The Hairy Tails of a Cat Sitter

by C H Hemington

Chapter 10 - A Dish Fit for a Feline

  Cats have become extremely adept at manipulating us humans, and no more so than when it comes to food. Being one of nature’s supreme predators this fixation isn’t really surprising, but why is it that our cats can spend hours glued to the same spot in the garden where they know there to be a mice nest, waiting for one of the unfortunate little rodents to put in an appearance, but show no patience at all when it comes to the meals that we prepare for them, incessantly demanding that we get their breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, night-time snack, ad-hoc treats etc, and be quick about it. It’s at these times that the cat’s ability to exploit humankind comes into its own, and they’ll employ every trick in the book to ensure they are fed exactly the right quantity, of exactly the right type and flavour of food, at exactly the right time. Not only that, but in my experience if the feline is extra fussy they will also have something to say about the receptacle their food is served in. These cats flagrantly disregard food delivered in a common and garden plastic bowl, insisting on nothing less than bone china.

  Priscilla fell into this category. She was an eight year old Persian with a taste for the finer things in life and her owner Nicky loved indulging her. “It’s not like I’ve got kids to spend out on,” she once said to me, a comment which sent me heading to the internet to find out the average annual cost of raising a child. Whatever it was I was sure Nicky exceeded it by a good margin. A quick scan of the contents of her fridge showed where her money went. One shelf was allocated to Nicky’s food and the remaining two were given over to Priscilla, as indicated by the little labels bearing the words ‘Prissy’s delights’ that Nicky would stick to the shelves whenever I looked after the pampered feline. Fresh tuna, king prawns, crab and breast of wild pheasant adorned the shelves, and these were just Priscilla’s ‘treats’. Her food cupboard was equally indulgent, with sachets of ‘luxury’ cat food purporting to contain delicacies such as venison and beaver. I suspected if I removed the contents and took them to the nearest Michelin star restaurant they’d go down a storm. Where did Nicky get hold of this stuff? Another thing I couldn’t quite figure out was why she placed so much emphasis on me watering the numerous pots of flat leaf parsley which were positioned on both of the kitchen windowsills. She later admitted to using the parsley as a ‘garnish’ on Priscilla’s carefully plated evening meal “I’ve seen it done in the cat food adverts, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for my Prissy.”

  At the other end of the spectrum was Bumpty, a friendly, scruffy cat with a squeaky miaow who preferred to spend most of her time outdoors, and her owners Rebecca and Tim were happy to let her do this, after all she’d still come in at least once a day for food and a cuddle on Tim’s lap. In fact she was such an independent cat that when the family went away I was only required to visit every two or three days to re-fill the automatic feeder. Whilst these devices can be a god-send, they can also be a nightmare, and Bumpty’s feeder was the latter. It was a large round contraption of a type that I hadn’t previously come across, and learning how to operate it left me feeling like a PhD in physics would have come in handy.

  Although Rebecca’s seven year old daughter Maisy had given me a demonstration when I went to pick the key up, I’d found it a tad confusing, and not wanting to risk looking like a dim-wit by asking the child to repeat the procedure, I instead convinced myself I’d get the hang of it.

  When I arrived for my first visit I was thankful to see that Rebecca had taken the precaution of leaving the feeder’s operation instructions out for me. The first thing I needed to do was to make sure that the battery was working. Over the years I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time obsessively checking batteries on cat feeders, either by holding them above me and straining my eyes to try and spot the tiniest movement of the most miniscule cog, or by sticking my ear to the feeder in an attempt to detect the softest of ‘ticks’ as the said cog undertook its circular journey. In this case the timer mechanism protruded from one side of the feeder making the battery checking process slightly easier, as was disassembling the feeder which allowed me to put the two pre-frozen ice-packs inside it. I could also just about follow the instructions:

  Locate compartment ‘O’ and moving in a clockwise direction fill the next compartment to it and any subsequent compartments required.

  The instructions then told me in no uncertain terms not to over-fill the bowls so as to avoid the rotating lid being ‘fouled.’ I thought this was an interesting choice of word given that it was referring to the potential mechanical failure of the feeder rather than the toilet habits of the species it was intended for.

  Then came the part I was dreading. I was to adjust the settings on the timer so that the circular lid uncovered a new food-filled compartment at the correct times on each of the two following days. I hesitantly removed the cover from the timer knob which comprised various ‘sectors’ in different colours, with two arrows that I had to align with something or other. It was all very confusing and the instructions inevitably weren’t very clear, not even with the accompanying pictures to aid their translation. I gave it my best shot but that wasn’t the end of it. Once the timer had been set and turned anti-clockwise then the entire lid also had to be rotated anti-clockwise to reveal the mystery compartment ‘O’. As I turned it I wasn’t convinced it was making the right kind of noise, so started again. Several attempts later I had finally convinced myself I’d set it correctly when Bumpty came tearing through the cat flap demanding food. So insistent was she that I swore I saw her lift her paw up and point to her mouth. This made a mockery of all my feeder settings as I’d already timed her meal for that day and I would have to start all over again.

