(No "cat interview" this week...I think it's possible that our long-ago Queen Cat Minnie might have been some sort of distant paternal-line relative of our current Queen Serena. I don't think they would have liked each other. Queen Heather seemed to share power equitably with three sisters whose talents were complementary and equal, or nearly equal, to her own. Minnie was a clever animal but nowhere near to being Serena's equal. I can't imagine their being friends and am glad their lifetimes didn't overlap.)
Something cats and humans have in common is that, as predator species, we tend to overeat when the food we like is plentiful. Nature has given us the ability to store surplus food as fat that gets us through leaner days. The only problem is that, in these days of abundance, we may not burn off the surplus fat. We may keep packing it on until it becomes dangerous.
This did not happen to me while I was a young undiagnosed celiac, but it's happened a few times since then. Home nursing jobs have usually been to blame. There's this person who is obviously not up for a good five-mile walk, lying about, feeling bored, in need of mental stimulation, probably not up for learning a new language or art form either, but needing good healthy food to recover per health. Like most people who've enjoyed cooking for fifty years, I've learned how to make all kinds of good healthy food, and I enjoy doing it. Recently during a Morning Writing Practice I sat down and spent about twenty minutes generating a list of 60 cheap vegan meals that are easy to do with either supermarket ingredients or health food store ingredients.
I cook that sort of thing for patients. Plant proteins as the base, meat as an option if the doctor recommends it. In a surprising lot of conditions North Americans develop, doctors who pay attention to the patient's diet recommend less protein. For Parkinson's Disease a low-protein diet is generally recommended. For diabetes the value of a vegetable diet probably comes from the extra fibre. For cardiovascular disease avoiding saturated fats, like animal fats, is important. If you want to gain weight you mix grains and beans; if you want to lose weight you separate them. So I have these lovely mental lists of things to do with grains and beans, apart and together, that I can--probably--eat again as farmers develop Glyphosate Awareness.
So I cook these things for the patient, and eat them with the patient, and do the boring little routine of daily cleaning, which does not raise the metabolic rate very much, and then sit around doing needlework and watching television and playing board games with the patient all day, and by the time the patient is back on per feet, my fat pants are getting snug.
I would never part with my fat pants, but their purpose in my closet is to be worn over another pair of pants on a cold day, or (sigh) worn to accommodate inflammation during glyphosate reactions, not so that I can actually fit into them.
So then I look for ways to build more walking into my life. Of course, in many parts of North America, our culture still makes this difficult for women. "A pretty little girl like you isn't safe with all these crazy men on the streets" messages actually overlap with "A woman of your age isn't safe with all these crazy motorists on the streets." I don't know whether the people who say these things hear themselves actually saying "We need to lock up all the men, and especially all the people whose "transitioning" hormones are guaranteed to be unbalanced, all the time." Women pay a good half of the taxes to maintain the streets so, if women really aren't safe on the streets, then the streets have to be kept clean of men, Of course, in reality, it only takes one other woman to make the streets "safe" for any woman who chooses to use them, or as safe as anything is in this dangerous world. I've chosen to spend many hours of my life being that one.
When people are blessed with healthy active thyroids--which is something dicamba spraying is likely to change, be aware--it doesn't take many extra miles to walk the extra pounds right off. When people have sluggish thyroids, it takes a lot of brisk walking just to nudge the thyroid closer to its "gear"--but brisk exercise, especially before breakfast, is the key to getting those thyroids working again if anything ever will.
Cats are the same way. Some cats have healthy appetites; they eat about a cup of food a day, often less, and don't want any more. Sometimes humans think the proper shape for cats is actually fatter than the cats need or want to be, and fret, "He's not eating," when the only thing wrong is that the cat is overfed and trying to avoid morbid obesity.
