Glop, Pellets and Sludge: Part of This Nutritious Breakfast
We've had to put our cat Math on a low-protein diet to help with her liver problem. I figured that the adjectives low-protein and carnivorous are mutually exclusive; so I was amazed when Kathy brought home a trunkload of prescription low-protein cat food of various sorts.
We were prepared in advance for what we would find within the cans, boxes and large bag. The prescription food actually has a money-back guarantee, which testifies to its overall attractiveness and palatability.
First we broke out the wet food. After opening the can and spooning out a dollop onto a saucer, we looked at it and decided that despite whatever was printed on the label, we would refer to it exclusively as glop. Glop is utterly amorphous. It glistens just the way that cranberry sauce does, too, except that cranberry sauce isn't gunmetal grey. Bleah. Math agreed with us: she examined her first meal of glop mere nanoseconds before turning to us and giving us a pained expression, as if to say, "You want me to eat this??"
Glop shows a surprising resistance to oxidation. It can stand out for days and lose neither its shape nor its iridescent sheen. I'm not sure I want to know why. Still, glop has one big advantage over standard wet cat food: it doesn't stink up the entire house the second Kathy cracks open the can. In fact, it has no smell whatsover. Perhaps the aroma, and hence the flavor, is too subtle for our atrophied olfactory lobes to detect.
Next, we consider the dry food. Pellets aren't all that different from regulation cat kibbles, but their compact cylindrical shape is somehow disconcerting. The canonical kibble is a flattened cube with rounded edges, or a flattened ellipsoid. Pellets, on the other hand, are reminiscent of those Tart-n-Tinys candies sold at theaters. But whereas Tart-n-Tinys come in four vibrant colors, the unrelenting greyness of pellets churns the stomach. What's with the grey, anyway? I would never have guessed that all the color in normal cat food resides in the proteins. We're not trying to starve our cat to death-we're ostensibly trying to bore her to death with artificial food completely lacking in hue and, presumably, flavor.
Pellets resemble much more closely some institutional, generalized animal chow you'd feed lab rats than anything you'd offer to a beloved pet. With a straight face, anyway.
Finally, we were given a couple juice boxes full of a liquid nutritional supplement-a kind of Ensure for cats. At first glance you might think it's melted caramel. Yum! Before your salivary glands could rev into high gear, however, you'd recall that the aroma of hot caramel is not that of wet, slightly moldy cardboard. Kathy christened this substance sludge. When sludge is left exposed to the atmosphere in a cold basement overnight, it forms a kind of putty that is practically impossible to remove from kitchenware.
Now, as you'd expect, Math was less than delighted about the radical shift in her diet. For the first week, each morning before I left for work I'd take her ration of pellets downstairs to her bowl. She would trot after me perkily, clearly expecting a bounty of flavorful, meaty delights to sprinkle down from on high. At the bottom of the stairs, I'd see an array of dishes and bowls containing glop, pellets and sludge from the previous evening; all were completely untouched. I'd set her down, facing the repast, and with a sweeping gesture, I'd say: "Look! You've got glop, pellets and sludge! What more can you possibly ask for?" Quite a lot, actually. Math would give me a reproachful look that clearly meant, "If I could talk, I could do a whole hour on my preferences in the fish group alone!" And I'd tell her, "Don't blame me! I don't set policy. I just sling the pellets."
I have a rather hard-line attitude towards cats who are fussy eaters. It's amazing how a day or two of fasting can expand their repertoire of acceptable foods. Oh, if my cat showed signs of actual malnourishment I'd relent and try some other kind of food, but I don't put up with cats just testing what demands they can get away with. Math has had such a hard time the last couple of months that we worried she'd lose too much weight before she got used to the food, if she ever did. Encouragingly, however, she has recently begun to tear into her morning pellets with gusto. She must have realized we were serious about not caving in to her complaining. You should have heard her pathetic mews the first couple of times I disappointed her with a scoop of pellets. "Can't you at least feed me something with color?", she'd wail. Hence the term, "Hue and Cry."
We were prepared in advance for what we would find within the cans, boxes and large bag. The prescription food actually has a money-back guarantee, which testifies to its overall attractiveness and palatability.
First we broke out the wet food. After opening the can and spooning out a dollop onto a saucer, we looked at it and decided that despite whatever was printed on the label, we would refer to it exclusively as glop. Glop is utterly amorphous. It glistens just the way that cranberry sauce does, too, except that cranberry sauce isn't gunmetal grey. Bleah. Math agreed with us: she examined her first meal of glop mere nanoseconds before turning to us and giving us a pained expression, as if to say, "You want me to eat this??"
Glop shows a surprising resistance to oxidation. It can stand out for days and lose neither its shape nor its iridescent sheen. I'm not sure I want to know why. Still, glop has one big advantage over standard wet cat food: it doesn't stink up the entire house the second Kathy cracks open the can. In fact, it has no smell whatsover. Perhaps the aroma, and hence the flavor, is too subtle for our atrophied olfactory lobes to detect.
Next, we consider the dry food. Pellets aren't all that different from regulation cat kibbles, but their compact cylindrical shape is somehow disconcerting. The canonical kibble is a flattened cube with rounded edges, or a flattened ellipsoid. Pellets, on the other hand, are reminiscent of those Tart-n-Tinys candies sold at theaters. But whereas Tart-n-Tinys come in four vibrant colors, the unrelenting greyness of pellets churns the stomach. What's with the grey, anyway? I would never have guessed that all the color in normal cat food resides in the proteins. We're not trying to starve our cat to death-we're ostensibly trying to bore her to death with artificial food completely lacking in hue and, presumably, flavor.
Pellets resemble much more closely some institutional, generalized animal chow you'd feed lab rats than anything you'd offer to a beloved pet. With a straight face, anyway.
Finally, we were given a couple juice boxes full of a liquid nutritional supplement-a kind of Ensure for cats. At first glance you might think it's melted caramel. Yum! Before your salivary glands could rev into high gear, however, you'd recall that the aroma of hot caramel is not that of wet, slightly moldy cardboard. Kathy christened this substance sludge. When sludge is left exposed to the atmosphere in a cold basement overnight, it forms a kind of putty that is practically impossible to remove from kitchenware.
Now, as you'd expect, Math was less than delighted about the radical shift in her diet. For the first week, each morning before I left for work I'd take her ration of pellets downstairs to her bowl. She would trot after me perkily, clearly expecting a bounty of flavorful, meaty delights to sprinkle down from on high. At the bottom of the stairs, I'd see an array of dishes and bowls containing glop, pellets and sludge from the previous evening; all were completely untouched. I'd set her down, facing the repast, and with a sweeping gesture, I'd say: "Look! You've got glop, pellets and sludge! What more can you possibly ask for?" Quite a lot, actually. Math would give me a reproachful look that clearly meant, "If I could talk, I could do a whole hour on my preferences in the fish group alone!" And I'd tell her, "Don't blame me! I don't set policy. I just sling the pellets."
I have a rather hard-line attitude towards cats who are fussy eaters. It's amazing how a day or two of fasting can expand their repertoire of acceptable foods. Oh, if my cat showed signs of actual malnourishment I'd relent and try some other kind of food, but I don't put up with cats just testing what demands they can get away with. Math has had such a hard time the last couple of months that we worried she'd lose too much weight before she got used to the food, if she ever did. Encouragingly, however, she has recently begun to tear into her morning pellets with gusto. She must have realized we were serious about not caving in to her complaining. You should have heard her pathetic mews the first couple of times I disappointed her with a scoop of pellets. "Can't you at least feed me something with color?", she'd wail. Hence the term, "Hue and Cry."