It's not a cat's market.
Caustic Soda
available. The people who make cat food are obviously
directing their marketing campaigns at me rather than
my cat. What else could it be while the featured flavors
are things like, savory salmon, chef's chicken and
tender tuna? If the stuff were marketed at cats, it would
come in flavors such as sparrow, moth and mouse.
I know, the cat is not carrying a Mastercard. So, it
might make sense to me except that I want to give the
cat foods he would enjoy eating.
Vince Barmann
Are YOU going to taste-test Mouseburger Melange cat food?
Vince B.
PS. Mouse milk is has one of the highest butterfat content. But you
need a reeeeeealy tiny stool to get it.
nenslo
My cat really enjoys eating food shaped like hearts and stars.
Caustic Soda
"Vince Barmann" <vbarMyFi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:MUjoc.2870$zO3....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Are YOU going to taste-test Mouseburger Melange cat food?
>
> Vince B.
>
> PS. Mouse milk is has one of the highest butterfat content. But you
> need a reeeeeealy tiny stool to get it.
>
>
I ate parts of a horse, but his name was not Melange. I even ate some
stray road kill deer. I never ate a mouse, but I'm assuming that a
mouse raised in captivity by humans and fed good foods like rice and
oats instead of trash and garbage might be tasty and come without
heavy risk of disease. Moths don't eat anything at all, except in the
larvea/caterpillar phase. They don't get greasey/filthy like other bugs
do. I don't think they would be tasty so, I don't eat them. But my Lille
Katt jumps at every chance to eat one. A sparrow is in the bird family
like turkeys and chickens but they just don't have enough meat to make
it worth my effort to cook them. They are just right for cats because,
when you consider size comparison, a sparrow is as big and fat as
any turkey in a cat's eyes.
Caustic Soda
"nenslo" <nen...@yahoox.com> wrote in message
news:40A1CDF1...@yahoox.com...
> My cat really enjoys eating food shaped like hearts and stars.
Do you describe meat hearts or valentines? Meat hearts
would appeal to almost any carnivore such as cats are.
Valentines only appeal to humans because of the implied
symbolism of love and acceptance. Cats don't read.
Belanger
>They are just right for cats because,
>when you consider size comparison, a sparrow is as big and fat as
>any turkey in a cat's eyes.
I should suppose that the turkey has not outgrown its container.
Therefore, a sparrow is no larger than a cat's eye.
BELANGER
P.S.
How did you get the turkey in there, anyway? I've heard of hatching a
duck egg inside a bottle and later drinking it, but considering the
average size of a turkey egg, I.d say you must have injected the
zygote directly.
--
BELANGER
Be seeing you...
Vince Barmann
Funny you should say that. When working at a granary once a pet food
rep told me that cats really like dry food that has little knobbly bits,
like stars, crosses, etc. Maybe it simulates "nibblin on dem tiny feets"
Vince B.
Belanger
>"nenslo" <nen...@yahoox.com> wrote in message
>news:40A1CDF1...@yahoox.com...
>
>> My cat really enjoys eating food shaped like hearts and stars.
>
>Do you describe meat hearts or valentines? Meat hearts
>would appeal to almost any carnivore such as cats are.
I'm not sure whether the cat would recognise the shape of a meat heart
in its kibble anyway, since they usually swallow mice whole.
Similarly, I've got my doubts whether the cat would recognise a "star"
shape as resembling a star. Any self-respecting cat would know that a
star is shaped roughly like a sphere, and not like a so-called
"starfish". I believe that if a cat were to try to eat one of those
it would end up with a solaster stuck to its face and/or a belly full
of poison.
Caustic Soda
"Belanger" <ready_fig...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:45m4a0lj1958bi1mj...@4ax.com...
Perhaps "eye" is a miscommunication on my part. How about some
fancier verbage such as "in a cat's visual perspective"?
edens morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Vince Barmann <vbarMyFi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
lucky charms
moons
clovers
stars
its tunaishly delicious
Vince Barmann
I first read that as "muons". "Lucky charms, now with marshmallow
muons" I'd buy it.
Vince B.
("Find the intermediate boson in this picture. Color it red")
edens morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Vince Barmann <vbarMyFi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
thats quarky charmed
nikolai kingsley
> A sparrow is in the bird family
> like turkeys and chickens but they just don't have enough meat to make
> it worth my effort to cook them.
Dystopia. That was the word I've been trying to remember all week. Stories
about the future are traditionally divided into happy stories (where
everyone lived in an idealised perfect society - Utopia - ) and the other
kind, where the writer wanted to, say, make a point about how crap Socialism
was (Orwell, "1984"), or how dangerous genetic engineering was (Huxley,
"Brave New World") or, in what was called the "eco-thriller", how mother
nature would fuck you over if you didn't recycle your plastic bags.
