Then, I thought about my kitty food shelf...
and kitty food pantry...
and this...
and this...
Yup, my prepper kitties are ready for the zombie apocalypse!
Yanno... I think I may have found the point where my all of my neuroses meet.
I've always had a bit of an irrational fear of running out of food. I'm not exactly sure where this comes from - perhaps from my early days as a (literally) starving musician. Or maybe it's from the year I spent in Norway as an exchange student when I ran out of spending money and had to give up eating lunch. Or perhaps it was the year in college when I cashed in my meal plan so I could afford guitar lessons.
Whatever the source, I do seem to have "issues" in this department.
Couple that with sick & picky kitties who frequently change their minds about what tastes good, a hatred for driving around town to specialty pet food stores, and my need to try to control the uncontrollable by being prepared for any and all eventualities, and you have a recipe for... well, a recipe for a LOT of cat food!
In my defense though, some of these specialty foods are not available locally, so my only option was to buy them online by the case. It's weak defense though, since some of those cases were purchased because she liked the first few cans and only decided it was blick after mommy brought home a case of it. And some of them because I just couldn't bear the idea of driving across town to the one store that carried it, and ordering a case online seemed like the less stressful option.
Anyhoo... lest you think that my fe-lions are dining on porter house steak or beluga caviar, I figured I ought to point out where some of that money has gone.
On the plus side, we seem to have hit upon a feeding formula that works for Princess. There's actually one brand of prescription cat food that she will eat (Purina NF Kidney Function) - well, she'll eat it with a treat "chaser." This means that I embed a few treats in the food and she chases them around the bowl trying to pick them up, and in the process downs and entire bowl of prescription food. She rarely gets the treat, but this doesn't seem to bother her. Did I mention that, sweet as she may be, Princess is not exactly the "brightest bulb" in the pack! Hey, whatever works, right?
I'd like to think that we'll use up all of this food eventually, but the truth is that Smoky is the pickiest cat on the planet, and does have some dietary restrictions, and there's a limit to how much Jasper can eat! Plus, some of this stuff is not the quality that I generally like to feed, and some of it none of them will go near.
I'm sure the Princess formula will not hold indefinitely, and it's nice to have a variety of tempting options if I need to engage in kitty bribery, so I'll be holding onto much of it for the time being. But eventually much of it will get donated, either to the food bank, the animal shelter, or to some friends who feed colonies of ferals & strays. I suppose that's OK though. If my neuroses can help a hungry kitty get fed, it's not all bad!
Anyhow, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!
So, do y'all think I'm totally nuts, or have you ever ended up with a ridiculous amount something... Please tell me I'm not the only person who does this!
Well, you're nuts in a good sort of way!
ReplyDeleteThanks... I think! :-)
DeleteHa! More charitable contributions after all!
ReplyDeleteI have a ridiculous amount of paper that's blank on one side. Also, way too much nutmeg. And too many sheets--none of them are quite perfect.
I used to have a ridiculous amount of coffee mugs. Now I just use the same two over and over again (mostly just my favorite one but I do have a spare), plus I have a whole set for parties in the non-prime real estate area. Oh, and a few mugs around the house for storing things.
Ha! Charitable by force of my own idiocy! :-)
DeleteOK... paper, sheets, mugs - all that makes complete sense, but nutmeg?
We have an excess of ginger, because I bought some and then found loads hiding behind something else...
DeleteYeah, that's pretty much the same story here. Or maybe it's my habit of putting things on the list when I'm almost out. And I'd been almost out of nutmeg for a long time and responsibly getting more before it was too late. Ha!
DeleteHmmm... well, by those standards I think I probably have an excess of a LOT of things, but none of it is even in the same league as the cat food. :-)
DeleteI got rid of loads of mugs last year because I counted them and realised we had 43 or some ridiculous number. It's not possible to fit that many people in our house for a cup of tea at the same time, so we didn't need them all. We now have about 18, which is still quite a few, but a less ridiculous number.
ReplyDeleteI also ended up with loads of candles and so on which I made a concerted effort to actual light and use, as they were just sitting in a cupboard gathering dust.
I've never ended up with a pet food stockpile though, as luckily none of my zoo are fussy!