Then there are the cats whose main interest seems to be eating, who always seem to be begging for food, will almost always eat whatever they're offered, and keep eating until morbid obesity sets in, and these cats show about as much interest in exercising as the average 350-pound patient does. For similar reasons. We all have to begin where we are. Obese people have to ease back into physical activity with slow walks and short periods of faster movement. Cats, too. That's why Garfield, in the cartoons, was always taking a few steps, or waving a paw, and then sending his human thought waves about lasagna. (Fat cats should not have lasagna.)
No resident cat at the Cat Sanctuary has ever been allowed to stay fat. Irene did have a tendency to gain weight easily, and she was a sweetheart about being served smaller meals when that happened, too.
As an adolescent the long-ago Queen Cat Minnie seemed to have a morbid appetite.
Minnie was a little smaller than kittens are supposed to be, the smallest of five kittens. She was always closest to Max, who was a little bigger than kittens are supposed to be. When they were just little things Minnie always seemed to be trying to do anything Max did.
I don't know how relevant it may or may not have been that their mother, Tabby, was just not a family cat. As soon as her five kittens were eating kibble, she started placing them in homes! Minnie and Pepper found their way back, Max, Biscuit (no known relation to a later cat called Bisquit), and Tiger didn't. And when Minnie and Pepper came home, mewing sweetly that the Cat Sanctuary was where they wanted to be, Tabby moved out. Sometimes a young mother cat wants to start a new litter and just pushes her spring kittens aside. My current cat family don't do that, but Tabby did, and Schatzi down the road did.
So Minnie, who was clever and on the borderline of social, though definitely not a Listening cat, was now alone with Pepper, humans, cardinals, wrens, and Ms. Poketana Possum for company. She seemed to get on well with Pepper and Poketana, though she'd chase the birds if she saw them on the ground, but she wanted to be the boss.
As a young cat Minnie was short and chunky. She was in fact growing into a large cat, so her appetite for extra food may have been natural. Pepper was always long and lean. When they were half grown Pepper started to look alarmingly lean.
Every time she saw me, she started meowing. Most cats' "meow" is a conversation. They understand few if any actual words, but they watch and listen for a reaction. Not Minnie, who was no longer a "mini-cat" but still had little white gloves and still, at this stage, answered to "Minnie Mouse." Minnie was doing all the talking. "Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!"
Cats who do that are unhappy. What they're unhappy about is the question. When a small animal has a round, solid abdomen, the first sources of unhappiness to check are hairballs and worms. Minnie had neither of those problems. (Minnie liked raw shelled pumpkin seeds, unlike some cats I could name who sniff at pricey roasted pepitas.) Minnie just kept insisting "Meow! Meow! Meow!" and the only way to shut her up was to give her a kibble. I'd open the jar and flip a bit out for her to chase, and she'd subside. Nevertheless, despite these extra snacks, she still kept gobbling up her food, so fast I wondered whether gas had something to do with her distress, and then gobbling the two-thirds of Pepper's meal that Pepper was still chewing up. For a cute, affectionate kitten Minnie was getting to have quite an unpleasant personality.
I tried changing the way I fed them. I put half a cup in each dish as usual, but instead of leaving them to eat I scooped up Minnie and groomed and petted her. Minnie's meal was quite safe; Pepper wasn't greedy. I combed Minnie's short gray tabby coat, which didn't need much combing, and sang:
Gather kittens while ye may!
Time brings only sorrow!
Pretty little gray kittens of today
Will be fat old gray cats tomorrow.
Minnie's such a pretty cat,
White apron, bib, and stockings.
Sad to say, she's growing fat;
Her figure looks quite shocking.
No fat cats are allowed at this house!
They waste both food and money!
If you're hungry, chase a mouse,
A cricket, or a bunny!
Minnie, if less food you eat,
You're certain to grow thinner;
So, although you're nice and neat,
You still get only one dinner.
