Midnight Mutterings | Homemade cat food

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

Right now the kittens are trying to separate the blinds in my room from their moorings. They climb up the inside of the curtains (usually one at the time, but occasionally together which means I can’t bear to watch) then hang onto the curtain with three clawed feet and use the remaining one to reach for the blinds. There they search through the slats trying, it looks like it anyway, to reach through the glass to the enclosed porch.

Tonight I watched a very nice if deranged woman make homemade cat food from a whole turkey, some butternut
squash, white rice, a bag of frozen green beans, two cups of ground flax seed, eight raw eggs still in their shells and a small amount of nutritional yeast. I may have forgotten an ingredient or two, but I won’t soon forget what happened to her kitchen or herself, both of which ended up covered with a thick layer of orange slime. Included in the slime coating were two valiant blenders who weren’t up to the job of crushing turkey bones to go into the two HUGE stock pots of boiling would-be cat food. One of the blenders, an enviable Vitamix took several time outs with the turkey bones, at which our ever enthusiastic chef-for-cats, assured us would rally after a short, boneless rest. ‘That’s what makes it such a good appliance,’ she observed confidently. The ground turkey bones are for calcium, apparently, though another cat chef said eggshells provided sufficient calcium if you bake them and grind them to a powder before adding them to the chicken dish she put together for her cats.

There: you know the worst. This wasn’t my first video about homemade cat food, but it will be my last. And I don’t want my cats to be any stronger than they already are. I wasn’t watching carefully—I’m sick* after all—but it seemed the chef in the second vid may have cooked the whole mass several times on her professional six burner gas range. At one point, she said she had nine cats to feed, or maybe it was eight—I know I would have lost count myself, but they never appeared and we didn’t get to see if they enjoyed the food. One watcher commented that she planned to make the cat food and if the cats didn’t like it, she was getting a dog.

My cats will never have the chance to turn down orange slop as the most I can do lately is make a cup of green tea in the microwave, and my kitchen in messy enough as it is, thanks to the kittens. They can reach any level in a single jump and make anything prefer life on the floor. If it’s a heavy item, fine. No bowl or pot is too heavy when two three month old kittens work in tandem, get behind the item and send it crashing to the floor. They haven’t managed to take down the blinds yet, but the game isn’t over until the scoreboard shows the final numbers.

Also, I don’t see how the cats can be hungry after they ate my calendar. September is a mystery, with several days gone completely. October is relatively intact, apparently not so tasty, but November is ripped up from the bottom of the page with Thanksgiving and the following days resting in the bottom of kitty tummies, or worse. Am I saying kittens actually tear days out of a calendar, chew them up and swallow. Yes I am. Probably plenty of calcium in shiny paper, in addition to what they get from chewing my hair.

Oh, did I mention that the kittens are very beautiful and have distinct personalities. They have identical faces and chest markings so it’s impossible to tell which one is advancing toward my face as I lie quietly in my sick bed, hoping for improved health. Their backs are different though, with Molly sporting narrow stripes while Rose’s back has blocks of black. 

Rose is slightly larger and she is a Republican** like most cats. Molly is a bit shy and hasn’t made her political leanings as clear. She is possibly Independent but could be a blossoming Libertarian. It’s too soon to tell. Meanwhile, she is still devoted to cleaning the world, including herself and Rose and any exposed human skin that comes her way. And she always, always does the dishes. Such a comfort in a messy world.

*Sick: Here’s what I don’t have and I can prove it: Covid, RSV, Influenza A or B, a mature outlook and my usual gluttonous appetite. Here’s what I do have: a cough and constant fever over 100 to just shy of 102F, and concerning but not terrifying, SpO2 levels. Add a distinct lack of patience.

**Why Cats are Republican: A solid belief in the validity of their ideas passed down through generations of their own
kind. Respect for bootstrap values, for hard work, fine minds, while preferring their own jokes. Would rather be correct over being appreciated. Understand the need for dignity, including not embracing veganism just because it’s current. Cats aren’t Democrats either. That honor goes to dogs, who just go on cheering for your tiny improvements, loving you in spite of your flaws, and eating what you cook if they possibly can, with sloppy gratitude.