Rawhide Bar!

Did you know that Petco has a rawhide bar? Yes it does! I found this out as I stopped into the one by my parents' house to get some doggie treats and catnip yesterday. It's $3 per pound. They also have a doggie treat bar for $4 per pound. Maybe Petsmart also has it, but I don't know. No such "catnip bar", though they do sell kitty litter by the scoop if you want it (didn't catch the price).

Some of those doggie treats looked edible for people, like their sandwich cookies. I can't say the same for the tuna bonito flakes or dried chunks of whiting. Maybe we can eat them, but they'd be horribly chewy and salty. I'm picturing the face I would make eating such a thing that my cat gobbles up automatically.

Some of the smaller animals are adorable. Take the ferrets. One looked like he, er she, um it, was trying to paw at my face as I glowered into the case at other ferrets biting and nibbling on each other. And while I have always thought birds to be among the stupidest of vertebrates (what a way to generalize about a whole class of animal), the conures that they had in their big enclosure seemed awfully interested in me, both as I passed and as I stopped to look in. I have never seen a bird pay such attention to me (the smalelr, cheaper birds sure as hell took no notice of me). I guess these conures will just have to wonder some more, since I'm not spending $600 to $900 for one of them to come home with me.

They also had some lovely looking guinea pigs. Animal lovers will be horrified by this, but I just could not help myself in thinking about that recent Peruvian guinea pig festival, where the guinea pigs were dressed in silly costumes, entered into races, and cooked in a variety of ways - fried, baked or grilled. I readily admit: I'd try fried guinea pig if I had the chance. Perhaps Petco shouldn't sell me one.

Angry Kitty Say Yummy

One more video, because I am too busy to write about what I've cooked lately. It's a funny angry kitty! He's growling and eating at the same time, so it sounds like he's saying "Yummy." But it's a very aggressive "Yummy".

Dear Lord, please forgive me...

I must be the last human being on the internet to have seen stuff that looks like this. They are remotely food-related, so there. (Shout out to Chris at Tallfreak.com, where I first saw this evilness.)


And there's THIS one!


It's been an exhausting past couple of weeks, okay?

Dognip?

My dog has lost his little canine mind. He is the kind of dog who always wants what everyone else is having. It's not enough that my cat now thinks he is a dog, because he not ony begs for food like a dog but comes when I call his name! Now, whenever I give my cat some catnip, the dog is right there waiting for an herbal handout. Waaah, I want what the cat's having. Why can't I have what the cat's having? So I give the weird dog a pinch of catnip, and he leaves me alone.

Now I read on the internet that anise has the same effect on dogs that catnip has on cats. My next step? A stop by Giant on the way home to pick up some anise extract and a cloth squeeze toy.

My cat eats asparagus now!

Like most of y'all, I haven't written about my little boy, my goofy orange tomcat Alley. His full name (Baptismal name?) is Alley McBeal. This was when I first thought he was a she. Hey, I hadn't had a kitten since I was a child! My landlords at the time in Riverside, California, gave me one from a litter - they had a hard time convincing me - and said that she was one of the kittens born to their tabby and the slutty male kitty that prowled the neighborhood. So I never had thought to look to see if she really was a he. I only found that out when I saw the large cysts under the tail that the vet soon told me were testicles.

Everybody together now: a - DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!

Alley turned all of 8 years old this month - not sure when, so I just lump his birthday with mine. And this strange cat does so many atypically feline things, I really think he believes he is a dog. He talks back to me all the time, for one.

Strangest of all, however, is what he eats. Any meat or fish, he eats, that's a given. But as for the rest? Well, it'll take too long in narrative format, so I will just bullet them:

• pound cake
• whipped cream (not that shocking)
• spinach (okay, that's odd)
• carrots (cooked, of course)
  
• rice (if he feels like it)
• ice cream (again, no surprise)
• red bell peppers (again, cooked, preferably in meat juices but he ate the pepper)
• cheese (all kinds)
• dog food (both the wet and the hard kind, which irritates my dog)
  

And just today he ate grilled asparagus from my lunch at Whole Foods. Oh, Alley (he responds to his name, by the way), I'm surprised your little kitty tummy doesn't hurt. I'm pretty sure it doesn't - otherwise, he wouldn't be pestering me for table scraps every chance he gets!

Apparently Alley is not the only one. Search for "cat" on this page from Dr. C, and you'll find a commenter whose cat eats - yep - asparagus.

Also, please watch out what pet foods you are feeding your cats and dogs these days. Check out this FAQ posted by Yahoo! News about the recent pet food recall, over aminopterin, used as rat poison in many countries, and how it has gotten into the food supply of Menu Foods' wet cat and dog foods, which manifest themselves in a hundred different brand names, from Iams and Eukanuba to America's Choice and Wal-Mart! They said on the news that only wet foods are affected. I myself will still feel better getting him a different brand of dry food than the Iams he has right now. Maybe I'm overreacting, but it's still for peace of mind.

Or I could just feed him asparagus.