague glanced over my shoulder and said quite causually – “How many years do you think those brothers are going to get?”

She’s not fat – she’s just extra fluffy.