  However, all that was a walk in the park compared with what I had to do for Colossus, a ten year old tabby cat with very specific feeding requirements. It was one of the rare occasions that I found myself with the time to look after a cat on a live-in basis. So, believing that I’d simply be keeping the cat company, feeding him, cleaning his litter trays and delivering the requisite amount of play and affection, I decided that with any luck I’d be able to undertake my duties as well as being able to have a bit of ‘me time.’

  Colossus, as his name implied, was a large cat that, with his short legs, round belly and greying chin reminded me of the bloated CEO of a large corporation who’d enjoyed too many rich meals each followed by a large brandy and a cigar, and who treated his employees with a degree of disdain. It was my firm belief that as far as Colossus was concerned I was very much an employee.

  Colossus was owned by a lovely lady called Rita who, although she was retired, was still very active and bustled about like a woman half her age. She and Colossus lived in an upmarket area of Tunbridge Wells in a beautiful Victorian town house, just around the corner from the expensive boutiques and coffee shops. I must say the location of the house did feature quite heavily in my decision to take the job. I could pretend I was a lady of leisure who had enough time on her hands to pop into town every morning for a Danish pastry and an extra large mochaccino. So yes, I was wearing my rose-tinted glasses when I agreed to move in, a decision I’d made and committed to before I’d seen Rita’s extensive list of instructions entitled ‘Caring for Colossus.’

  “That’d be a good name for a book,” I said to Rita before realising that it was, in fact, a book. I had assumed that what I was looking at was a single sheet of paper sitting atop a pile of other pieces of paper. I didn’t realise that the whole pile was to become my bible and that by the end of the week I’d know it back to front and inside out.

  “Everything you need to know is in there,” Rita said patting the book. “It’s terribly important that you follow the instructions to the letter.” I wondered what it was about looking after Colossus that required such a plethora of precise instructions, I’d already established that he was fit and healthy and there was no medication to be administered. Deciding she was possibly just an over-fastidious owner and he was probably on
e of these fussy cats I left, still very much looking forward to my week’s ‘holiday.’

  When I arrived at Rita’s house the following week, she’d already left for her break in Cornwall where she would be staying with her sister. So I greeted Colossus and took my suitcase up to my allocated bedroom with Colossus in tow. I wasn’t quite sure why I’d brought so many clothes when Colossus was the only company I was expecting, but at least I was prepared should some surprise social invitation come my way, plus I’d be able to give off an air of elegant confidence when having my morning coffee at the bijou establishment down the road. It was my plan to unpack my suitcase at a leisurely pace then sit down with a cuppa and read the epic tome that was ‘Caring for Colossus.’ Well that was the plan anyway.

  Before I could even begin to unzip my case Colossus had planted his large posterior on top of it and started making a noise that probably was a miaow, but couldn’t really be described as such, it was more of a ‘miaow-howl-yowl’ combo. Not being sure how to translate this particular vocal outpouring, I thought I’d better go down and check the cat-bible for its chapter on ‘Interpreting Noises Made by Colossus.’ Downstairs I heaved the bible over to a nearby armchair and began to flick through it. All of a sudden my eyes fell upon the words “grind the raw liver, any skin, raw meaty bones, and raw heart,” and another that read “if you had to replace liver with Vitamin A/D or replace heart with Taurine, add the substitutes now. If you’re using Psyllium add it at the end and mix well.”

  My heart sank into the slippers that I’d just had time to don before Colossus had started making his racket. Rita was a raw food feeder, and the reason why the bible was so large was because it was awash with raw food recipes to be made at home, from fresh. Not only that but it seemed that Colossus was fed little and often, very often as it turned out. In fact every three hours for a period of fifteen hours commencing at 6am and I was already late with his 9am feed, which presumably was the reason why he’d been shouting so loudly at me. No wonder Rita had left before my arrival that day, and no wonder she hadn’t told me about Colossus’s stringent feeding requirements, but had instead decided to let the bible do the talking.

  I rushed to the fridge where five saucers of mush, covered in cling film had been left, only identifiable as Colossus’s meals because there were little notes attached to each, with a description of the contents therein. It looked like Rita had at least left enough meals for that day, probably to give me time to hone my raw meat creative skills. I unwrapped one of the saucers, holding my nose as I did so, and placed it on top of the plastic ‘Fat Cat Lives Here’ plastic mat that denoted Colossus’s feeding station. Never a truer word...

