Work Hard, Play Hard

Yes, today I worked hard, I played hard, and then I worked harder. But all for a good cause. It was a long day of short tasks, with pauses for reward time in between.

The day started with work - as usual, and I integrated new CSS-based tabs into the development copy of our corporate website. Fun stuff. (To me, anyway.) And then I got to leave work and go to the dentist. Not "fun" per se, but it wasn't too bad, once I got in there. I love you, Hygienist Amy at Westend Dental! You make going to the dentist - dare I say - pleasant. Thank you for making me smile while you're sticking pointy metal down my gums. I really don't mind going to the dentist anymore. :)

So, as a reward for being good and going to the dentist, I went SHOPPING! And not errand-shopping either. FUN shopping. Shopping for crap I don't need, but that I had a great time buying. Like a tea bag organizer, under-bed boxes, and tchotchke shelves (no joke, that's what they're called) from The Container Store. And a bottle of real French limonade, some fish spices and a nice charger (plastic, but it looks great) from Cost Plus World Market. And Sims 2, from Best Buy. :)

Then I go home, and since I had just heartily rewarded myself, it was time to work again - this time making what I hope will turn out to be several weeks' worth of homemade cat food. Um, yeah, you read that right. I spent the last 3 hours of my free time making cat food.

I've made oblique references to it in the past (see the post where I go to Whole Foods for the first time ever - I went there to pick up some dietary supplements for the recipe) but here's the deal - I now make my own cat food, according to a principle or movement or fad or whatever you want to call it, called The Raw Food Diet, or alternately (and much more fun), B.A.R.F. (Bones And Raw Food). Yes, as you might have guessed, it involves only raw foods. And I know it sounds a bit "out there", but here are some of the finer points of why I decided to give it a shot:

1. One of my cats has a food allergy and requires prescription cat food to the tune of $70-80 a month. And the Rx food is only about 85% effective at solving the problem.
   
2. I will do just about anything to help that little guy.
   
3. There is quite a lot of compelling research out there that concludes that cats aren't necessarily allergic to the proteins in the food, but to the by-products of the mass-production processes.
   
4. We know quite specifically what foods, proteins, and vitamins cats require, how much, and also what foods they are NOT able to digest. So making your own food is as easy as following a recipe.
   
5. The diet is based on a principle that makes a lot of sense to me: what do outdoor/wild cats eat? They eat birdies and rabbits and meeses and grass and plants and whatever they can get their little paws on. (And they've been surviving that way for thousands of years.) But they sure don't stop to cook the food first, and they don't really even bother with cutting it up, deboning it, removing the innards, or any of that nonsense. They just kinda eat it the way the good Lord made it -- raw. With bones.
6. The diet has a pretty big following, all of whom say it produces miraculous results in their kitty subjects. But all that aside, a good friend of mine from karate is the one who told me about it, and I trust her when she tells me it worked wonders for her food-allergy kitty (as well as her other variously-ill cats). She even loaned me a book written by her vet on the subject, which details the whys and hows of the diet and its principles.
   
7. It's cheap to make. I just made what ought to be about 6 weeks' worth of food for about $10. Compare that to the $100 I'd be paying in Rx food from the vet for that length of time.
8. If it doesn't work, no harm done. I didn't have to make a significant financial investment to try it, and I can always go back to the Rx food.

So there you have it. I'm giving it a shot. Don't get me wrong, it's a pain in the ass to make and my Cuisinart is about to go on strike (I'm making sure the kitties will eat this batch before I invest in a meat grinder), but it's kinda fun, too. There's something extraordinarily primitive and visceral about turning a nice whole happy 5-lb chicken into pieces-parts, and then turning those pieces-parts into a gallon of Cuisinarted goop. All I have to say is, thank God for ziplocs, and for those (relatively) new disposable tupperwares.

It's already working, in fact. I made a batch after the Whole Foods trip a couple weeks ago and have been feeding it to the kitties with limited success. (Turns out they don't like broccoli - my bad. Not that I blame them. But I think the peas will go over much better this time.) The kitty who will eat anything has accepted it just fine. The allergenic kitty is a little more finicky about it. But he's coming along fine, and you know what? His allergies have been clearing up. It hasn't been long enough to tell if this is a complete success yet in that regard, but so far, so good. I have faith.

So yeah - that was another three hours of working hard. Now I'm playing, by blogging and relaxing to the cup of cocoa and slice of cold pizza that is my dinner this evening. (Somehow after spending so long "cooking" for the cats, I really don't feel like cooking anything for myself!)

And now it's time to play with my eyes closed and call it a night.

- Joan