Food Experiments

Hi Every cat! It's certainly been a long time since I posted anything on the Pablo Fan Club blog and I'm sorry for that. I wanted to take a moment to tell you all about an interesting experiment that we conducted recently.

You see, Tracy had been switching our foods willy-nilly and it was very confusing. Here you can see me and Phoebe looking at this new food and wondering why it was different.

Here are the two foods in question:

Science Diet for indoor cats is a big triangle food that we had been eating for a few weeks.

Then, one day all of a sudden, Tracy brought home this regular Science Diet food for adult cats. It is a small circle food that we had eaten in the past before they ever made the triangle food.

Well, we decided to do a very scientific food preference survey and decide for once and for all which food we would have at the Pablo Fan Club headquarters. Here are the two side-by-side, ready for voting.


Three out of three of Pablo Fan Club members surveyed preferred the triangle food. That's 100%! Talk about a landslide... Power to the cats! Tracy is complying with the Pablo Fan club decision and buying the triangle food ever since.

What's cookin'?

Hello everycat! I have an important announcement. I have decided what I want to do with my life. I am studying to be a chef. Chefs get to go on TV and do big competitions and win lots of money and have cooking shows and be very famous.

Hey! If he can do it, so can I!

Tonight, Denis and I are making top ramen noodle soup. You have to start somewhere, right? This is how you open up the package.

Next, we put a pot of water on to boil and add the noodles.

That's about all there is to it! This stuff is easy. I'm pretty sure that I'll be a chef before you know it!

Temptations test

A very very long time ago, Tracy and Denis went to visit Pablo and I sent some Temptations as a very special present from me to him. Unfortunately, the were confixated by the border patrol because food from America can be very dangerous to Australian security. Well, I wanted to at least show Pablo what the Temptations were like, so that he would know that it would have been a very good present. It turns out that recently, Kate found some real Temptations in a store in Hobart, so he has gotten to try them as well. Did you like them, Pablo? Monica, Joey and I sure did.
This is what they look like. They are not as big as they look in the picture on the bag, but they sure smell good.

We had a very hard time waiting for Tracy to take the pictures before we started eating them. I would have smiled for the camera, but I think you will understand that I was busy getting a sample.
The picture on the bag shows that there is a soft filling inside the crunchy outside, but we ate them so quickly that we couldn't ever confirm that was true. So Tracy did an experiment to be sure that the soft center was really there. It's not as big as it shows on the package, but I don't care really.

New Foods

Dear Pablo and everycat,

You have all been so sweet in sending me your purrs. They are very comforting and make me feel very loved. I want to make a list for you of all the new foods that I have tasted in the last two weeks. I'm not sure if there are thirteen, but we'll see.
1. Milk from Tracy's cereal bowl
2. Joey's food
3. My V. E. T. Dr's recommended liver diet wet food.
4. Poached salmon
5. Chicken of the sea from a can
6. Canned "Solid Gold" tuna flavor
7. Real turkey from Thanksgiving dinner
8. Fancy Feast chicken dinner flavor
9. Happy Tails chicken dinner flavor
10. Ground turkey browned
11. Cottage cheese
12. Kitten formula
13. Baby food, turkey flavor.

Wow! There were exactly 13 foods, so I can officially call this a Thursday Thirteen.

From Tracy - At the vet's on Tuesday, she got one dose of oral prednisolone (steroid) to get started. We are waiting for the compounded version that can be applied to her ear. Today, she greeted me at the bedroom door this morning for the first time since she got sick. She has eaten more today than she has in quite a while. Grandma is home and came to visit today. We'll just keep taking it one day at a time. Thanks for all the great ideas. I may look for those pill pockets and see if I can get that gallbladder medicine in without a struggle. It may have been helping a bit.

