Emo Cat Love

I was fortunate enough to have celebrated a few thanksgiving feasts this year (Canadian thanksgiving) with friends that are family. I was at Modi’s Tofurkey festival shredding ethically delicious treats courtesy of Lizzy and sharing stories about Bear. Stuff about how cute he is when he does this or how nuts he is when he does that. In fact a few of us that were there had stories to share about our cats. I caught myself and quickly asked out loud (I’m not sure exactly how I said it but the general idea is there) “Hey are we for real? We’re talking about our cats like some people talk about their kids”. People make fun of those people and not that I’m worried about the judgement but I worry about how obsessed I am with my cat. We laughed it off and kept on cause our cats rule.

Bear is raging in the sunroom on his own, I’m gonna go join him during his hunting hour. He’s my dude and that’s that, only Dog can judge me (get it?).

I was just in Montreal this weekend and as we were driving through Verdun at 4am I noticed an abundance of cats roaming the streets. I’m being literal, many feline cats roaming the streets (even though there were many of the human kind hanging hard as well -cool cats, anyone!?). I mentioned this observation and my friends then quickly pronounced “Ben you’d be pumped on this” and pointed out this lady who was surrounded by even more wannabe bear’s and Richard Dunn’s. She reminded me of the lady in Mary Poppins that feeds the pigeons, which used to make me cry ’cause I felt bad that she only had pigeons in her life. Apparently this Verdun lady goes out at night to not only feed the cats but fixes them as well.  That’s some next level Emo Cat Loving. I don’t really understand the process though of randomly taking stray cats and getting them neutered/spayed. Is she a vet operating on kitty’s ghetto style or does she pay for them to have it done professionally? The suspense of not knowing the answer to those questions makes for really cool and uncool scenarios in my head. Still, WTF?!

This also made me wonder since we were in Verdun and all us of speaking the French language, does it matter what we speak/say to our cats?  I’m assuming that because of the area we were in, chances are the cats were spoken to in French (fair assumption?). I could probably speak to Bear in french but it makes me feel nervous thinking about it. I just don’t feel like it’s fair to play games with his head after all this english. Realistically he’d be just as pumped to get brushed in both french and/or in english. What about German? If it was my mom speaking to him I bet he’d be stoked but me, i’d probably sound like i was  yelling at the dude.

Meh, I’m gonna go Brush Bear in the language of Emo Cat Love, the end.

My friend Jon Roth just had a traumatic experience with one of his cats “Woody”. A bit of background information before we start digging- Woody is named Woody because he loves to hump. Jon had to find him a new home months ago when he started humping Dolly, a cute but submissive female cat that also lives in their home. They found Woody a loving owner, the end.

Woody used to be on a strict diet, organic cat food and only the  best of the best. To quote Jon, he said that “he used to eat better than we did”. Impressive. As of recent his diet hasn’t been as strict and he was recently hospitalized due to crystals forming in his bladder. The crystals caused his urinary track to be blocked for 5 days and his heart to quickly stop and start up again. They rushed him to the vet when signs were severe and now Woody seems to be recovering well, even though there was no promise that he would. Phew…I would have been bummed out for my friend.

I still wonder though, what is the best food for Bear and other cats? We feed him “Orijen” and he seems to really dig it. They claim high protein, local ingredients without all the BS that comes with supermarket pet foods but again what the hell do I know?! I also feed him watered down milk every couple of days and randomly give him a bit of beef or chicken. Sometimes I give him food that my partner really doesn’t approve of like Deli meat. I then feel guilty and worry that I might kill him with my ignorance. My theory is this- the dude probably would have loved to have found those kinds of leftovers in a dumpsters, so why not feed it to him once in a while here at home?! Worst logic, but I’m generally a sucker when he begs. Still feeling guilty.

So really, like anyone else that just doesn’t know and buys whatever looks pretty on the cover I’m clueless about what’s best for my cat. I try to give him the “best” but according to the old fancy feast commercials I’m far from it. If only we could figure out a way to communicate with them and understand the meaning of “meow”. “UP” did it with dogs, let’s do this cat thing.

Woody, stay strong and people let’s get real with this food business. It’s hard enough for us to get the facts for what we put into our own bodies.

For the record Bear still gets Milk, it makes him happy and a happy kitty isn’t a bad thing.

Meow (translation- peace)