Well, here we are living in the future, and they were all wrong; things just
got weird and dumb. Example: where I live you can still buy insecticide,
household cleansers, toilet paper, light bulbs, diet Pepsi, Mills and Boone
romance novels and those little cylinders filled with nitrous oxide that
give you a ten-second buzz. There is still free-to-air television, internet
access, electricity (some of the time), social security and sanitation. The
only things we don't have are jobs and food. Everyone I know is on the dole
and spending most of it on rent; the climate is fucked up to the point where
winter lasts all year and the only thing that's edible in the shops is rice,
and you'd better stock up on that when they have it. Incredible! We're
living in the twenty-first fucking century and we're eating the same food as
third-world peons in Cambodia, except they also had fish.
All the little bakeries, the fast-food places, the pizzerias, fish shops,
restaurants and the fruit-and-veg shops; they all of them closed over a
period of two years. They didn't have anything to sell. Some of the
supermarkets are still going, but shopping in them is like a trip back in
time to the Soviet Union circa 1975. They still have the shelves where they
used to stock food; they just don't have anything to put on them. There are
huge shopping malls in some suburbs that sell real food, I've heard, but you
need a couple of hundred bucks before they'll even let you park outside.
There was a minor media thing when a gang of starving unemployed tried to
rush the security guards. Some of the dolies were beaten to death, but
people forgot about it after the next big aircraft explosion. Maybe there's
something about a low protein diet that gives people the attention span of a
goldfish.
Mmm... fried goldfish.
Once some friends of mine drove up to the country because they'd heard that
farmers had cows and sheep. They were going to kill some, bring them back to
the suburbs and sell the meat (there's that low-protein-diet thinking again;
what they really wanted to do was bring them back *then* kill them). They
said they drove around for four days and didn't see a living thing more
advanced than a tree. Most of us have already tried eating leaves. They're
not very tasty. Or filling. Or nutritious.
There were still stray rats, cats, dogs and possums, but anything still
living out here in the suburbs was too smart to be trapped. The cats
survived by eating crows and possums. Packs of dogs fed on cats, crows and
possums. Occasionally a dog would be killed in a fight and, after the pack
had eaten all the good bits, dozens of crows would come descend in a
coal-black wave and peck at what was left. Fuck knows what the possums ate.
This is where I decided to step in, with my next door neighbor Jade The Mad
Bitch. She's a slat-thin goth who actually likes living out here because the
supermarkets still sell cough syrup and vodka. She has the kind of
metabolism which allows her to get by on one meal a week. Me, I'm descended
from hearty Polish peasant stock, and occasionally I need to eat meat. When
I woke Jade out of her hibernation and told her what I had in mind, she
sneered, "Oh, right. you'll eat crow, but you won't eat dog."
"I can pretend that crows are just evil chickens. I can't make dog seem like
anything except dog. And don't dogs carry rabies?"
"Don't crows?"
"No, that's *bats*. You with me on this or not? Think of the feathers, Jade.
Lots of black feathers." That got her in. "Here's the plan. We go down to
the park, find some crows - "
"- the collective noun for 'crows' is a 'murder' -"
" - I know. Okay. Right. We find a murder of crows, toss a weighted nylon
gill-net over them and if we trap any, we club them to death with a shovel."
"Sounds like a plan. Not much of a plan, but it's a plan. It's been a long
time since I had any fried chicken."
---
It worked, more or less. We managed to trap four crows, big turkey-sized
fuckers too full of raw dog (I tried not to think about that) to get away.
They hung on to life, I'll give them that, and they weren't at all
intimidated by mammals twenty times bigger than them. What finally stopped
them wasn't so much a shovel over the back of the head, as a shovel through
the neck. Jade wanted to keep the heads, and I let her. When we'd thrown the
net over them their eyes had been glittering pale emeralds. Within quarter
of an hour the eyes were the colour of dried snot, and she lost interest in
the heads.
So there we were, fifteen minutes later, in my living room, with four
headless crows. They were bigger than the chickens I remembered from the
take-aways, but part of that was the memory of how viciously they'd fought
back after we'd netted them.
I looked at the crows. I looked at Jade. She looked at me. I looked at the
crows again.
"Well?" she said.
"Well. I've never cooked crow before. I do know, from reading the Furry
Freak Brothers, that you have to pull the insides out first."
She stared at me. "You know... 'What did you stuff the turkey with?' 'I
didn't have to stuff it - it was already full.'"
Jade rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I'll prepare them."
Since the power was out, we built a bonfire on the vacant lot where one of
the units had partly burned down last year. There were still many
goodly-sized pieces of wood to hand; I siphoned a cup of petrol from my car
to get it going. It was quite festive. We sat down next to the blazing heap
of wood and pulled feathers out of dead crows. We had to use pliers.
