The Cat Thinks We’re Food Insecure

3 Nov

Striker thinks I’m trying to starve him, or that we’re food insecure, either way he’s less than happy regarding his food lately and it is of course all my fault. I am the one with thumbs who can open the food after all.

He used to eat only dry food, that was his preference. Whenever I tried him with wet he’d eat a little bit if I was lucky then demand the dry food back. As he is very good at hunger strikes and I want a happy cat not a pissed off killing machine as a roomie I don’t push it. He wants dry food he gets dry food. A ridiculously expensive, minimal ingredient, all locally made dry food that costs a fortune, but dry food all the same.

I prefer it, it’s less messy, easier to stock up on, and I don’t worry about him being hungry when I’m out or sleeping because I always keep his bowl topped up. By topped up I mean absolutely no more than one and a half scoops, any more than that the bowl is too full and he won’t eat it. Any less than that the bowl is empty (according to him) and he meows until the correct amount is placed in the bowl.

He’s not particular or anything…

For medical reasons he is now on an all wet food plan and he is uncertain about how he feels about this.

It started off kind of okay, but quickly turned in to him refusing to eat a flavour of wet food today that he ate happily yesterday. He’ll even decide mid-day that a flavour he had in the morning is no longer palatable and won’t have it for dinner. Not stressful at all for me, the one with thumbs and a dwindling bank account because oh yeah, wet food also costs more than dry. Because of course it does.

The amount of wet food I’ve ended up composting because he flat out refuses to eat it and cries to the heavens because he’s hungry and all I have provided is top quality wet cat food that is obviously poison, sigh.

To be fair, I don’t know how it tastes so maybe it is gross. They all look gross to me.

My saving grace was one particular flavour, tuna with pumpkin. This is the one singular flavour I can guarantee he will eat, and not just eat but happily eat. I’ve been nervous about giving it to him too often for fear he’ll get sick of it and then I will have zero guaranteed wet food options. Yesterday I battled it out with him to get him to eat salmon, a salmon he happily ate the day before but yesterday would barely even sniff. Eventually, after not caving for roughly 8 hours he ate about half the bowl which I felt proved my point to him that he can eat it if he really wants. I then took the remaining salmon away and replaced it with his tuna & pumpkin because he hadn’t eaten enough for the day and I don’t want him going hungry.

This morning for breakfast I put out more of the tuna & pumpkin, from a fresh can not leftovers as he ate the entire can I opened last night for dinner throughout the evening. Guess what he is no longer eating? That’s right, the tuna & pumpkin. The one singular flavour he consistently enjoyed is now apparently out of rotation.

I’m not so worried about the stockpile I have purchased, the pet store will let me return unopened cans and exchange them but wtf am I supposed to buy now? He won’t eat land animals, he’ll barely stray from tuna, salmon is pushing it. The one guaranteed option is no longer guaranteed and I’m lost for what to feed him next.

I know he’s nature’s perfect little killing machine (in theory, in actuality he’s scared of bugs and hasn’t killed a thing in his life) but I swear his actual talent comes in intellectual and emotional warfare on his captive human. This is some sort of torture he’s devised and I am not a smart enough bipedal to figure out the trap before it snaps closed on my bank account.

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My Head is a Cat Toy

14 Jul

The cat and I were cuddling, nose to nose if you’d like a visual, and I ended up using a catnip toy as a cushion. It wasn’t planned, it just sorta happened. I stretched, it was there, I was barely conscious so didn’t think through the decision. You know how these things go.

The result is Striker has decided my head is needing all of his attention and now I worry for the safety of my scalp, and my hair.

He already drew a little blood from my knee when he threw a ball at my leg then followed it with a poorly aimed pounce. Well, poorly aimed if he was wanting the ball. Perfectly aimed if he was wanting my knee. I’m choosing to believe he wanted the ball and missed – there’s something to be said for ignorance.

Now he watches me, from his Santa’s Workshop house that he refuses to let me put away even though it’s July and waits for his next chance to get near my head. This must be what a mouse feels like once a cat has decided it’s interested.

In my defence he uses the toy as a cushion also…

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My New Year’s Superstition

31 Dec

I am not a person who believes in superstitions. I don’t rub a lucky coin or toss salt over my shoulder and if I see a black cat I’m more likely to try to pet it than stop it from crossing my path. If superstitions are your thing that’s fine, they just aren’t mine.

