When Cat Food Goes Bad: An Uncanny Occurrence

If you've read this business for a while, you probably realize we have two cats, Nacho, who is "my" cat, a nine-year-old dilute tortie/Siamese mix who is affectionate but stubborn  and Tuxedo, Becky's car,  a wacky black and white shorthair who lives in the studio since she and Nacho do not get along.

Nacho was originally younger daughter Alyssa's cat which she picked out from the shelter after her cat Arco disappeared. Nacho, we discovered, had been abused: one of her eyes doesn't work right, the result, the vet said, of physical damage and one of the joints in her tail has been broken. I hope the hottest place in Hell is reserved for people who torture innocent animals. (Not nice, and probably not Christian, I know, but that's how strongly I feel about people who abuse animals.)

Alyssa was in college when she acquired Nacho, and I made her sign a solemn compact that when she graduated and left home, Nacho went with her.

Well, Alyssa finished school and came to collect her cat. In the meantime, Nacho and I had become best buds. The exchange between Alyssa and me went something like this:

Alyssa: "I've come to take my cat."
Me: "YOUR cat?  She's MY cat."
Alyssa: "But you made me sign a solemn compact that I would take her when I finished college."
Me: "I don't know what you're talking about."

I know, it's terribly to deceive one's child in such a way, but a cat is a cat and Nacho was my bud.  Here's a picture of her in a typical pose:

She's actually awake in this picture, which is unusual. She spends about 18 hours a day either sleeping or eating.  What a life!

Anyhow, this past six months or so, Nacho has been eating like there is no tomorrow. We had her checked by the wonderful vets at Prince William Animal Hospital, whom we have been taking our cats to for over thirty years. They could find nothing wrong with her.  So she porked up: here is a current shot of Her Pear-shapedness:

I tried to get a picture of her abeam, but she kept turning toward the camera (and me--she thought I had something for her to eat). Take my word for it: the cat is pear-shaped.

Now, Nacho has been eating canned food ever since we started feeding it to our deceased cat Trio a couple of years ago to help her gain weight. (Trio was not deceased when we fed her canned food. She was very much alive and died in July 2010.) So, Trio is gone, but it is Nacho who has gained the weight.

The cans of cat food have that little pull ring which works well when it works but when it doesn't...well, you know. I had a pull ring failure this evening. Here is the offending ring which separated itself from the can without opening it as they sometimes do. Oh, the humanity!

Naturally, when the ring pulled off without the top of the can, I did what any guy would do: I took out a can opener, and...

No, I didn't. I grabbed a sharp knife, though better of it, took a butter knife, and making like Bear Grylls in my kitchen, stabbed the top of the can repeatedly, hoping somehow it would give up and fly open.  Here is a picture of the crime scene:

(This shot was taken after I used a can opener on the can and took the yummy delicious-smelling [NOT!] cat food out and gave it to poor pitiful starving Nacho.)

So, after stabbing the can top didn't open it, I got the manual can opener out and took the top off like a civilized person. Actually, if we were truly organized we'd have an electric can opener like we used to about 25 years ago. It was my favorite appliance (is it wrong to have a favorite appliance?  Mine now is our GE refrigerator with ice and water through the door--ah, civilization!), but the power can opener broke one day and we never replaced it. Maybe it's time.

So, there's a moral here someplace. Maybe it's that "improvements" don't always work and sometimes you have to go back to an older technology(i.e. a map when your GPS loses you real good at night in a torrential rain). And, violence is not the answer. And, no matter how it's opened, wet cat food still smells awful.