Pfffftttt. Valentine's Day

Whatever.

Totally jerry-rigged consumer-driven holiday emphasizing loneliness or disfunctional relationships.

I prefer to surprise and be surprised throughout the year at meaningful moments. Not when someone tells me to tell someone I love them with expensive debt-laden or guilt-inducing gifts.

In the anti-spirit of V'sDay, I am going to sleep late, exchange no cards or gifts, hang out with my mom, hang out with my cats, read, nap, knit on my new project, and rest/recharge during my three day weekend.

My people know I love them. And most of them have showed me how much they care with all the support they provided during an extremely trying week. Truly wonderfully blessed am I.

Thank you.

Vent-ilation

Oh my, let me tell you. That movie clerk almost had himself ripped a new butthole, on his face. I went to the movies with a friend on Saturday. We made these plans on Friday afternoon after checking the paper that comes out, every Friday, that tells when the weekend movie times are. We chose "New In Town".

So I get to the theater and I'm waiting for her. She's a bit late and I decide to get my ticket coz it looked like things were going to get busy. I plunk my money down and say "one for New In Town."

He said, "The next showing is 7:20pm".

???????????????????

Me: "What?"

MovieJerk, sorry, Clerk: "The next showing is at 7:20pm."

Me: "It's supposed to be 1:20pm."

MovieJerk, errr, Clerk: "Well, it's been cancelled due to the Opera."

Me: ????????????? "What do you mean, it said the showing was at 1:20pm?"

MovieJerk, I mean Clerk: "The live Opera is showing in that theater."

Me: "It didn't say that in the paper."

MovieJerk, Clueless Clerk: "What paper?"

Me: "The paper that comes out on Friday so you can plan your weekend movie viewing."

MovieJERK: "Well, it wasn't in the paper."

My Mind: "Lissen you sumbitch, you tellin' me my movie's been dumped for some dumbass Opera gig? No head's up in the papers? Are you frickin' serious? I'm about to come over that counter and put an extra orifice where the sun does shine!!!"

Me: walking off because I'm about to lose an extremely bad temper and I'm not interested in playing with Security.

I waited for my friend, she finally arrived, and I not so calmly explained the asinine situation. She and I talked, well, she talked and I fumed, and decided to see our second choice "Push".

We get back up to the counter and she paid first. While waiting for my ticket, I told MovieClerkJerk that they really needed to consider advance advertising and to think ahead more when they do events like the Opera that cancel movies like "New In Town". He just nodded. It'll never happen. But I was delighted that a woman behind me asked him in a trumpety very irritated voice, "What, New In Town's been cancelled?"

I wasn't the only one, there were lots of couples who came in after me and ended up leaving coz their weekend plans were stomped on as well.

As for "Push", it had a good premise with some interesting special effects but it fell far short of a "wow" movie as it had a lot of unused and underutilized potential with lots of room for improvement.

CatFood Experiment Has Ended

I've tallied the data...

And the results are in...

5 different flavors of Brand 1 (small-sized breakfast cans) and 5 different flavors of Brand 2 (big dinner cans) have made it thru - half of the flavors involving "beef", the other half "chicken", and one lone "turkey with cheese bits". All involve "gravy".

Whatever. I have happy cats that are official members of the "Clean Plate Club", pooping up a normal BM storm, peeing good sized pees, and I've even caught Moomers drinking water out of the non-fountain water bowl twice. Oh my!

I went to the store today to stock up on 5 cans of each flavor - 50 cans total, which came out to be about $20! Way cheaper then the Science Diet guggy food.

Day 3 and Still a Happy Experiment

Chalk today up as another success. Beef seems to be the catnip flavor so far.

Meglet asked what's my feeding procedure, so here it is: (those of you who babysit the cats while I'm away will already be familiar with the basics)

Hobbes: he gets a shotglass full of dry food (3 varieties mixed together - Nutro Weight Maintenance, Adult chicken, and Senior) in a small bowl along with a dish of 1/3 of a can of whatever wet food I'm serving up.