Until yesterday.

I saw a TikTok that said there is an old superstition (why are superstitions always old?) that you should not clean laundry on New Years Eve or New Years Day. Now, she broke it down to a slightly different reason for each but, and I’m paraphrasing here, to do so would be removing all the good fortune / luck / vibes from the current year and you want to bring those with you, not wash them away, into the new year.

The opposite could just as easily be a superstition, do allllll the cleaning before New Years otherwise you bring bad luck / fortune / vibes with you from the old year to the new but I don’t like this one as much, so let’s go back to the one that says no laundry.

Do I believe it? Absolutely not. Will I follow it because it gives me a reason to not do that one specific little bit of housework? 100% yes.

Enjoy your New Years Eve and New Years Day and consider yourself officially granted two days off of laundry duty!

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A Very Motivated Mosquito

19 Aug

Mosquitos usually leave me alone, I joke that it’s because I don’t taste good but sometimes I wonder if there is something to that.

I tend to run cold, even when outside on a hot summer’s day and I tend to wear layers throughout the year. I don’t know how mosquitos pick their targets but surely when deciding between me, the person who has a lower body temp and has almost no exposed skin and a person in shorts and a tank top who is so hot they are sweating they find one human more appealing than the other. If only to avoid getting a headache from drinking something cooler than their preference and risking bending their stabby nose getting through layers of fabric.

Yesterday evening I realized I had been bitten, it has been so long since I’ve had a mosquito bite it took me a couple minutes to figure out why my arm was so itchy. Now many areas on my arms are itchy and I am cursing those little demons.

I’ve counted about ten bites, and because I scratched them in my sleep…and if I’m being honest also when awake, they have grown quite large, and more itchy. What’s with that?

I tried putting lotion on them after my shower, that didn’t help and I think the shower made them worse. Something I was not expecting. I have nothing to treat mosquito bites, why would I when they leave me alone? So I’m stuck trying to not scratch; screw dieting, this is the ultimate test of willpower.

When trying to puzzle out when I got attacked I figured it had to be when I was out with a friend on Saturday and was a little offended they went for me and not her. But then this evening when in the shower I found a fat, probably because it’s full of my blood, mosquito on the shower curtain. It should not come as a surprise the mosquito is no longer with us, it has moved on to the next plane of existence while I am still firmly sitting in the plane of itchiness.

I can’t even be surprised that one mosquito did so much damage, I remember there was a quote on a body shop t-shirt in the 90’s, now, I’m paraphrasing here and will get it wrong but it was along the lines of if you think you can’t change the world see what one mosquito in a closed tent can do…I mean, that isn’t near the quote, but you get the feeling right?

One, whether it’s a mosquito or a human or a cat or a whatever can create a lot of change in the world if they are motivated enough. That mosquito was definitely motivated…maybe I should take notes…

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Chicken vs Concussion

14 Aug

Two weekends ago I bought some chicken when grocery shopping. Not the frozen kind that lasts forever if you keep it frozen, the raw squishy kind that you need to either cook or freeze before it becomes unsafe.

I swear I meant to cook it within a day or so but see, I put it in the fridge and it immediately joined the list of things I forgot about because I could no longer see it. And because it wasn’t super visible immediately upon the fridge door opening I didn’t remember it was in there. I put it on top of the egg carton, I eat eggs regularly so thought that was a good spot, but what do you know I ended up eating more tofu the past little while and didn’t go for the eggs.

Oops?

My concussion strongly affects my memory and not in a good way. If I put something down and walk away to do another task within a minute I forget where I put the initial object, and when I go searching for it I can scan over the area where it is multiple times before I actually see it. I also just full on forget where something gets put, which has been a real treat to deal with considering I spent the bulk of the worst part of my concussion moving and trying to unpack. There are still so many things that I have no idea where I put them…

At one point I bought a new tv remote because I couldn’t remember seeing mine while unpacking, all boxes had been emptied or at least fully gone through, and I had no remote. I figured something has to get lost in a move and that must be it so I bought a replacement from Amazon and then of course proceeded to find my original remote after the one from Amazon arrived. Because of course. The amazing hiding spot I put it? On top of my dresser and then a piece of paper ended up on top of it and boom! Remote no longer exists in my brain. Why didn’t I, in all my searching, move the piece of paper to see what was under it? I have no idea.

So yeah, all this to explain why I immediately forgot about the chicken after putting it in the fridge and didn’t see it whenever I opened the fridge.