  Having yelled at me to get his food, Colossus just sat staring at the dish I’d placed in front of him. Didn’t he like it? Was he supposed to be served the different recipes in a particular order? I hurried back into the living room to consult the bible. Under the heading ‘How to Feed Colossus’ was the following statement:

  Once the recipe has been made, the food is to be divided into small chunks and each chunk fed by hand.

  By hand? Was Rita mad? Thoughts of cross contamination flooded my head, not to mention the idea of offal-soaked hands, which I then realised I’d have anyway as a result of preparing the food. However, a sentence further down the page partially allayed my fears.

  Gloves can be worn for food preparation and feeding. A supply is kept in the cupboard under the sink.

  Scurrying back into the kitchen, I located the aforementioned cupboard and hastily opened the doors. A strange sight lay before me. From the back to the front and side to side the cupboard was completely full of boxes of latex gloves. Not only did this leave me wondering where the cleaning products were, but it also made me feel like I was in some weird kinky film. The stash of gloves was so large that I wondered if Rita had contacts in the medical profession who were keeping her stocked up.

  I grabbed a pair of the gloves from the only open box and put them on, doing that stretchy hand movement used by surgeons before they operate. I picked up a quantity of the mush that I thought equated to a ‘chunk,’ placed it on my flattened palm and offered it to Colossus. To my surprise he was very gentle and delicately nibbled the food in a way that was at odds with his appearance. However what this meant was that it took an inordinate amount of time for him to clear the plate. This was clearly a cat that didn’t like to rush his food.

  Eventually, with the last chunk eaten, Colossus gave himself a quick on-the-spot wash before lumbering into the living room for a post-breakfast snooze. I on the other hand could afford no such luxury seeing as I had some serious swatting up to do. However, when I took another look at the bible in all its off-putting enormity, I quickly changed my mind and decided to skim-read it there and then, and thereafter use it as a reference tool. I already knew that making Colossus’s meals was going to be complicated and time-consuming; I didn’t need to have it rammed down my throat on my first day.

  When I’d first seen the saucers of food that Rita had pre-prepared my initial thoughts were that she had a week’s worth of similar concoctions already made and frozen, and all that was required would be a bit of thawing out. However, as it turned out Rita clearly didn’t believe in freezing food, at least not Colossus’s food, and had made it clear via her instructions that I was to visit the local butcher daily for fresh supplies, using the money that she’d left for me in an old tea caddy. It appeared that my morning trips out would no longer consist of a stop at the coffee shop for my daily Danish pastry and mochaccino, but a visit to ‘Nice to Meat You’ butchers for raw meat, bones and offal.

  I needed a strategy to make my food preparation duties as time-efficient as possible, thereby giving myself the opportunity for a bit of quality ‘Kat time’. The idea of making all the food for the entire week in one go and freezing it was tempting, after all just because Rita didn’t do it this way didn’t mean I couldn’t. However, I quickly dismissed this plan because once Rita had returned, it would be easy for the butcher to let slip the fact that he’d only served me once. So I instead devised a timetable which was to be put into action immediately.

  Today

  Decide on recipes for the week’s meals.

  Go to ‘Nice to Meat You’ butchers and buy meet meat for tomorrow’s meals.

  Return from butchers and give Colossus 12pm feed.

  Have light lunch (avocado and prosciutto + slice of crusty bread).

  Prepare recipes for tomorrow and refrigerate using separate shelf.

  Give Colossus 3pm feed.

  Unpack and relax with cuppa and good book (not Colossus bible).

  Give Colossus 6pm feed.

  Have nice dinner and glass of wine.

  Watch TV.

  Give Colossus 9pm feed.

  Bed (me) 10pm.

  For each day thereafter the timetable would be:

  6.00am: Feed Colossus. Go back to bed.

  8.30am: Get up, wash, dress.

  9.00am: Feed Colossus.

  9.30am: Go to butchers for meat etc.

  10.00am: Prepare meals for next day and refrigerate.

  11.00am: One hour ‘at leisure.’

  12.00pm: Feed Colossus.

  12.30pm: Feed me + three hours ‘at leisure.’

  3.00pm: Feed Colossus.

  3.30pm: Afternoon cuppa + 2.5 hours ‘at leisure.’

  6.00pm: Feed Colossus.

  6.30pm: Feed me + 2.5 hours ‘at leisure.’

  9.00pm: Feed Colossus + 1 hour ‘at leisure.’

  10.00pm: Bed.

  I was quite heartened when I saw the results of my time-management exercise. It appeared that I would have quite a lot of leisure time after all. Of course there were the litter tray cleaning duties but they would take a matter of moments, and the play and affection-giving time I counted as part of my leisure activities.

