The Politics of Cat Food

Although Dinah's mouth has healed, I've continued the practice of giving her a meal of canned food in the morning. She'd come to expect it and gets more and more agitated over the morning if I don't feed her, and she's still on the light side.  Canned food to the rescue!

But this turned into kitty politics.  Dora, the meatloaf cat, doesn't need more food.  She can barely jump up to the bed, and when she jumps down, she lands with an audible grunt.  She doesn't understand the idea of "Dinah gets special food and you don't," though. She simply FREAKS.  "Wheresminewheresminesheresminesheresmine???"

So I put a dab of food on a saucer for Dora while Dinah gets the rest.  At first, this quieted Dora.  After a while, she began to notice that Dinah took a lot longer to eat.  She never tried to steal Dinah's portion or chase her away from it, but she'd hover and pace and stare while Dinah finished.

One day, I set the empty food container on the floor next to Dora's dab.  She didn't know what to do!  TWO bits of food to choose from?  This is both heaven and hell!  Finally she went for the dab, and after it was done, she dove into the container.  She worked her kitty buns off to lick every morsel and drop from the inside.  It was made more difficult by the way the container scooted across the floor.  It took her a good twenty minutes of work to satisfy her that it's clean.  She was clearly frustrated by this, but hey--it gives her something to do.  Now I do it every day.

Meanwhile, Dinah can eat in peace.

Amazon Dumps Hate-Mongers

When a major, exploitative corporation like Amazon does the right thing, I feel conflicted.https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/03/12/amazon-responds-to-republican-sens-on-book-ban-says-wont-sell-books-that-frame-lgbtq-identities-as-mental-illness/

I assume this only applies to non-fiction, though I'm wondering how they'll employ this new policy. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books that would need delisting.

Do note that, no matter what the right-wing says, this is NOT censorship. As a private company, Amazon is not required by the First Amendment to publish your book or offer it for sale on their site. It would be censorship only if the =government= tried to say a book could not be published.

And where were the "Amazon is censoring" nutbags back when Amazon got into a snit with Hachette and pulled all the books by authors with that publisher? Hmmmm? Not a peep back then. We know what they're worried about, and it ain't censorship.

Group Families

There are lots and lots of ways to structure a family. This has ALWAYS been so. The dad/mom/kids/dog thing was the only socially acceptable one, even though there were lots of single parents, divorced parents, blended families, same-sex parents, and households that included people who were considered family even though they had no blood or marriage ties to anyone. These families existed, even though no one talked openly about them, or even acknowledged their existence. Then, in the 80s, single and divorced parent families became normalized and accepted. Thirty years later, same-sex parent families became (or are becoming) normalized and accepted. Now we're seeing yet other types of families become normalized and accepted.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-throuple-families-coming-out-polyamorous-parenting-201401574.html

This is, frankly, the result of social media. Social media allowed people to tell stories that would otherwise go untold. Social media allows people in so-called non-traditional families ("so-called" because these families have existed just as long as dad/mom/kids/dogs) to communicate and understand that they aren't the only ones. And social media allowed these families to BE SEEN, and being seen is the first step toward acceptance. It's hard for people to understand and accept what they've never seen before.

I've encountered some poly families over the years, and every one of them said that a group makes a bunch of stuff easier. Child care, household chores, emotional support for kids and adults are all easier when spread out among more adults. It also saves money--more people living in one household is always cheaper than having multiple, smaller households. Its how humans were evolved to live, really--in groups or tribes.

People love to ask, "But what if someone divorces the group? What about the kids then?" Except that's the exact same situation for two-adult families, and no one asks such families, "What will you do if you decide to get divorced one day?"

It's interesting and wonderful to see families where there are more people to love and care for the children. And it's wonderful to see these families gaining mainstream acceptance.

Wrist Weights to the Rescue!

So I've been pounding through the workout/game Supernatural on the Oculus. The workouts come in three levels: low, medium, and high intensity. I started out with medium and quickly progressed to high. I check my progress by tracking my heart rate with my Fitbit. The Fitbit also tells me how many calories I've burned, which is handy--I can put the information into Noom, and it adjusts my calories for the day accordingly. I get to eat one "extra" calorie for every two I burn.