Yesterday I found the chicken and decided to cook it, sorta skipping over the fact that the best before date was 4 days prior. Those are just suggestions, right?

To add to this little scenario I still can’t taste or smell, so until I get sick from something I’ve eaten I don’t actually know that something I’ve eaten has gone off. Go long covid go 😛

In the end I overcooked the chicken out of a healthy dose of concern, I really didn’t want to be sick, and managed to have a perfectly acceptable dinner of veggies and chicken. Boring? Kinda. Can I tell? Nope.

I bought some ground beef this past weekend but that I actually remembered to put in the freezer so I’m safe there, now all I have to do is remember next week that I have it and want to cook it…

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An Almost Smell

2 Aug

Last December I lost the ability to smell and taste…bet you can guess how! 😉

Every now and then I get a faint whiff of a smell, a mere hint of something, that lasts for just the length of time it takes to inhale a regular breath. As soon as I realize I can maybe smell something I take a deeper breath, I try so hard to get a second chance to smell, but it never comes. Whatever smell breakthrough I had in that one inhalation is gone, and usually not repeated again for quite a while.

The weird thing, as if that isn’t weird enough on it’s own, is things almost never smell like what they should. I thought I smelled gasoline at work one day, it was someone’s lunch warming up in the microwave. I thought I smelled something a bit sweet, it was the cat’s litter box. It’s confusing and makes it hard to pin point at times what I might have smelled unless someone is there I can ask.

Last night I was on the water at dragon boat practice. Usually in summer the water we practice on gets a definite odour. It’s polluted, there’s power boats all around us, and as the temps rise the E.coli numbers also go up, so ya know, that probably is contributing to the smell. I have been spared smelling the water this year, a small silver lining.

However, at last night’s practice as we were taking a rest and gliding through the water I smelled a smell, it was gross, it made my nose wrinkle in full ick mode, and I thought of course. Of course I get a breakthrough scent from this water. Of course I get a chance to smell for a second and what I smell is wide spread pollution and general grossness. Then the person behind me took a deep breath in and said something along the lines of “Oh that smells great!”

Turns out the scent was someone bbq’ing, it’s a common enough smell when we’re on the water. People on their large power boats, mini yachts I guess, or maybe not “mini”, I don’t know what size you have to be for the yacht designation. Boat size isn’t really the point of this story though so let me get back on track. Someone was cooking meat, I don’t know what it was, but they were bbq’ing meat.

I love the smell of bbq! I’m a meat eater, I enjoy a tasty bbq’d burger, hot dog, steak if someone else is buying it lol The point I’m trying to make is I enjoy eating meat and I also enjoy the smell of it cooking on a bbq. But last night to me it smelled disgusting.

Of all the things for my non-working sniffer to mix-up. sigh. Here’s hoping one day I get my full sense of smell back and bbq once again smells like bbq!

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A Cat’s Jealousy

11 Jul

I worked from home today and the timing of that couldn’t have been better as Striker, the cat who owns me, was sick and if I hadn’t been here the blankets he got sick on last night wouldn’t have been washed as early as they were, and I would have come home to cat puke in multiple areas of my apartment. All focused on carpet and bedding of course. That is the cat way after all.

But that didn’t happen, I was at home so every time the poor little guy made the telltale noise all cat people know I’d go running, get him to the kitchen floor, then comfort him as he got sick.

Then of course, while he was laying down resting I was cleaning up the mess. Oh to be a cat.

Once I was finished working for the day and could escape my desk Striker and I moved all the way to the living room, approximately ten steps away from where I’d spent the day, and we did what he’d been wanting to do all day, cuddle.

When he’s not feeling well all he wants is a soft blanket and his human at his beck and call, and who am I to deny him either? So we sat, for hours, while I slowly got more and more dehydrated and hungry because I am most definitely not moving him for something as silly as food and tea, and he slept.

Later this evening, around 8pm or so, my landlady who lives upstairs texted asking if I’d sign a form for her, you know, one of those ones you need a witness for? Of course I said yes and that I’d be right up. Striker by this point was more laying against one of my legs rather than on top of both so he was out of his full on needy stage and more in a “I want you near by but could maybe tolerate a couple minutes separation, maybe” stage. Deciding to chance it I went up, signed a form, and we chatted for a bit, mostly about cats as we each are owned by one. Baxter, her lovely furball, just turned 20! I cat sit him sometimes so I scooped him up for a quick cuddle and a chat, it is all one sided as he’s totally deaf, but I still talk to him and he pretends to care for about 0.5 seconds.

