The good, the bad, the crunchy

The really good cat food was what we made for Sebastian. No pic of him, unfortunately, since he was before digital photography, but if you picture Curtis you've got a pretty good idea. Bigger though. The problem he had was FUS. Feline Urological Syndrome. Guys don't like to read about this. The ash built up in his penis, and blocked the flow. We found out shortly before he was about to explode. Essentially he got turned into a girl cat in some respects, and we had to be very careful about his diet.

We made the cat food. It was edible by humans, if you liked chicken liver. At the time I could make it in my sleep. Make some rice. The chicken livers could be cooked or not. Hard boil some eggs. Mix all together in a food processor, add a bit of carrot, a few vitamins, and you're ready for the most important step. It had to be frozen before serving. Had to be. They wouldn't eat it fresh, but chowed down on it big time after it had been frozen and thawed out again. Something about the texture and the smell totally changed.

The bad was the commercial cat food we tried before making it for ourselves. We opened the first can and nearly heaved. If the vet hadn't warned us that it smelled bad, we would have taken it back to the vet to get our money back. It was gross, and that's what we thought with our insensitive human noses. Sebastian and Nefertiti wouldn't even stay in that part of the house after a can was opened. Neither of them ate for two days while that was on the menu. It didn't hurt Sebastian to miss a few meals, but poor Neffer was getting a bit thin. Thats when we started to make our own.

Sebastian's crunchy of choice was crackers. Particularly the Stone Wheat thins. Even the slightest rustle of the wrapper would wake him from a sound sleep, and he'd run to the kitchen. Run. Normally he was really civilized about sharing a lap with a human who was eating. He just wanted to know what we were eating. Even if it was something cats normally liked, a tuna sandwich for example, he'd take a couple sniffs, and then wait patiently. He'd be right on anything that dropped. He loved the smell of bananas. He'd sniff and sniff and sniff, but wouldn't taste. All that was fine.

But crackers. He was a total cracker whore. He'd be right in my face, trying to eat the cracker that was in my mouth. He would try to pry open my hands to get  at the crackers. One time I held a couple crackers out at arms length. He tried several times to walk out my arm to get them. You try to hold your arm out straight with a 17 pound cat walking on it. When that didn't work he went to the floor beneath my hand, then leap up to wrap himself around my arm to drag it down to where he could work on my hand. Eventually I realized that if I wanted to eat crackers, he had to have one. That was enough. I'd break corners off and he'd snarf them down. I think if you laid a path of them he'd happily follow them into a troll's lair.

It's beautiful weather out today, 8 or 9 C (nearly 50 F), with water running everywhere. I put on my run gear, did lots of limbering up and headed outside. There is still lots of ice on the sidewalks so I had to be cautious. After a short and brisk walk I tried running, very lightly, very easily. I very much doubt those would be the words used by any watchers to describe what I was doing. I lasted about 5 minutes, then did a short walk just to give my legs a break. They weren't sure of this running thing anymore, and my knees and hips were complaining a bit. I did that a couple more times, then walked back to the house for a cool down. I stretched for a long time after, pigeon, feet up, runners stretches, back twists, squats.

The first thing getting back is always hard. Tomorrow it's supposed to be crap weather again, so I don't know when I'll be running again, but I'm aiming for Sunday.

I have to admit I'm a little surprised that there were no comments about the cat paws under the door video in yesterday's post.

Reader input needed. I need 28 words supplied to me by my faithful readers. Any word in English. Never mind why just now, but I need them for Feb 1. You can supply more than one if you like, but I'd prefer if the first commenter didn't supply all 28. If I get more than 28 I'll pick the most interesting, by my criteria. You'll have a chance over the next bunch of blogs to contribute. I'm pretty sure it's set up so that anyone can comment, though blogger makes it hard to do from a mobile platform. Please and thank you. Yes, I'm going to be a nag about it.