  So with a great deal more enthusiasm I delved back into the bible to make my recipe selection. I figured that if I stuck to t
he same recipes I would at least be giving myself a chance of eventually getting them right. Scanning the pages for those that were slightly less complicated to prepare, I saw that the all recipes in fact seemed to be based on a similar theme which included the following components:

  Liver

  Drumsticks

  Thighs

  Heart (MUST be chicken heart)

  Variety could be obtained by changing the type of meat used be it chicken, turkey, duck, pheasant or rabbit. In addition the following ingredients were required:

  Bottled Water (not sparkling)

  Egg yolks

  Supplements (NOT optional)

  The ‘NOT optional’ supplements were:

  Taurine powder capsules

  Wild Salmon Oil liquid capsule (its okay to drop the whole capsule into the grinder, the gelatine capsule is edible)

  Vitamin E liquid capsules

  Vitamin B Complex powder capsules

  Iodized table salt

  Psyllium Husk Powder

  I wasn’t sure where one would purchase Psyllium Husk Powder, so I could only hope that Rita already had a supply of the supplements and didn’t expect me to go out and buy those too. As I headed back into the kitchen the clock above the fridge told me that it was already 11.30, and I hadn’t even completed task one on my to-do list. I raced around the kitchen throwing open cupboard doors until I came across the supplements hidden behind a large metal object that I guessed was a meat grinder. In the same cupboard I also found a knife, a pair of shears (poultry shears I later found out), a meat cleaver, a set of mixing bowls, some plastic sheeting, kitchen scales, a large chopping board and oddly, a new pair of earplugs in a sealed box. I assumed these were all the tools I would require for Colossus’s meal preparation, but why would I need earplugs? Perhaps it was to drown out the sound of his ‘miaow-howl-yowl’ which I imagined would surface once Colossus got a whiff of the food. I made a mental note to ensure he was shut out of the kitchen during food preparation, not only to save my eardrums but to save his whiskers from the meat cleaver.

  I decided to postpone my visit to the butchers until after I’d given Colossus his 12pm feed and I’d had my own lunch, after all, buying and preparing the food for tomorrow couldn’t take that long, and I was bound to get back on track with my timetable before the 3pm feed. Once again I found myself crouching on the floor above the ‘Fat Cat’ mat sporting a pair of latex gloves and hand- feeding individual pieces of ground slop to a large cat.

  By the time I’d finished feeding Colossus and eaten my own lunch it was 1pm and time for me to head off to the butchers. To safeguard against any lapses of memory on my part I decided to take the bible with me and found a snazzy shopping trolley in the under stairs cupboard in which to transport it. The trolley had a distinctly unpleasant odour so I assumed it was what Rita normally used to cart the freshly purchased meat in. I grabbed the trolley and dashed out of the house.

  ‘Nice to Meat You’ was only a few minutes’ walk away, and despite the fact that I was trundling a smelly trolley behind me, I was enjoying my stroll in this up-market neighbourhood. Arriving at the shop I was expecting to be greeted by a burly man with a jovial booming voice, a full moustache and hairy forearms, wearing a freshly laundered white apron and a straw boater. What I got was a surly, skinny individual wearing bloodied overalls and chopping up a large leg of meat. I took a deep breath, removed the bible from the trolley and placed it on the counter. The loud ’whoomph’ noise it made as it hit the glass surface caused the skinny man to look up from his chopping.

  I began by politely introducing myself and letting him know that I was looking after Ms Donovan’s cat Colossus for the week. I was hoping this would be enough to trigger an “ah yes, we know exactly what Ms Donovan has – we’ve got the turkey variety bag for you today” response, whilst producing a bag of exactly the right ingredients in exactly the right proportions.

  However, the butcher remained silent.

  “Ms Donovan gets all her meat here for Colossus’s meals,” I said. A quizzical frown appeared on his shiny forehead.

  “Am I supposed to know who Ms Donovan is?” he asked bluntly. I had assumed that the man who served Rita every day would remember who she was, but it appeared not. Perhaps he had a plethora of customers visiting the shop on a daily basis asking for raw meat for their cats, after all, this was Tunbridge Wells. There was nothing for it; I was going to have to refer him to the bible. Pointing to the recipe for chicken thighs with bone, I told him I wanted those ingredients in those proportions multiplied by six. Although the bible instructed me to give Colossus a different recipe per meal, there was no way I was going to be able to order the meaty ingredients for six separate recipes each day, let alone have the time to make them, so he would just have to put up with the same ‘flavour’ per day, and each time I visited the shop I’d ask the butcher to have ready the meat for the turkey recipe the next day, the duck recipe the following day and so on, through to the pheasant and rabbit recipes.

  The butcher glanced at the page and replied “Can’t get chicken hearts.”

