Slimming Down with the "Cat"kins Diet

Mr. Random's TV debut didn't turn out quite as hoped, but it was a great show otherwise. I could only recognize Mr. Random's calves and back of his hair, and that's because I'm his wife and am supposed to know stuff like that. It turns out more people were wearing red socks than I remembered - who knew? . . .

Mr. Random took the Random Cat to the vet for the first time since we adopted her four years ago. We generally have shied away from taking her out of the house since as a "shelter cat" who had been left at the shelter by *two* sets of previous owners, we really didn't want to cause her any more trauma than she's already had. However, Mr. Random's sister just had her two cats die within a week of each other, and Mr. Random was sufficiently spooked enough to want to get Random Cat checked out . . .

I wasn't able to go with them since I had meetings that morning, so Mr. Random had to go solo. He said it was heart-wrenching hearing her meows of fright as she was transported in the carrier in the car to the vet. That's why I'm glad I couldn't go - it would have made me so sad . . .

So the vet says that Random Cat is a bit overweight, which we knew . . . it's kind of obvious. It turns out that she is 12 pounds - 4 pounds over her proper weight. Wow! I didn’t know she was that much bigger . . . it would be like you had to lose 30% of your body weight in a year. So the vet has put her on a “cat”kins diet – now we have to give her ONLY wet food, which I don’t think she will mind very much. Dry food isn’t good for her, the vet said, because it is full of carbs and empty calories. Odd thing is that the canned food is better for her than the weight-loss pellets we had been mostly feeding her . . .

In this job transition period, I feel myself getting dumber. I am trying to keep so much stuff straight in my head, and I have so many people asking me about so many different questions about different things, my brain just can't take it anymore. I have taken to giving glazed, puzzled looks whenever anyone asks me anything - and usually the question is wildly out of context, so I have to respond "And this has to do with . . . ?"

This has been such a long week . . . I hope everyone has a great weekend - I certainly am going to try! Haven't ended with a poem in a while, so I hope you like this one . . .

Elegance
By Linda Gregg

All that is uncared for.
Left alone in the stillness
in that pure silence married
to the stillness of nature.
A door off its hinges,
shade and shadows in an empty room.
Leaks for light. Raw where
the tin roof rusted through.
The rustle of weeds in their
different kinds of air in the mornings,
year after year.
A pecan tree, and the house
made out of mud bricks. Accurate
and unexpected beauty, rattling
and singing. If not to the sun,
then to nothing and to no one.