Bestest Christmas EVA!!

Dudes! Let me tell you the story of the bestest Christmas gift EVA! I don't know how momma got it for us without knowing it was in the house, because she was rather annoyed when we got it.. Maybe Santa Paws is real after all..

She was laying in bed and heard Twee scratching at something behind her nightstand. She thought that Twee was just after one of her toys that she had previously stashed back there (Twee has a habit of pushing her toys into places she can't get to them) but when Fleurp got involved and the action moved a bit, she started to investigates what we haz'd.

She knew something was up.. this was no ordinary toy. This was the bestest toy EVA!!

Momma initially thought it was dead, and for a split second thought about letting us dispose of it*, but then she saw it move and sprung into action. Daddy was quite confused and didn't know what to do so Momma had to explain everythings and made him get a box to trap it in.

We tired that mouse right out, so Momma had no problem getting it into a container but she was a little confused as to what to do next. She knew that if she just put it outside the mouse would come back in. With all the snow out there, she was a little sad to let it out thinking she would just be making a mouse-icle. She gave the mousie a little cheese (which it was too traumatized to eat) and drove it down the street and tried to at least put it near a tree. She failed miserably and still fears she made a mouse-icle, but she did the kindest thing she could think of.

Now, we are all on high alert for additional gifties from Santa Paws.. We know that there must be more out there..

* If I wasn't worried about my neighbors using mouse poisons, I would be inclined to let my cats eat a mouse they legitimately killed. But I am worried, and they didn't kill it, and I just couldn't let it suffer.

Right after we moved into this house I found some mouse poop, but I hoped that it was from a previous invasion that was already taken care of. We had already bought the house so it wasn't like we could force anyone to fix anything, and I was avoiding the whole thing hoping that it wasn't a thing - or if it was the smell of six cats in the house would make them flee. Now that I know that it is totally a thing, getting someone in here to take care of this is going to be a high priority.

Experiements in food

20+ years ago when I became a pet parent officially for the first time, I believed the rhetoric that all commercial food is the same (I mean my vet told me that so it must be true) and that dry food is good for the teeth.  So that is what I fed.  Emerald became diabetic.

Food was mentioned in her treatment, that high fiber would help slow the transition from food to glucose, so I attempted to put her on W/D, and she had explosive diarrhea.  I wasn't ready to contend with problems of diabetes and diarrhea, so with my (at the time) vet's OK I put her back on the food big bag of dry food that I bought at the local grocery store. Tig started peeing around the house eating that food.  He disappeared before we realized we should get him to a vet as he was an outside kitty.  Sometimes now I wonder if he didn't block and die a horrible death because of the food I fed him, but I prefer to think he found himself another home.. (Tig is one of my major regrets in life - but I did what I thought was best for him at the time, so I try not to let it get to me)

I started to hear talk that "premium" food was better then grocery store food.  That cheap food had cheap ingredients so I did some looking around at the pet store, and I picked out a dry premium food.  While feeding it one of my kitties blocked.  Then another.  While dealing with that, Em started losing weight, so I did MORE reading on nutrition.

I switched them all over to raw diet I made at home.  I had five cats, I spent an hour a month grinding up food.  I was still fostering and our clowder kept growing.  We had seven cats and it took more then an hour and we were grinding up 40-50lbs of chicken thighs at a time.  The smell of grinding bone is unique and after a year of it I started having visceral reaction to that smell.  It would turn my stomach and make me light headed.  I'd have to take a break half way through.  I decided to look into buying it commercially.

I bought Feline's Pride for a while, but the distributor (they don't sell it to pet stores, just independent distributors or online - and shipping was prohibitive to me) was two hours away and was a little sketchy to me, and I really started feeling very uncomfortable (she since is no longer a distributor) and so I looked for something local.  I went with Oma's Pride and fed that for some time.  Then some of my cats became ill and another ended up with a piece of bone stuck on his tooth the size of a dime.  I wrote to them and they couldn't have cared less and were very vague in answering my questions so I went in search of something else.  I've been feeding Bravo in chicken for quite some time.  We have tried other brands other flavors but none got the paw approval of all the cats.   We are not into feeding multiple flavors in a meal - that and we aren't into fostering competition in our cats.  But I am of the belief that having multiple sources of food is a good thing.  Granted they all will eat pretty much anything out of a can and all kibble, but at this point I equate kibble with cookies for humans and I don't think it is a source of real nutrition.

So long post short  (ha ha ha too late)

I made a purchase from Hare Today. 

Mice is one of the cat's natural prey, and it is the ideal diet.  Why no one makes a commercial mouse diet I have no idea, but Hare Today does sell ground up whole mice.  They also sell pinkies which are whole baby mice.  I'm glad they sell them ground up because I could NEVER feed mice into my grinder and I could NEVER feed them whole to my cats.. There is a lot I will do for them, but crying over their food is not one of them.  Hare Today also grinds up whole rabbits (more crying from me, as I have kept rabbits as pets so unfortunately I can't feed it) and grinds up goats and llamas and many other types of animals. 

(Kit just walked in with a toy in her mouth, I so love it when my kitties bring me toys)

It is sad when you think about it, but then again that can you popped open this morning or that bag of kibble you poured out also started with an animal being ground up - so we just won't go there.  This is the circle of life we are talking about..

I know full well that cats are creatures of habit and if they weren't introduced to it as young kittens then the chance of them accepting new foods right away is pretty low.  But we opened up a pack of ground mouse this morning and offered it.  Twee and Fleurp enjoyed it.  Jack took a few nibbles (wow, really? Jack eats anything I would have thought he would have enjoyed it) Eli was happy he found the chicken on the plate. 

Muffin was incensed.  But she's easily incensed.  She's kind of a diva.  No, she is a Diva.

Skippy.. Skippy I found quite interesting.  He has an extremely high prey drive and I thought he might have found it interesting, but then again it is food on a plate and not really prey.  I brought him back to it and encouraged him to give it a try.  He gave it another sniff, then turned away and shook his back paw at it.. I almost fell down laughing.

I'm trying to decide if I want to push the issue.  I could get them to like it by mixing it in with their current food and gradually increasing the amount over time.  But again shipping is prohibitive to me.    I can buy in bulk and they ship for a flat 19$ rate, but bulk is pretty bulky ($1000) Not that we can't handle that amount of food (we have a large freezer and a smaller one that isn't running at the moment) but still...

I also bought some llama and goat to try, I can't wait to see how that goes.

Fleurp is eating mouse, Eli has chicken

Since it wasn't a huge hit with The Crew, I thought I'd bring some down to Meira and see how that went. I stupidly did not bring my camera.. I had to run upstairs and get it and by that time the girls had eaten enough to slake their hunger and walked away.  They had descended upon it like little vultures and it made me laugh..

and when I finally left the kitten room I saw this..

I wonder what they were thinking.. either it was good, cause that stuff was gross! or hey, maybe we'd like to give that another try..