Deep Thoughts

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

I have been thinking about this whole Joey situation and I have decided that I am going to be nicer to him. He is just a little kid and he doesn't have a mommy cat any more. Monica and I had this whole big house and our brand new big Outside territory. There is room enough to spare. Denis and Tracy sure like him, so he must not be too bad a kid. So I'm turning over a new leaf. I might be able to teach him a thing or two.

Plus, his food tastes really good.

Delinquent

Dear Pablo,

I'm sorry that it has been SOOOOO long since I wrote anything on our blog. Tracy has been hogging the computer since we got back from our New Year's holiday at Grandma's house. Supposedly, she has been "catching up" on her email, financial matters, work stuff, etc. Above you can see one of the ways that we passed the time while waiting for our turn on the computer.

Now, I have to draw your attention to an important matter. Here in the US, the producers of pet food have been making it increasingly difficult to obtain the products we need. I will explain. Phoebe and I have been accustomed to eating a particular cat food called IVD Neutral formula. This is the food that is good for Phoebe's stomach and we have been eating it for several years now. Our veterinary office was specially ordering this food for us as we needed it, since it is not one that they usually carry in stock. But in the last several months, the food manufacturers have changed the rules. First they changed the bag they packaged it in to a smaller bag and charged more money for it. Then they changed the name of the company to Royal Canin. And the final blow is that they refuse to fill orders for less than 200lbs of the stuff at a time. From our vet's office, there is only us and one dog who are eating food from this company, so the office can no longer provide this food for us.

This is truly an outrage, and I wanted to warn you and any others who may read our blog. This may happen in your area as well. AS you know, cat's stomachs can be temeramental and it is not good to be changing your food all the time. Perhaps you can make sure that such monkey business will not affect Tasmanian animals.

At any rate, we have been changed to a new food which our vet's office always keeps in stock. The good news is that it tastes good and it comes in pleasant little round bits. They are very crunchy and bounce nicely when dropped on the floor. So, we will survive. Here is a picture of our new food.

Speaking of food

Dear Pablo,

This is our food dish. You notice that it is full? Well, recently we had a bit of a scare. It all started with a visit to our cat doctor - which is always an unpleasant experience in itself. There was some prodding of our ribs and discussion about needing to lose a bit of weight. No problem, we got out of there and came home. Everything seemed normal for about a week.

Then, out of the blue, Tracy started measuring our food and putting out a bit twice each day instead of just filling it up. Well, Monica and I started to conserve the food, making sure that it would last. We made sure that it didn't get all the way empty. Well, after a few days of that, she put down even less food! 1/2 cup of kibble in the morning and then another in the evening. We couldn't help but leave the bowl empty on some days. This was very disconcerting, as I'm sure you can imagine, Pablo. I mean, what if she forgot to put down some food one day? We would just go hungry until the next time. Something had to be done about it!

Well, I just would not stand for this situation. So I decided that I would put on a vomiting protest. I made sure to throw up at least once a day in a prominent location. Normally, I do try to hold back and keep my food down. I know that they get very worried about me when I am sick. But I just pulled out the stops. My protest lasted for 10 days before Tracy finally relented and filled the bowl up completely again. Now things are back to normal around here.

Turkey

Dear Pablo,

I know that you like to eat chicken a lot. Have you ever tried turkey? It is like chicken on steroids! We have one cooking in the oven today - it is a big annual thing here in our house. You should have seen the size of this bird, it's huge.

I can see clearly with my own eyes that the people have plenty of turkey to spare. You would think that they would share some with us, but they don't. They wrap it all up after they are done eating and put it in the big white box in the kitchen (they have lots of food in there). We only get a taste if they happen to drop some on the floor and don't notice it.

We are only officially allowed to eat kibble that is provided in a bowl in the kitchen. Phoebe is actually to blame for this situation. She has an intestinal disorder that causes her to vomit a lot. She is more likely to do so if she eats unusual foods. And you know how people feel about vomitting. Well, eating only kibble is a sacrifice that I make for Phoebe. She is my sister, after all.