Doodle: she gets basically the same as Hobbes but because she gains weight faster than him and Moomin, I tend to reduce her dry food if she's getting chunky.

Moomin: he gets a shotglass full of Science Diet c/d dry food (prescription food for cats prone to urinary tract infections, poor baby) and the biggest third of the can of wet cat food mixed together (took me long enough to figure that out, he was taking forever with eating each tiny dry piece one at a time). He's the most active kitto of the bunch and he really needs the water factor in the wet food. Not to mention he takes after his gigantic tomcat father.

Everyone gets a bedtime snack of a sprinkling of dry food to prevent hanging over me like a vulture too early in the morning.

Dr. H said dry food is higher in calories and carbs, along with all the grains/veggies filler (he said it is difficult to make an all-meat dry cat food), than wet food, so he recommends I feed them more wet then dry. Dr. W did an experiment with her own cat and found if she fed it 16 dry pieces of the food she was feeding it, her cat never gained weight - if she took some away it lost weight and if she added more to the 16 it gained weight. I like to keep dry food in the mix as we as humans are supposed to eat crunchy/harder foods to keep our teeth exercised and strong so I figure the same goes for cats. Not to mention if they were out hunting their food, they'd be crunching on small bones. Yuck but true.

Taking this all into consideration, I tend to keep the dry to the minimum I've worked out with my cats to maintain their weight which is a shotglass full and not the jumbo shotglass, just the regular straight alcohol shotglass size. The reason I'm not giving them more then a third each of a large can of catfood is that they barely finish that and I can't have food laying around all day because a) eeww and b) Doodle would be 500 lbs by now. The bedtime snack helps with the hungries.

Of course, Doodle is ALWAYS hungry so it doesn't matter how much I feed her. She literally has no shut-off switch. Plus she eats so damn fast sometimes that she yarfs her entire meal up and 10 minutes later she's all super-affectionate to me which means she wants more food because she's on empty.

Day 2 Of the Great Catfood Experiment

(I love these pics with my HobberBobber!)

I took Hobber, the eldercat, to his annual checkup last week during our bleezard and learned:

1) a limited diet for cats is NOT good

2) having them eat the same thing all the time is NOT good

3) cats are one of the purest carnivores and we are making them eat food with grains and veggies in it

4) eating fish has not been scientifically shown to cause the crystals in cat bladders

5) kittens should be given a wide variety of different kinds of wet foods so they learn to tolerate eating most anything which will come in very handy when a cat gets sick n' picky

6) stick to the bigger better known brand names

7) and it's okay for Moomin to have any kind of wet food coz it adds much needed H2o to his body (I still don't ever catch him drinking water).

So, on Dr. H's recommendation, I have purchased a gazillon (well, not really a gazillon, but a lot) cans of catfood.

We've got turkey, chicken, and beef in a variety of different preparations, like:

"meaty bits"

"savory shreds"

"prime filets"

"feast"

"gravy"

"grilled"

"gourmet"

"chunky"

"with cheese"

and finally "bite-sized marinated morsels".

And the feline herd is LOVING it. No picky eaters in this bunch. They have joined the "Clean Plate Club" with huge enthusiasm. In fact, I was practically hijacked when I said, "treats dinner!"

I have a ratings system set up so I will know which ones are the all time favorites, but if things continue the way they are, I will end up just getting all of the flavors I bought with some new ones added in to keep the "novelty factor" in play.

I have them pick the flavors they want. Well, I array the cans in a line and open whichever they sniff/touch first (yes I know they can't smell thru the can, but I believe in giving power of choice when appropriate, after all, I've been forcing them to eat the same bland guggy Science Diet Mature Cats Savory Chicken paste). Moomin picked beef but he picked that for breakfast so I took Doodle's choice of turkey in gravy. Hobbes isn't choosing, he's staying on the Hoosier waiting with baited breath.

The kittos also seem happier around meal times. More relaxed. I know I am. Keep you all posted.