MisterCairo
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 7,005
- Location
- Gads Hill, Ontario
Barn cats can be very pleasant company, and sometimes they can turn into house cats without you ever realizing it.
Humans are (or have evolved into being) omnivores, and can survive by eating a rather wide variety of things as long as they do not contain some form of toxin. But Miss Lizzie is correct when she stated above that cats are obligate carnivores--their biology differs from most other animals (including humans) and they must have some form of meat in their diet (or something of equal nutritional value to them) in order to survive. As such, anyone who decides their cat should eat a vegetarian diet is dooming it to a shortened life of poor health.I suspect that a cat could subsist healthily if not happily on a diet free of meat. Just as can humans, who also have flesh-ripping incisors and canines.
Humans are (or have evolved into being) omnivores, and can survive by eating a rather wide variety of things as long as they do not contain some form of toxin. But Miss Lizzie is correct when she stated above that cats are obligate carnivores--their biology differs from most other animals (including humans) and they must have some form of meat in their diet (or something of equal nutritional value to them) in order to survive. As such, anyone who decides their cat should eat a vegetarian diet is dooming it to a shortened life of poor health.
A few years back, when visiting the dairy farming relatives in Wisconsin, my dewy-eyed bride asked my uncle the name of a cat on the premises. He smiled and told her it was a barn cat, one of a few around there, and didn't have a name.
A couple three or four of his younger granddaughters were playing with a kitten that day -- making a little bed for it out of grass clippings, etc. The next day we found the kitten dead, from who knows what. My uncle picked it up by its tail and tossed it in the garbage.
Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine" (named after the French author not the singer!) Seemingly indifferent to my presence in the house but always there waiting at the door for me on my return home. He was my buddy and to this day miss him terribly.A cat came my way in 1978, it must've been, give or take a year. She was left behind by a free-spirited (read "flaky") hippie chick at the dog-patch compound where I resided at the time, in a converted chicken coop (others there lived in converted school buses and travel trailers and the like). The cat, who I called "the kitty" until I came to drop the definite article, had been living with afore-mentioned hippie chick on an island in the San Juan chain, an island then accessible only by private boat, where she largely fended for herself.
The kitty was pregnant, by the way, and began delivering stillborn kittens on my bed. I didn't know nothin' about birthin' no kittens, but I figured they ought be born alive, so I gathered up the cat and took her to a nearby veterinary practice, where three live kittens were extracted from her via C-section.
I had that cat until she died, maybe a dozen years later. She came and went through a cat door at the back of the house I later moved into. She frequently brought in the rats she captured on her rounds. (Seattle is thick with rats, by the way. The stories I could tell.) My then-girlfriend told me she knew I would be arriving home in a matter of seconds because the cat, who apparently recognized the sound of my approaching car, would exit the house via the cat door, climb the fence and greet me in the driveway.
I loved that cat. I really did. She was exceptionally affectionate -- she purred, she drooled, she head-butted. I'll never forget her.
And me about our neighbour's cat, China Doll. China was a pedigree Birman, her point was one of the rarest, a torty tabby. Torty meaning tortoiseshell. As a young cat she would sit on our garage roof and welcome me home every evening, rubbing her social spots around my ankle. "I'm going to come and live with you," she would say, in delightful purrs. When she was about eighteen months old, her staff, (cats don't have owners) split up. To resolve their arguments over the cat and who should have her, they decided to give her to us, if we wanted her. She lived with us for twenty years, passing away without going to the vet for that dreaded injection. She was just a cat, but even typing this, evokes such a reminisce that it makes me well up. "I told you I was going to come and live with you," she would purr, as she made a fuss of me on the bed.Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine"
Now you have gone and made me all verklempt about my feral cat buddy, "Celine" (named after the French author not the singer!) Seemingly indifferent to my presence in the house but always there waiting at the door for me on my return home. He was my buddy and to this day miss him terribly.
I worked in the carnival for 12 years (from 12-25 years old) and a lot of the slang that was used was Yiddish. I imagine now that many of the old carnies were Jewish. Didn't know it at the time as I did not know what Yiddish was or that it even existed. But things learned early on have a way of sticking with you. And besides that, to my ear, Verklempt is the perfect word to describe that emotional state. I have a number of Jewish friends that just look at me strange when I throw in the odd Yiddish in to the conversation. But none of them have yet to accuse me of cultural appropriation......I suspect they just think I am quaint.I've seen it used here before and think I might even have looked it up before as I had an inkling of its meaning (or I got it from context), but I looked it up anew - nice use of "verklempt -" clearly Yiddish words are going mainstream if "Belfast Boy" from Canada is using them. I love a good cultural melting pot.