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Goals, my future, life

Posted on January 6, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

In the last post, I talked about how difficult it was for me to make buying decisions at a certain price point. Under twenty bucks, not a problem. Buying for my cat, well, it’s a problem because he’s become incredibly picky about food, but I have no problem spending money on him. I just have a hard time finding something he will eat. He was sick about two months ago and since then, he’s been extremely picky about food. I think it’s that he can’t smell as well as he used to, but I’m not sure. What I do know is that he used to eat Solid Gold tuna pate for all his meals.

Now, however, he will or won’t touch it, depending. He’ll eat it every three or four days, maybe, but not every meal as he used to. It’s frustrating beacuse he won’t eat any shredded food. He’ll eat the gravy that it’s in, but not the shreds themselves. Flakes? Yes. Pate? Yes. Morsels? Yes. But, and this is the important part, not more than a certain amount. I’ve been trying to figure out what he will and won’t eat, and it changes meal-to-meal. There are some foods he won’t eat at all. Tiki Cate Pate is one. Oh, and he will not eat broths.

Today, he is having a ‘I don’t want to eat anything day’, and I’m frustrated. I know that the standard bit of advice is to just leave out the wet food for twenty minutes and then take it away. It wouldn’t be feasible or ethical to put out the same food for the next meal, but that would be what you do with dry food. Even the food that he loves, he’s only deigned to nibble at. To be fair, he ate a decent amount at breakfast. Not a lot, but decent.

Side note: I learned when I took him to the vet that he had lost several pounds since the last time I took him in. Meaning, he wasn’t eating enough. Well, to be fair, he was considered plump back at the last check-in when he was nearly fifteen pounds. He was ten pounds this time, which was on the thinner side. He is getting older so that’s part of it, but I’m trying to feed him more. So, in general, he is eating more than he did before he got sick. I used to feed him one small can a day of wet food plus free-feeding dry food, and giving him treats during the day. Now, I’m upping it to one big can or two small cans a day, but he won’t eat all of it at a time. Realistically, we’re probably at a small can and a half total during the day with a lot of food wasted.

If he were younger, I would try to change his feeding so that I didn’t have to go through this stress every day. Given that he’s nearly 17, though, it’s pretty much any food I can get into him that I accept as edible that will do. He is eating. I take comfort in that. It’s jsut a matter of him getting something down him.

I think another thing that I have to come to terms with is that there are things I won’t change about myself. Back when I was younger, I bought into the notion that you had to change everything wrong with you. If you were aware of a flaw, then it behooved you to do something about it. The problem is that I wsa well-aware of my issues. I knew of the many things that I should fix. One prominent one was that I worked to the back of a deadline. If something was due on, say, February 1st, I would get it done ournd 11:59 p.m. on the night of January 31st.

Don’t know what you got (until you upgrade)

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I tend to be someone who runs at the base of what I need until I begrudgingly have to up that base for some reason. I don’t like to spend money even though I can afford to do it now and again. To be clear, I am not skimping on the basics by any mean. I don’t have to worry about my next meal or putting clothes on my back. My cat lives a life of luxury with many cat perches and the best food possible. In fact, he’s sitting in front of my keyboard right now (slightly blocking one of my monitors). My brother said I spoiled him too much, but why the hell not? I love him and can afford to spoil him. I don’t have kids so he’s the main object of my affection. So if I want to lavish him with beds and treats and whatever else, that’s my choice. It’s still not that much money in the grand scheme of things, however. The only thing I buy him on the regular is food–and litter.

I grew up thrifty. Everyone in my family acts as if we have nothing. For my father, it stems from the fact that he grew up in a very poor family. His father was a farmer who refused to work for years. Why? I can’t quite remember why, but it had something to do with moving? His wife wanted to move and he didn’t? Or something to that effect? Anyway, he didn’t work for many years so the family was even poorer as a result. He had four brothers and sisters (two of each) and he was the only one who was allowed to go to grad school in America. He and my mom sent money back to his family every month. My mother came from a solidly middle-class family, but she had seven brothers and sisters, so it wasn’t as if they had money to spare, either. Half of the eight kids ended up in America for post-grad (and remained on this side of the ocean), including my mother. I think it’s the oldest four, in fact, which is interesting.

The point is that both my parents are from humble beginnings. We were dirt poor when I was a kid. We slowly became middle class over the years, but the “we’re poor” mentality persisted well past the point where it was true. My father is weird with money. he would pinch pennies ruthlessly, complaining about kiwis being two for a dollar. Then, he would turn around and buy a fifty dollar water pick without a second thought. I think I have a bit of t hat in me except I think a long time before I buy anything. Then, it seems as if I did it on the spur of the moment because I go all in once I actually make the decision. Like when I adopted my cats. I went on Petfinder and looked at black cats by the dozens. My only criteria were that they be brothers and not very clingy. That was it. I saw hundreds of black brother cats and my eye was caught by the description Shadow’s foster mother had written for him. It said that he knew what I was thinking because he was psychic, which immediately endeared me to him. And that I needed two cats. I fell in love and when I found out that they were going to be at the local Petco (or PetSmart) the next day, I knew it was fate. I went and loaded down on everything I needed, but not the boys. Their foster mother didn’t bring Shadow to the event because he hated them and no one ever looked at them at the five or six previous events. I went to her house a few days later to pick up the boys and brought them home. Yes, it seemed like I had made the decision on an impulse, but I had been looking for a few months before actually adopting them.