  Couldn’t get chicken hearts? Did the chickens arrive at the butchers de-hearted?

  “Well I’ll take whatever you have got,” I said in my best ‘this isn’t good enough’ voice.

  “It’ll be ready in half an hour,” he said. What would take him half an hour? All I was asking for was some chicken thighs and liver, what was he going to do, kill, pluck and dismember the chicken himself? With an exasperated tut I left the shop.

  However, the waiting time would at least give me the opportunity to stroll up to the high street for a spot of relaxing window shopping. I knew from previous visits to the town that there were some amazing jewellery shops, housing items so precious that they required an intimidating security guard to be positioned outside the shop door. Arriving at the first of these I quickly began to drift into a little fantasy world, one in which I’d won the lottery and could afford such trifles. As I gazed through the window at the array of sparkly jewels I failed to notice the security guard approaching me.

  “Would you mind moving on madam?” he said, making me jump. Now I’m not one for confrontations, especially with a man whose thigh was no doubt bigger than my waist, but could see no reason for his request, unless he thought I was scouting the joint as part of a plan to carry out a jewel heist.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked, resisting the urge to add “officer” to the end of the sentence.

  “Well, erm it’s just that I noticed an odour coming from your direction and I don’t want you putting off our usual type of clientele.”

  Oh that’s charming I thought, clearly understanding what he was getting at. In my old hooded sweatshirt, equally old jeans and trainers, and with smelly trolley I could on reflection see that he might have a point and perhaps my ensemble wasn’t that far off the ‘bag lady look,’ even if the trolley did have a jazzy pattern. I thought of all the lovely smart-casual outfits that were lying unpacked in my case, and rued the fact that I’d been in too much of a hurry to change into any of them.

  So instead of arguing I scuttled back to the butchers where I took a seat on a plastic chair and waited for my order to appear.

  It was a further fifteen minutes before skinny butcher disappeared through a PVC door into the back of the shop, and another ten before he re-emerged with a plastic bag containing my ingredients. The plastic was so thin that it resembled a piece of pale skin stretched over someone’s vital organs. I quickly paid skinny butcher, tossed the bag into the trolley and marched out, completely forgetting to pre-order the next day’s meat.

  By the time I got back it was past 2pm and I was even further behind my schedule. With no time to lose I laid the bible on the kitchen counter, open at the required page, assembled the equipment along with the non-meat ingredients, washed my hands, donned a fresh pair of latex gloves and steeled myself for the food preparation. To protect the worktop from any bloody splashes I pla
ced a piece of plastic sheeting over it and put the chopping board on top of it. I then retrieved the chicken thighs and livers from their plastic skin and spread them out on the board. I was now in the hands of the recipe:

  Ensure that the correct calcium/phosphorus ratio is maintained by removing 20% to

  25% of the bone from the total amount of meat used.

  I spent the next five minutes trying to figure out exactly what that meant, and eventually decided that I was to remove and dispose of 1.2 bones from the thighs and keep the remaining thighs and their respective bones. Maths was not my strong point and I made a mental note to include a calculator in my essential equipment for the next day’s food preparation activities. However, it wasn’t just a calculator I needed. How on earth was I going to work out what 0.2 of a thigh bone looked like, let alone remove it? The only thing I could do was guesstimate the size and try to extricate it with the poultry shears.

  Remove the skin from half the chicken thighs.

  It occurred to me that removing all the skin from all the chicken thighs would have been a healthier option for Colossus but didn’t want to muck up any ‘fat-to-anything-else’ ratio, and surely these steps were in the wrong order? I’d just spent ten minutes trying to de-bone a chicken thigh whilst keeping the skin on, only to then be told that the skin could come off.

  Wash and weigh the meat and offal.

  This was supposed to remove the surface bacteria but again I questioned the sanity of the instructions given that I was going to have to put the thigh meat and liver back on the same board to be chopped, where they would no doubt pick up the surface bacteria that they’d already left on it. However, I knew if I followed the instructions (almost) to the letter it wouldn’t be my fault if it all went wrong. Unsurprisingly the taps on the kitchen sink weren’t the hospital lever-type that I could turn on using my elbow, so in order to avoid surface contamination I was going to have to remove one latex glove for the tap-turning, and keep the other hand gloved for the meat-and-offal-washing, even if doing it this way meant that I was only able to wash one piece of meat and offal at a time.

  “MIAWOOOHOOOWYOOOWOOO!!!”

