Writing a fresh new blog post every week is hard. Even harder when you’ve had a hectic week, and finally take a moment to catch your breath and look at the clock and it’s 3 PM on Friday afternoon.
What’s a girl without a single post idea to do? Why, mine the archives of her humor column from The Block Island Times, of course! So I started reading through past articles, and came across this one:
I know I've written about dieting in the past, and I've actually lost some weight lately (darn those New Age gurus for promoting eating less and exercising more and actually being right!). But I've discovered a whole new spin to the dieting dilemma that I wasn't expecting: my cat is overweight.
Okay, overweight is being kind. According to Veterinarian's Digest, he's grossly obese and should have had a heart attack a year ago.
This isn't my fault, really. I thought he was just fluffy. Then my aunt noticed that his stomach was dragging on the floor and asked me how much he weighs. I covered Gilligan's ears (he's very sensitive about his appearance) and mentioned the fluffy thing, but then she pointed out that he's a short-hair.
I decided to weigh him. My mother suggested getting on the scale, getting off, and then getting on again while holding the cat, which was a lot easier than trying to coax him onto the scale with treats. After accomplishing this (and a side note to all you dieters: never weigh yourself in the late afternoon) I learned the truth: my cute little kitten weighs 20 pounds.
After going into a tirade about feline diabetes, heart disease and how matted the cat's fur was from dragging on the floor, my aunt convinced me to put Gilligan on a diet. She suggested reading the label on the cat food bag to see how much I was supposed to be feeding him each day. This was news to me. It turns out they really do have directions for use on pet food bags, and it does not read Open bag and place on the floor.
Gilligan did not seem happy about the cup of dry food I put down for him the first day. It did seem awfully small. When I came home that afternoon, he was yowling at the top of his lungs, and after checking to make sure he was not on fire, I discovered he was out of food. I gave him his dinner a little early, because obviously he was starving. He woke me up at three a.m. by gnawing on my hand. I shuffled downstairs, bleary-eyed, and left an open ten-pound bag of food on the floor.
I figured he could make up for the extra food by exercising. The problem is, to exercise a cat, a human usually has to be involved. I started chasing him around the house, screaming like a banshee, in order to get him to run, but he got scared, tripped over his own belly, and peed on himself . . .
Here’s the thing, glimpsing back on this memory from 2006: I really did put that cat on a diet. And he really did hate it. So much so that he really did gnaw on me (he actually bit my arm, leaving a puncture wound, the scar of which I still bear to this day). And you know what? That wonderful fuzzball of a cat was dead within a year, one of hundreds of casualties resulting from a massive pet food recall back in March 2007. Do I wish I had let him eat (non-poisoned) cat food to his heart’s content? Sure. But does the little white circle, exactly the width of Gilligan’s fang, make me smile whenever I stop to look at it? Sure it does.
So I have no new blog post today. I’m tired, and I’d much rather play with Wednesday and Pugsley tonight than write something new. If you could hear the purring right now as I balance the laptop on one knee and Pugsley on the other, you’d likely agree a new blog post can wait ’til next week.
See you then!
What’s a girl without a single post idea to do? Why, mine the archives of her humor column from The Block Island Times, of course! So I started reading through past articles, and came across this one:
I know I've written about dieting in the past, and I've actually lost some weight lately (darn those New Age gurus for promoting eating less and exercising more and actually being right!). But I've discovered a whole new spin to the dieting dilemma that I wasn't expecting: my cat is overweight.
Okay, overweight is being kind. According to Veterinarian's Digest, he's grossly obese and should have had a heart attack a year ago.
This isn't my fault, really. I thought he was just fluffy. Then my aunt noticed that his stomach was dragging on the floor and asked me how much he weighs. I covered Gilligan's ears (he's very sensitive about his appearance) and mentioned the fluffy thing, but then she pointed out that he's a short-hair.
I decided to weigh him. My mother suggested getting on the scale, getting off, and then getting on again while holding the cat, which was a lot easier than trying to coax him onto the scale with treats. After accomplishing this (and a side note to all you dieters: never weigh yourself in the late afternoon) I learned the truth: my cute little kitten weighs 20 pounds.
After going into a tirade about feline diabetes, heart disease and how matted the cat's fur was from dragging on the floor, my aunt convinced me to put Gilligan on a diet. She suggested reading the label on the cat food bag to see how much I was supposed to be feeding him each day. This was news to me. It turns out they really do have directions for use on pet food bags, and it does not read Open bag and place on the floor.
Gilligan did not seem happy about the cup of dry food I put down for him the first day. It did seem awfully small. When I came home that afternoon, he was yowling at the top of his lungs, and after checking to make sure he was not on fire, I discovered he was out of food. I gave him his dinner a little early, because obviously he was starving. He woke me up at three a.m. by gnawing on my hand. I shuffled downstairs, bleary-eyed, and left an open ten-pound bag of food on the floor.
I figured he could make up for the extra food by exercising. The problem is, to exercise a cat, a human usually has to be involved. I started chasing him around the house, screaming like a banshee, in order to get him to run, but he got scared, tripped over his own belly, and peed on himself . . .
Here’s the thing, glimpsing back on this memory from 2006: I really did put that cat on a diet. And he really did hate it. So much so that he really did gnaw on me (he actually bit my arm, leaving a puncture wound, the scar of which I still bear to this day). And you know what? That wonderful fuzzball of a cat was dead within a year, one of hundreds of casualties resulting from a massive pet food recall back in March 2007. Do I wish I had let him eat (non-poisoned) cat food to his heart’s content? Sure. But does the little white circle, exactly the width of Gilligan’s fang, make me smile whenever I stop to look at it? Sure it does.
So I have no new blog post today. I’m tired, and I’d much rather play with Wednesday and Pugsley tonight than write something new. If you could hear the purring right now as I balance the laptop on one knee and Pugsley on the other, you’d likely agree a new blog post can wait ’til next week.
See you then!
Look at Pugsley's puddin' face. Say . . . you don't think he needs to go on a diet, do you?
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