Foods for thought

This is my week to feed Smokey. Despite valiant efforts to convince him otherwise, which included two of his Friends giving up a Saturday morning to “walk” him from the old building to the new building and then repeated trips to campus to make sure he had stayed there - Smokey did not want to move with us.

His reasons for avoiding the new building are many. He’s very old, he's all ready fought for and won the territory he has now and he isn’t going to abandon it, and the large fox that hangs out around the new building. I think if the reporters are seeing a “large” fox that they may actually be seeing a coyote. But I’m not sure, I remember reports of foxes at the other building as well as coyote sightings and those didn't scare him away. I think that as a 10 year old feral cat, Smokey just isn’t going to be pried away from his home. There is another group that is supposed to be moving into our building at some point (Lord have mercy on their souls) and contact has all ready been made with them - They will take over the Smokey feeding responsibilities at that time. But for now, the three of us are taking it one week at a time. It’s funny. I did the feeding of him every day for years and the food was provided for free, and no one ever volunteered to help me out with it. Now that we have to travel to do it and supply our own food, there is whole group dedicated to feeding him.

It being my week, I took Dogger and we went to the building Sunday afternoon to pick up the food container, which on Friday I kind of thought might have had food in it, it didn’t. Dogger and I went to the grocery.

The store was advertising it’s back to school products as well as two for one Sugar Smacks . So much for a healthy start. I thought that while I was there that I would make myself meat loaf for dinner, but first I had to worry about what Smokey was going to eat. I had been told that he seemed to like Ally Cat brand cat food. I was familiar with Ally Cat because this is what I fed my cats at school. It is the cheapest cat food on the market. It is made of equal parts ash, bone meal and I imagine, melamine. If you are a cat eating Ally Cat You all ready have problems apart from your diet. The melamine content is just lagniappe.

I couldn’t find Ally Cat, so clearly a product of China the cat pictured on the bag bears a striking resemblance to Mao Tse-tung and inside every bag is a copy of The Little Red Book. The store didn’t carry it. Sugar Smacks yes, Ally Cat, no. I have some cheap cat food at home for my strays, but past experience has taught me that Smokey won’t eat that brand, he like Bill O’Reilly hates products of Mexico. He’s poor, he’s homeless, he’s beset by fleas but even he won’t eat .99 cents per three pound bag of dry cat food. He has standards.. I ended up with Store Brand cat food, more expensive than Ally Cat but with a higher ash-to-bone-meal content. Nummy.

Cat food accomplished, I wanted to start thinking about me. I had wanted to make a meat loaf, but when I walked into the store, there were no baskets handy. I couldn’t carry a bag of cat food and meat loaf fixings. I changed my mind on dinner. I ended up getting a frozen pizza, thin crust, because I was feeling like something healthy.