When I came back downstairs I returned to Striker, who was exactly where I left him. I sat down, got comfy, and immediately I was being sniffed. My slippers, my pants, my shirt, my face. I had pulled my laptop onto my lap and completely ignoring it he walked over my abdominal area, he smelled multiple places, then he meowed in my face, glared, and lay down, draping himself over my arms, which were still stretched to reach the laptop keyboard.

I’d been pinned by a jealous cat who seemed hell bent on letting me know who I belonged to.

He’s adorable, and cuddly, and when others are around does his best to be a ninja and hide while also acting like he has no need for a human, and apparently he is also jealous when I come home smelling of another cat.

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Goodnight, Travel Well by The Killers

6 Mar

It’s old but it’s still good.

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Grief

18 Nov

Grief is an odd thing, we will all at some point experience it and yet, no two people will go through it the same way.

Some crush it down refusing to acknowledge it is there. Others become so wrapped up in it they never function the same way again. Most I think muddle through, alternating between days where they can fake things well enough to appear to be ok and other days they drown under the waves of emotion that bombard them, until they find a new normal. A slightly calmer ebb and flow of grief, one they can handle while still functioning in society. An odd tear at a random moment, a brief hitch of breath when a stab of pain finds their heart, but those come farther and farther apart until you can almost pretend the pain was never there. It isn’t under the newly formed scar, it isn’t something you’ve learned to live with, you just pretend it’s gone, never was, and that all is fine again.

Grief isn’t a bump we trip over while going through life, it’s a hole we fall into and have to crawl our way out of. Grief is a tsunami crashing over us that if we don’t hold our breath well enough, and swim strongly enough, we’ll never escape.

Grief comes to us because we have experienced a loss so painful we can’t brush it off, can’t look the other way, can’t eat a bit of ice cream and move on. It comes to us when our heart breaks, when our soul feels ripped in two, when the world no longer makes sense and we are left scrambling to find our footing.

Maybe at first you don’t try to find your footing maybe you let yourself stay afloat, unmoored, not tethered to anything, because the pain is so overwhelming you don’t even know how to reach out to someone so they can help anchor you.

When your feet finally find the ground again the pain doesn’t go away, it intensifies because now you’re forced to feel it all. There is no buffer, no cloudy mind to help hide the truth of what has happened. Now it’s just you and the pain facing off.

Does the pain win? Do you win? Can there be a winner or just a vague truce made between the two?

Eventually, if you live long enough and if you’ve let yourself become close enough to others that you feel love, you will feel grief. There’s a quote, something about the more you hurt the stronger you loved. I don’t know if that sentiment is right, but I do know that right now my heart is destroyed, I am broken, the pain of loss has beat me and I don’t care if I ever come back from it because I don’t want a world where this person who is vital for my happiness isn’t here. But that isn’t how life works. We lose people, it’s inevitable, and the world keeps going on about its business while those like me are left stumbling, off rhythm from everyone else, because they are no longer whole and don’t care enough to try to fake being ok.

Grief is an equalizer, a painful one. By choosing to love we voluntarily sign ourselves up to one day feel this way. A poor bargain is it not? Is the love once felt worth the pain that takes it’s place?

The person I lost, the reason I am drowning right now, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t had them in my life. Their impact on who I became was huge, and the memories I have of them so dear to me I will fight with everything I have to preserve them. I cling to one of their cardigans, I ordered their favourite meal at a restaurant, I’m eating their ice cream, all to try to bring them back to me, to feel them close just for one more second. It’s a stupid game I play, one that will only hurt me in the end because they aren’t coming back and trying to cling to them just makes the pain last longer, cut deeper, overwhelm me even more.

The value I place on every photograph of them, every item they once used or touched, is so high I would make rash decisions and poor choices to keep all these items just as they are. I can’t make their entire house a shrine, and I shouldn’t try, but every time something changes I hurt a bit more because that is a change they won’t see, an update they won’t know about. It is proof life is going on without them and right now, with the pain so strong, I don’t understand how that is possible.

He is dead, and I am lost, but I guess the pain is the price of such a strong love and since I don’t want to know what a life without that love would have been like, who I would have been without it, grief is the price I must pay.

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