Ha! I guess the number of people one's house can fit would be a good measure for the number of mugs one ought to own. Of course, I have about half a dozen of them because, yanno... different sizes and shapes for different purposes. Plus, I sometimes go through 3-4 before I have the dishwasher full enough to run.
DeleteMy sister has a cat that has allergies, so has some of the same problems you do. Most of the time, she can only find the food she needs online and has to buy it by the case. However, then the cat doesn't like it any more and she ends up with a lot of unused cans. However, she has found friends or the food pantry that is happy to take it. (My cats are on prescription food and unfortunately can't use it.)
ReplyDeleteWhile I have too many of several different items, I don't think I've reached the excessive stage yet. That may come from growing up in a cluttered house run by my parents who both grew up during the Depression. I learned from the error of their ways.
I too grew up in a cluttered home, but somehow didn't learn the lesson of not hanging onto things - she says glancing at half a dozen rolls of packing tape on the shelf...
DeleteMy food stockpiling is driven by some emotional stuff, too. This hasn't spilled over to our dogs' food (yet) but it's all the same issue, you know? Wanting to make sure we have enough on hand, just in case.
ReplyDeleteIn the grand scheme of things, the opportunity costs from having that money stored in cat food is pretty minimal. And if you decide you don't want to run to the store for the next few months, you can!
True true. I tend to stockpile food in general, but the emotional part of it is much worse where my kitties are concerned. I just have a horrible fear of failing them. Of course, the truth is that they eat better than a significant percentage of the humans on this planet, but still...
DeleteI'm fortunate in that I've never had a cat who was picky about food. One that was on Rx food for low kidney function preferred other food - had to keep the dog's food away from her - but would eat what I gave her.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm a bit of a minimalist, I also like to keep a decent supply of staples around since we live out in the country and I try to minimize my driving. One can never have too much toilet paper. One way I've avoided stockpiling too much of something is to plan "use it up" months where I try to use what I actually have before buying more. Hmm, I just noticed I have about 5 jars of olives and 5 jars of salsa. Guess I need to work those into my menu planning...
Oh... I think a few "use it up months" are definitely in order around here! I am determined to eat up the contents of the chest freezer by summer so I can defrost it and start over with next year's garden bounty. I must say, though, that I am totally enjoying all of the stuffed zucchini that I made last fall - it's soooo nice to have on hand when I don't feel like cooking!
DeleteCrazypants definitely, but okay since it's for the kitties! Fortunately my cats are picky in a good way - they like dry kibble (pretty much any name brand) and not much else. And my dogs are totally indiscrimante eaters.
ReplyDeleteOops - That should be "indiscriminate". Looks like my fingers were still asleep.
DeleteI think my cats would probably love to eat kibble if I'd let them, but, you see... I am a neurotic kitty mom who believes all the hype and buys the most expensive canned foods. Of course, my mother always fed her cats dry Purina cat chow and,on average they all lived much longer and healthier lives than mine have, so who knows what the best food for them really is.
DeleteCompletely understandable! This reminds me of Dewey the library cat. He was super picky and I remember in the book about him that his caretaker was always fretting over trying to get him to eat.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Readmore_Books
I have 1 picky cat (Dottie) and the other two will eat pretty much anything. Monkey in particular has never met a cat food she doesn't like, even when I hid meds in it. Thank goodness!
Awww... just read all about Dewey - what a story, what a name, and what a face!
DeleteYanno, I used to get really grumpy with Smoky for being so picky, but then after he almost died because of some sort of gastrointestinal problem that the vets could never pinpoint (and that I'm convinced had something to do with the change in food that occurred just prior to the problems beginning) I decided that perhaps he knew more than we did about which foods were best for him. So these days I just let him eat what he wants even if it it does mean we waste some food sometimes!
I tend to stockpile human food, but I'm working hard on eating up my "stash" at the moment (helped by an infestation of pantry moths!). At least your kitties will be well-fed during the zombie apocalypse!
ReplyDeleteI have a stockpile of people food too - but it's not quite as out of control as the kitty food is. Plus, it's a lot easier to convince myself to eat down the stuff I'm not wild about than it is to convince the fe-lions to oblige. Perhaps if I was just willing to let them go hungry for a day or two when they get picky... sigh.
Delete