We’ve been receiving Christmas catalogs for three weeks now, but yesterday I decided to start keeping them. They stay in a paper bag until after Christmas when they all get recycled at once.
Kiddo#2 found them and is currently upstairs lusting over one of the catalogs. She’s never been interested in them before, but this year she can really read. Which catalog, you’re wondering? Surely the Interesting Toy Catalog, or the Expensive Toy Catalog, or maybe even the Wishbook?
Nope. It’s the food catalog. “Mommy, HAM!” {pause} “Mommy! CANDY!” {pause} “Mommy, what is this?”
I don’t have the heart to tell her these foods all taste like salt and the things in the assortments come in packages the size of my fingernail.
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Last night, my Patient Husband fed the third cat. Due to kidney problems, Third Cat eats pouch food rather than dry food. By agreement, I’m the one who feeds Third Cat, but for some reason, he took care of her last night.
Looking worried, my Patient Husband came into the bedroom with a tiny dish, and on it, the cat food.
“It came out of the pouch like this,” he said. “Is it okay?”
You know those moments where suddenly you see the world through someone else’s eyes? This was one of them. Abruptly I saw this pouch-shaped glup of cat food with mackerel chunks stuck in the middle of it as the feline world’s equivalent of a jell-o salad, gelatinous and oozing, just a little bit jiggly, and with unmentionalble/unidentifiable stuff floating inside.
When I indicated that it was okay, my Patient Husband asked, incredulously, “We feed them this?”
I nodded. “They even like it.”
This morning, as I fed the Third Cat while she head-butted my ankles and whined at me that I wasn’t ripping open the pouch fast enough, I admit I felt a tad bit guilty. But she scarfed it down, so I guess it must be okay.
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Our classy Local Paper came up with a voting guide for us yesterday in preparation for the primaries. It’s never too soon to make up people’s minds about political matters, and they’re doing their duty by the American public, or at least the local one.
They had the candidates submit their favorite recipe to the paper.
I kid you not. We are going to vote not on Candidate but on Candidate’s Grandmother’s Traditional Family Spaghetti Sauce or Other Candidate’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe that was cobbled together out of a cookbook. (The subtitle said “award-winning” which makes me wonder whom the candidate stole it from.)
So forget about Iraq policy, their opinions on abortion or immigration, or what they’ll do for your taxes. Vote on whether their cookies were moist and their spaghetti sauce savory. Because, you know, the president’s primary job is to come into the kitchens of each American family and cook them dinner.
I wish I were running for president. I’d send them a pouch of cat food and put together a list of ingredients from the Christmas Food Catalog.
But look at what cats usually eat in the wild–what’s a gelatinous glob of mackerel-flavored corn by-products when you’re used to gnawing the heads off of squirrels?
The Little Black Terror left me a mouse this morning. At least it was only a little one.
And I hope she didn’t leave it in your shoe as a surprise. :-b
I think Third Cat loves this stuff because it’s especially smelly. I used to break it up with a fork because it looked better, but over time I got lazy. Maybe I should do that again, with a sprig of parsley for presentation?
There’s a lot to be said for smelly. Smelliness has great currency in the cat world. Why else would they have so much fun burying their heads into and sniffing deeply at old sneakers? Misha’s favorite food is cheap, grocery store brand tuna cat food because it stinks.
I doubt Venus cares much about the presentation or the parsley. I bet she likes it all globbed together because that means she can take a bigger bite.
The mouse was on the front step. I’ve stepped over “gifts” in worse places.