June 27th, 2008 - Cat treats
The cat treat industry is amazing. I like to think that I’m pretty good at eliminating unnecessary products from my life. But it never even crossed my mind in the last 5 years that we’d had animals that cat and dog treats are not necessary parts of life. Until 2 weeks ago.
Mom brushed Maggie’s teeth. Sith has been conditioned recently to come sit on the toilet while I brush my teeth and wait till I’m done for a treat. He did that while Maggie’s teeth were being brushed as well. Maggie sometimes gives him his hairball medicine on Sunday mornings so she clamored to do so. I told Mom that it wasn’t time for the hairball stuff, but they could give him a treat instead. “Give him 3 or 4 pieces, over on the cat tree.” “What? 3?” “Yeah, the package says up to 6 but I think that’s too many.” “Wow. I just gave him one.”
And I realized that our childhood cat Esmeralda probably never had cat treats. So why in the world did I give Sith (and Shmi and Pi and yes, we like cat names with “i” in them) cat treats at least once a week, sometimes daily? I’m going to finish up the bag that’s open, any other bags we might have in the house, and then not buy any more.
Unless we have to give him pills. Shmi got lots of treats because they helped the medicine go down. (So many that she sometimes avoided the treats because she knew they came along with medicine. She was on a daily liquid for her OCD/allergies and a weekly pill for 3 years.)
I might try veggies on Sith, too. Pi loved veggies. Frozen beans were his favorite.