Thursday, October 13, 2011

Depression Era Cat

I've come across people, mainly elderly relatives, who kept everything. You probably have too. My Gramma, for instance, kept everything she could in her single wide trailer. My grandfather died when I was 1 and when my gramma died when I was 17, my dad and his siblings had to clean out her home. All of my grandfather's clothes were still there....in a single wide trailer. Stuffed to the gills. I was told that it was because she lived through the depression and never wanted to go through that again, so would hold on to things "just in case." Well, I think Blue might just be kinda like that. Blue is either going to learn to control herself when it comes to food (hmmm..... maybe I should use the same will power with myself that I will use on her!) or she is going to be the fattest cat in the history of the universe. She can not get enough to eat. She wants more and more and more. It's constant. Once she is done with one bowl she wants another. Yesterday I fed her 1/4 can of wet kitten food. She ate that and started meowing as if death from starvation was imminent. I thought, good night, she obviously is hungry! So, I gave her another 1/4. She gobbled that up like she hadn't eaten in days and started begging for more. I ended up feeding her the whole can. She ate that and then wobbled over and started eating Lucy's food. When Lucy came to eat her own food, Blue guarded it as if it was a matter of national security. She took a bit of a breather and then moved on to Buddy's food. She could barely walk by the time she was finished.
Today began Blue's controlled eating plan. She received a 1/4 of a can of kitten food mixed with a whole lot of water. Buddy was fed out in the garage, so that he could eat in peace and actually eat his food today. Lucy was fed dry food, which doesn't hold the same power over Blue as wet does.
I'm wondering if it has something to do with her being a stray and having suffered with hunger when she was really young. I feel like we should have named her Scarlet O'Hara, because I swear, if she could have, she would have stood up on her hind legs, grabbed a fistful of dirt and cried, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"
We will have to see how it goes. On the human front, we are no longer eating a gluten free diet.  I have found that any time that I totally remove something from my diet, I overcompensate on what I am allowed. So, not cutting calories at all, in fact, in most instances, increasing the caloric intake. I need to go back to basics, remind myself of my own blog post, and start crackalackin'!

PS: It's hard not to have the focus of the blog be the animals when this is the view while I'm writing.

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