  It was 3pm and Colossus’s strange alarm call caught me off guard for the second time that day, causing me to drop a piece of liver into the sink. “Bugger it,” I said to myself, not so much because I’d dropped a piece of liver, but because I was going to have to stop what I was doing to spend the next quarter of an hour sitting on the floor, hand-feeding a frustratingly ‘nibbly’ cat. Colossus ambled in like a large bear with a sore head and sat by his mat. It was then I remembered that I had intended to shut him out of the kitchen whilst I made his meals, but as he’d stayed away voluntarily, that is until his 3pm feed was due, I decided that this step wasn’t necessary, especially as I had so much else on my plate, so to speak.

  Fifteen minutes later with Colossus’s mealtime over, and dropped piece of liver re-washed, I picked up the recipe where I’d left off:

  Cut the thigh meat from the bone and cut into small chunks.

  This would have been a nice simple instruction had I known what constituted a ‘small’ chunk. I decided not to over think it and to base my measurements on the size of the pre-prepared mushy chunks I’d just fed Colossus.

  In a small bowl mix together the following supplements:*

  Taurine powder capsules**

  Vitamin B Complex powder capsules

  Iodized table salt

  Vitamin E liquid capsules - pierce and squeeze out liquid

  Panicking that no quantities had been given I then followed the * to the bottom of the page where the required amounts were given. What idiot had decided not to display the quantities next to their corresponding ingredients? Rita seemed a fairly sensible lady so I wondered whether she’d copied this recipe from a half-wit author of raw cat food recipes that she’d found on the internet.

  Underneath the quantities was the ** note relating to the Taurine:

  If not using heart, substitute with extra Taurine.

  Extra Taurine? Couldn’t it be more precise? I knew that Taurine was a very important ingredient, so decided to check out other pages of the bible in the hope that they would reveal a definitive measurement. By this time I was back wearing both gloves and really couldn’t be bothered to do the whole taking-off and putting-on thing again, so decided to use my chin to turn the pages, which was actually quite effective! Not only that but I found the information I was looking for fairly quickly, and re-used my chin to get me back to my original page. I then realised that in order to get the supplements out of their containers I’d have to remove my gloves anyway. Who was the half-wit now? It wasn’t until I’d straightened up that I also realised I’d been draping the ends of my hair in the liver which had tinted them blood red and rendered them sticky and slimy, a fact born out every time I moved my head and they came into contact with my neck.

  Add the egg yolks and water to the bowl of supplements and whisk until it reaches a ‘slurry’ consistency.

  What on earth was a ‘slurry’ consistency? I washed my hands and grabbed my phone so I could Google the definition of slurry:

  A semi-liquid mixture, typically of fine particles of manure, cement, or coal and water.

  Manure? There was no mention of manure in the recipe, so I decided to focus on the semi-liquid part of the definition.

  Place a clean bowl under the grinder and feed the thigh bones through. Slowly add the liver, heart and wild salmon oil liquid capsules.

  This, for me, was the most hazardous part of the recipe. I’d never before used a grinder of any description, let alone a ‘Rondo Multi-Speed Gourmet Electric Grinder’. The multi-speed element consisted of two settings. If I used the faster setting it would obviously get the job done more quickly, but would it hurl the ingredients out so violently that blobs of the minced concoction would end up spattered across the kitchen? I wasn’t prepared to risk it so chose the slow speed. As soon as I switched the machine on the purpose of the earplugs became clear. The noise it produced was deafening and this was just on the slow speed, I dreaded to think how ear-splitting it would be on its fast setting. I grabbed the earplugs and was disappointed to see that these were not the sponge type that I used when Elliott started snoring after he’d had a bit too much to drink, but the wax ones that one had to hold in one’s hands until they were soft enough to mould into a size and shape that would fit into one’s ears. Five minutes later, with the earplugs in place and the noise sufficiently muffled, I hesitantly started to feed the bones and offal mixture through the grinder. It turned out to be a very uneventful, if somewhat gory process and I soon had a bowl of what did indeed look something like mince.

  Add the chunked meat, the Psyllium Husk and supplement slurry to the bowl of mince and mix well.

  At last, an instruction that didn’t leave me baffled nor require me to chin back and forth through the bible like some square-jawed baboon. I would even have considered abandoning the fork for the pleasure of mixing by hand if the ingredients hadn’t been quite so disgusting.

  So there it was; my home made cat food in all its glory. Ok, so it didn’t look quite like Rita’s but what it lacked in appearance I was sure it made up for in taste, and I could always take a flat-leaf parsley leaf out of Nicky’s book and add a bit of garnish. So despite it’s less than appetising look, the relief I felt at having completed this smelly and frankly onerous task was immense. That was until I read the final sentence:

  This recipe makes a single portion.

  My smile turned upside down as I realised that although I’d used six lots of meat and offal for the next day’s six meals, I hadn’t multiplied by six the amount of supplements and other ingredients required. What dunderhead would put the ‘this recipe serves’ information at the bottom of the recipe? There again what dunderhead wouldn’t look for the ‘this recipe serves’ information before attempting to make said recipe?