She still wriggled and meowed, but she obviously enjoyed the extra attention enough not to mind that this song took enough time to let Pepper recover a healthy weight. After being groomed and sung to, Minnie would gobble her meal, and by that time Pepper would have had time to eat most or all of hers.
After a few months like this, the grooming routine stopped seeming necessary. Minnie matured. It took her a long time to grow longer and taller than Pepper, but she was always noticeably heavier, with a wide frame and lots of lean muscle on her solid little bones. She had a short tail, too, and might have been a carrier of the Manx gene; we'll never know, since she never had kittens. Along with her big but healthy shape Minnie matured into a calmer personality. She always was a hasty, messy eater, but she stopped gobbling up Pepper's food.
Then they were spayed. As regular readers may remember, Pepper was the only cat I ever knew who seemed positively healthier and happier after being spayed, and Minnie was the only one who seemed to hold a grudge. She was the one who really did have a longer list from which her "Top Ten Ways to Annoy and Embarrass Humans" was selected.
"You love her more than the others," my husband observed.
"Ha! Ha!" I said. "I barely manage to put up with her."
"But you do put up with more abuse from her than from any other cat. Deep down, you love Minnie."
I suppose I did...but not as much as I did any of the other cats, whom I actually liked.
Here are some adoptable cats who may need a strictly limited diet and a program of regular exercise--cat toys, or walking with a harness, or just living a normal, natural life in the barn.
Zipcode 10101: Kiefer from New York City
Born in November 2021, Kiefer's guaranteed to like to exercise, and maintain a healthy shape around his broad, almost British-type frame, if he has someone to play with. He's recommended for adoption by a family that have another cat, or cats...or a human who spends a lot of time at home. He's already had the basic vaccines and been neutered. The site doesn't list his weight but it's possible that he may grow even bigger (a little bit bigger) this summer.
Zipcode 20202: Christina from D.C.
She's old and fat, but she still likes to play so there's some hope of getting the flab down. Christina is unfortunately grumpy and surly with other cats, so she's recommended to someone who can keep only one cat. She's not a snuggler, either...she's starting to sound a bit like Serena, whom she probably wouldn't like. If you want the peculiar experience of living with a cat who would rather chase a ball than snuggle on your knee, ask about this cat today. Though you should also know that the D.C. shelters are overflowing with adorable adoptable kittens and sometimes a bossy, un-cuddly cat will mellow enough to adopt kittens who are already weaned. The adoption process for cats begins with growls, snarls, and slaps, but in a day or two the kitten has learned the rules and the cat has fallen in love with it.
Zipcode 30303: Zahra or Mocha from Atlanta
Why does this beautiful Siamese cat look so heavy and sad? She was brought to the shelter because she had kittens. The kittens were torn away from her, and she was spayed. She's not described as holding a grudge but, as shown, she is starting to overeat. She needs to learn other ways to have fun--playing with you, or perhaps fostering other kittens, of which the shelters seem to be full. I say "seem to be" because, as regular readers know, the shelters around Atlanta have two chronic handicap in our Petfinder photo contest. Too many shelter staff seem to try to comfort the animals by overfeeding them, and too many of the shelters post bad photos or none. So the page on which I found Zahra's or Mocha's picture (no mention of whether they're trying to change her name because they have things stamped "Mocha" or because a shelter worker or relative of one is called Zahra) is full of pictures that really look like space aliens, and blank spaces where pictures are meant to be, and notes that each of these pages represents an adoptable kitten. If you can resist the temptation to throw food at her when she meows too much, which she may sometimes do, and try to find out what she wants, this cat is described as friendly, clever, and likely to be fun to know for another ten years or more.
Bonus Cat: Torti from Blountville
That face! It is usually assumed that Lewis Carroll got the idea of a cat with a grin from the aura of a migraine headache, during which patients often almost see remembered images overlapping with real ones. Then again, he might once have known an ancestor of this cat. The Torti at the Blountville shelter is described as sweet, friendly, and unlikely to turn down being petted.