Anyway, I noticed lately my heart rate wasn't going as high during even the most difficult high intensity workout. I also wasn't sweating so much and wasn't becoming breathless. Stupid aerobic exercise! How dare it improve my muscle efficiency?

Trouble is, I was burning fewer calories as well. I needed to figure out what to do.

So I went to the sporting goods store near our place and bought a set of wrist weights. Three pounds for each wrist. Then I climbed into the Oculus.

Boy, could I feel the difference! It was tough, but I powered through it. My usual Oculus workout runs 60 minutes, but this time I had to stop at 40. I finished things off with a 20-minute treadmill run.

Check the stats when I was done. The Fitbit sorts heart rate into Fat Burn, Cardio, and Peak. I was spending most of an hour-long workout at Cardio, with maybe five or seven minutes at Peak, though this time was shortening lately. I was burning about 600 calories.

With the wrist weights, I spent 36 minutes at peak and burned 850 calories.

Okay, then. We'll continue with them.

Lake Living: A Second Kayak and a Fall

Darwin went with me to the sporting goods store to look at wrist weights. We walked inside, and straight into a huge display of kayaks.

A bit of history: when we moved up to the lake last year, I wanted a kayak. A sporting goods store is only a couple blocks away from us, so we went kayak hunting.  It turned out to be devilishly difficult--they had few in stock, and most were ungodly expensive. Turned out that the pandemic, which was in full swing, was pushing people to look for safe activities, and kayaking is one of them. The store couldn't keep kayaks in stock! A clerk told us they didn't even bother unwrapping them. They just put them on the sales floor, still encased in plastic wrap, and they were gone within a day.  After several trips to the store, I finally found one that was more-or-less affordable and used it happily, but we couldn't get a second one for Darwin without paying $800, so we decided to wait.

Winter came, and it passed quickly.  A few days ago, the lakes melted.  And apparently, the sporting goods store decided to get a jump start on kayak season.  Today, they had dozens and dozens and dozens of them, in all sizes and price ranges, all neatly stacked right up by the front door.

Well, dang!

It's still too cold for kayaking, but decided to get a kayak for Darwin anyway, on the grounds that they might sell out again. We got one for way less than I paid for mine.  We got the cheapest one, really, because our lake is shallow and basically waveless, and we don't need ultra-stability, titanium steel, or stealth capabilities.

We were carrying it back through the store parking lot toward our place when Darwin tripped on a parking block. 

He went straight down to hands and knees on the pavement, and I saw him hit his head.  My heart about stopped.  I shouted his name and tried to get him back up.  I couldn't at first, and I wondered if I should call an ambulance.  But finally he got upright.  He'd hit his head on the kayak, not the pavement, at least.

Somehow, we got him and the kayak back home.  Upstairs, I examined the damage.  The area above his right eye was tender and swelling up, and both knees were a bloody mess.  I gave him an ice pack with orders to keep it on his eye, then put cold cloths on his knees (this made him hiss) while I hunted up the peroxide.  At first, he didn't want me to use it, but I told him it was that or a bath to clean the wounds.  He relented.  I put towels under his legs and started pouring.  It set the scrapes to bubbling merrily, which made Darwin hiss again, but when it stopped, he said he was surprised that everything had stopped hurting.  (He'd never put peroxide on a sore before.) 

I fed him ibuprofen, then went to the drug store for bandages and antiseptic spray.  Back home, I did the spraying (NO STING! the label proudly proclaimed), and Darwin howled.  "The label lies!" he yelped.  When everything died down, we got the bandages on him.

Darwin had meanwhile abandoned the ice pack.  I checked his forehead, and found a knot under construction.  I refreshed the ice pack and told him to leave it there, or he was going to have a bruise.  He did.

He's feeling better now, even more so after I burned a batch of cookies for him, and I think he'll avoid a bruise.

But we have another kayak.