  The thought of starting all over was more than I cou
ld bear, especially as it would involve a repeat visit to ‘Nice to Meat You’ butchers, or ‘Not Nice to Meat You in Any Way Shape Or Form’ butchers, as I’d now christened the shop. Would it matter if I just made some more of the ‘supplement slurry’ and added it into the existing minced mixture along with a bit extra wild salmon oil and Psyllium Husk? I immediately decided it wouldn’t, after all I’d make sure to do it correctly on the days that followed.

  By the time I’d finished adding the extra ingredients, dividing the mixture into six portions, ‘plating them up’, covering them with cling film and refrigerating them, it was almost 4.45pm. I was shattered and I still had the washing up to do. What if it preparing Colossus’s meals took this long every day? I consoled myself with the thought that now I’d done it once my next attempts would be much quicker and generally less fraught, not to mention more faithful to the actual recipe. So I cleared up the mess in the kitchen then took myself off for a well deserved soak in the bath, accompanied by a large glass of wine. I didn’t care that it wasn’t yet 6pm which was usually the earliest that I’d allow myself a little tipple.

  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cope with Colossus’s vocal acrobatics at 6am the next morning so that night set my alarm for 5.50am in an attempt to pre-empt them. It turned out this wasn’t necessary. At around 1am, as I was having a rather disturbing dream about being trapped in a room with piles of foul smelling raw meat and offal, I was suddenly woken by a loud and ghostly howl. I opened my eyes to see Colossus staring at me from the end of the bed. I couldn’t decide which had been worse, the dream, Colossus’s newest vocalisation, or the intimidating look he was giving me. Before I could make my mind up he let out another powerful howl. What did it mean? The bible didn’t say anything about a night feed. Or did it? I begrudgingly hauled myself out from under my warm duvet and dragged myself downstairs, just to make sure. At the same time I would fetch the earplugs, it seemed I’d need those for more than just muffling out the noise of the grinder.

  Having checked the bible to make absolutely certain that I wasn’t required to indulge Colossus with a midnight feast, I returned to the bedroom. Peering around in the dark I wasn’t able to see him. Where had he gone? I realised that I hadn’t heard any noise emanating from his direction since I’d left the bedroom and come to think of it, he hadn’t followed me downstairs either. Deciding he must have tucked himself away in some cosy spot I clambered back into bed, pulled the duvet over me and placed my feet around my still warm faux fur covered hot water bottle. At that moment the bottle began to move up the bed towards me, ON ITS OWN. Had I gone straight back to sleep and was in the middle of a ‘night of the living hot water bottles’ bad dream? I hadn’t. This hot water bottle had four legs and a tail. Colossus had indeed tucked himself away somewhere cosy – in my bed, and not only that but he’d decided to purloin my hot water bottle. Then, having been unintentionally disturbed from that location he chose the next warmest place which happened to be my stomach. Now I was never going to get back to sleep, and instead found myself worrying about how Colossus was going to respond to my potentially inferior breakfast time offering. If he didn’t eat it at 6am he wasn’t likely to eat it again at 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm, and then I really would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

  At 5.50am my alarm went off, unnecessarily given that I’d been awake most of the night with a large cat glued to my stomach. As I tried to sit up Colossus awoke and luxuriated in a wonderful morning stretch. Oh well, at least one of us had managed to get a good night’s sleep. I trudged downstairs, this time with Colossus in hot pursuit, went into the kitchen, retrieved his breakfast ‘à la Kat’, donned the obligatory latex gloves, and with my heart in my mouth offered him a piece. He took one sniff and then, to my astonishment, grabbed hold of it and with barely a single chew the meat was heading down his oesophagus on its way to his stomach. I was delighted, not only that he obviously approved but that there was none of the nibbling malarkey that had made the previous day’s mealtimes such lengthy affairs.

  Breakfast over, I went back to bed and set my alarm to coincide with Colossus’s 9am meal. Would his response to breakfast be a one-off or would each of today’s repeat servings be met with as much enthusiasm? Exactly two and a half hours later I found out that he was as happy the second time around as he had been the first, so trotted off for my day’s visit to skinny butcher with renewed vigour, despite the fact that, having forgotten to pre-order today’s meat, I would therefore undoubtedly have another thirty minutes wait ahead of me.

  “Got some chicken hearts delivered first thing,” skinny butcher said, rather taking the wind out of my sails. His tone was such that I wasn’t sure whether he’d been proactive and ordered some the previous day or they’d simply arrived of their own accord. However, I didn’t want to get into a convoluted discussion about the sourcing of chicken hearts, so simply expressed my thanks and placed my order, not forgetting to give him my requirements for the following days so I could just come in every morning and pick them up.

