Menu Changes at Le Cafe Matou

Whitey has been fickle about eating off and on all summer, and after the vet visit early this month he went turbo fickle mode, eating little or none of his kibble for multiple meals in a row.  So we tried to wake up his appetite by:

• spiking his food with hard kitty treats.
• begging and petting.
• spiking his food with Kitty Crack (http://bluebuffalo.com/product-finder/cat/?facets=cat_treats)
• giving him partial portions of wet food.
• giving him all wet food.
• giving him wet food spiked with Kitty Crack.

All this worked in varying degrees, and after several false starts for now he seems happy on a full diet of all wet food. This is not as good for his teeth, but we'd rather have a properly fed cat needing his teeth cleaned than a hungry cat with clean teeth.

However, all this wet food flying around has a spillover effect.  In particular, we need to also give consideration to the others in varying degrees:

• Oscar has never liked wet food, he'll walk away from kibble any where near wet food.  So we can and do feed him kibble as always.
• Penwiper wolfs wet food down mixed with his kibble, and clean up Whitey's bowl when allowed to after everyone else is done. So he needs a little reasonable restraint (to avoid premature clean up) to be a happy diner.
• Billy is now making us shake our heads:
• Traditionally, he likes wet food ...
• ... The smell excites him as we serve up the meal ...
• ... Once eating, the smell will drive him to abandon his own kibble meal half way through. Never mind that he is locked in the bathroom, he still has the nose of a cat ...
• ... but if we give Billy wet food, he doesn't eat it. This is a new development in the past week.

The solution to Billy (for this morning at least) was let him eat his chosen meal (kibble) with everyone else for the dining room.  He was a gentleman to Penwiper and Whitey (Oscar started and finished early enough to not be an issue), no one left more than crumbs, and everyone was happy.

Suffice to say it's all a fluid situation with the regulars at Le Cafe Matou.

The Fickle Felines Of Fate

An entire summer's worth of updates in one post ...

The Big Trip

We took to the road for 27 days drive across the country and back.   (Pictures and various other updates are over on https://www.facebook.com/swhobbit/photos if you care, but you'll have to friend +Katherine Derbyshire or I to see them.)

+Margaret Derbyshire and her son Ian were able substitute cat valets in our absence.   Oscar never did fully adjust to them, but he did chill enough to eat well.

Penwiper, love monger that he his, had Marg and Ian wanting to take him home to Syracuse with them.  Against our better judgement, we kept him.

Spa Day for Whitey and Oscar

All the cats have been to the vet over the summer, with Oscar & Whitey making a second visit on September second for teeth cleaning.

During the visit, Whitey also got a blood draw, and the results came back that his kidney and thyroid functions are both "high normal".   That means our quiet hunter doesn't need any treatment, but we need to keep a close on his drinking and litter box use, and of course annoy him next year with more blood work.

The sedation associated with the visit knocked them for a loop, as always, and PW hissed at the strange smelling cats as they staggered about the house.  But they bother recovered faster than previous visits.