  Not wanting to repeat my embarrassing security-guard-incident I decided to leave the smelly trolley in the butchers and head for a coffee shop. Given my lack of sleep, a large mochaccino and sugary Danish pastry were just what I needed. Half an hour later, and on a sugar and caffeine high, I returned to the butchers, collected my order, and would have skipped all the way home, was it not for the risk of falling over the smelly trolley.

  With one lot of successful raw food preparation already under my belt, I approached that day’s undertaking with a sense of optimism. Not only was I aware of which pitfalls to avoid, but knew I could carry out the instructions in an order that was eminently more sensible and time-efficient. So with ingredients and equipment assembled I set out about my task.

  Just one and a half hours later I completed my assignment, having shaved a whole forty five minutes off the previous day’s time! I sat back smugly with a cup of tea, deciding that by the time it got to the end of the week it would take me no more than half an hour, including the washing up. My dreams of a relaxing few days away were still intact... until that night.

  By 10pm I was so tired as a result of my previous night’s sleeplessness that I drifted off to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. At around 1am, ‘The Howl’ woke me again. In my sleep-deprived state I’d forgotten to close the bedroom door when I went to bed, and there was Colossus, once again staring at me from the other end of the duvet. “I know your game” I said to him, and before he could crawl under the sheets and commandeer my hot water bottle, I used my feet to hook it up the bed and placed it next to me. If he had to sleep in my bed I was at least going to make sure it was not on top of me. As I patted the bottle and lifted the duvet he sashayed up the bed with a swagger that told me he’d got me wrapped well and truly around his paw, which was exactly where he wanted me. However, at least I was now able to sleep without a colossal weight on my stomach, and in a matter of moments nodded off again.

  Craning my neck to check the time on the luminous clock I saw that it was only twenty minutes since I’d fallen back asleep. For the second time that night I found myself having been woken up by Colossus, but this time it wasn’t with a howl, a yowl or even a miaow, but with snoring so loud that I actually had to check it was coming from Colossus and not some fat drunk man under the bed. Once again I trudged downstairs, collected the earplugs that were back in the kitchen cupboard, having been used during the grinding of that day’s meaty bones, and went back to bed.

  As the days went on I learned various tricks to help make my life easier. As well as buying another set of earplugs to keep on my bedside table, I also purchased another hot water bottle so that my feet wouldn’t freeze at the expense of Colossus’s comfort. I also decided that when I went to bed Colossus would come too, that way I wouldn’t get woken up at 1am. On one occasion I had tried keeping the bedroom door shut but the commotion he made was not one I could ignore.

  On each of the days that fo
llowed there was no need for Colossus to remind me of mealtimes. At precisely one minute before each meal was due, I’d be in the kitchen, saucer of food in hand, poised and ready for action. Within seconds Colossus would charge in and grab the food from my hands, occasionally threatening to include my fingers in the raw meat on offer.

  “You didn’t give him all the skins did you?” Rita asked when I visited her to drop the keys off, and told her about the enthusiastic way in which Colossus had greeted and eaten each and every meal I’d prepared for him.

  “Err yes,” I said hesitantly, glancing at Colossus who seemed a little bit podgier than I remembered. I went on to explain that I’d followed the recipes with the utmost diligence and hoped that I’d done the right thing.

  “It’s my fault,” Rita replied. “I should have told you to remove all the skins; the fat in the meat is quite enough for him.” Aha, no wonder he gobbled my home-made meals so readily, the fatty skins would have provided much more flavour and if I’d have been making them for me, I’d have definitely kept them in. I decided not to tell her that I’d taken Colossus to bed with me every night, if this was a habit I’d got him into, I didn’t want her to know about it, although the chances were she’d already found out for herself.

  One thing I did make Rita aware of was the fact that skinny butcher hadn’t appeared to know who she was. “No he wouldn’t, he was just standing-in” she said, before going on to tell me that the actual butcher, a Mr Percival, had also been on holiday during the same week, and the look of slight embarrassment on her face made me wonder if it hadn’t been her sister with whom Rita had been on holiday, but Mr Percival himself. This line of thinking was further strengthened when Rita said “You’d like Mr Percival, he’s a lovely jovial man, and I don’t know about you, but I’m rather partial to a full moustache and hairy forearms.”

  I was a bit piqued that I’d had to put up with surly, skinny butcher but despite that, and all the other initial mishaps such as battling with convoluted raw meat recipes, broken sleep and cold feet, not to mention the inference that I was a bag lady, I’d learned from my mistakes, got better at the job, enjoyed some nice time with Colossus and had a bit of ‘me time.’ So the week hadn’t turned out to be so offal after all.