Jade wanted to leave their feet on. "Here. These two are *yours*, and these
two are *mine*." I used the pliers to cut through the legs about two inches
from the claws (the tendons snapped and withdrew into the withered flesh),
tossed the feet onto the fire where they clutched at the coals and smelled
like death.
"Jesus, that's teddible."
Jade grinned. "You think *that's* bad?" She threw a handful of feathers onto
the fire. They ignited and spiralled up with the hot air. Thankfully most of
the stench rose with them. I couldn't decide if it was more like rotting dog
carcasses or septic sewage. A little of both, perhaps, with a touch of
sulphur. Remembering the archetypal Priest's Speech On Hell from James
Joyce, I thought this is what hell would smell like, all the time.
I held one of the naked birds up to the firelight. "Are they supposed to be
this colour?" I wondered. "I don't remember food ever being quite that shade
of grey."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, we're eating *crow*. Don't be so fucking fussy." She
laid the largest specimen on its back on a sheet of plywood, whipped out her
goth dagger and sliced it open from the ragged neck-stump down to its
asshole. There was... stuff inside. I pretended not to be repelled. She
grabbed a handfull of the stuff, pulled and sliced through pale membranes.
She held up a cupped hand, smeared with blood, filled with... uh, stuff.
"Please, don't throw that on the - " Of course, that's where she threw it.
It hissed and started to burn. "Oh, fuck." The smell got worse.
She wiped her hand on the yellowed, dying grass. "Where the hell did you
think I was going to put it?" I can only suppose she was trying to cheer me
up by holding the crow carcass by its wing-tips and making it dance.
"Doobley-doobley doo," she pantomimed.
"You're not helping," I muttered, casting about for a wooden spar to mount
the thing on. She made the bird dance a can-can, its claws clattering on the
plywood, before impaling it on a section of aluminium window-frame and
arranging it over the flames. What had been tiny puckered dimples in the
chicken flesh from my memory was, in plucked crow, ragged holes with slivers
of feather-horn sticking out here and there. After a few moments we realised
it wasn't going to cook dangling over the flames, so I pushed it into the
coals. Jade eviscerated the next bird while I went through my collection of
spices; the sorts of things you accumulate over the years because you never
find a use for them. Ground nutmeg? Garlic and coriander? Maple syrup?
Chicken salt! Yes. I pulled the bird from the fire, sprinkled, and put it
back. The flames flared sodium-yellow.
I felt I was losing face by my reservedness, so I offered to gut the
remaining two. I laid the bird on its back, held it gingerly by one wing-tip
and sawed at the breastbone with a serrated-edged kitchen knife that had
once sliced bread, when we'd had bread to slice. The skin parted. The blade
went in easily.
"You don't want to cut the insides into sections," Jade cautioned. "or
you'll be forever getting it all out. Just open the body, peel it back..."
It didn't want to open neatly; it was all held together by a sticky, stringy
mesentery which was tougher than the skin. I managed to seperate the two
with some success, then I reached in with my eyes closed. It was still warm;
the internal stuff had an unpleasantly grainy feel, as if the bird had been
eating gravel. "That's it," Jade enthused, "give it a good squeeze and then
pull."
Which I did. And, of course, it came apart in my fingers. I gulped, grasped
the sticky wetness a little more firmly and tugged again. Pieces of it came
out. With my eyes still closed, I threw the insides onto the fire. When I
opened my eyes, I saw the guts had landed on top of the bird roasting in the
coals.
"I'm not very good at this," I decided.
---
We experimented with a couple of different cooking systems; the one that I
feel worked the best was the Crow Wrapped In Wire and Burned to Buggery. The
Spit-Roasted Crow kept falling off its spit; not enough meat to hold it on.
I elected to wait until the meat had turned black, burning my fingers on the
wire as I unwound it. I pinned the carcass to the plywood with the bread
knife and pulled on a drumstick. Then I pulled some more. Then I decided it
wasn't done yet and held it in the coals, dangling from the knife, until
enough flesh had been burned through to allow the leg to part from the
torso.
She was waiting for me to try it first. Well, if I hadn't impressed her with
my crow-gutting skills, I would dazzle her with my reckless crow-eating. I
sniffed the ragged end; it didn't smell like chicken. At least it didn't
smell like burning crow's feet. My tongue found a small piece that had
looked a bit like chicken; I took it in my teeth, pulled, chewed. It tasted
of wood smoke and chicken salt, with a faint hint of petrol. It was greasy
and flaked with ash, but it was *way* better than rice.
Jade added some chicken salt to the smoking crow on a stick, then buried her
teeth in blackened flesh. She chewed enthusiastically. "No'bad. 'Specially
with salt. After all," she added, a mad glint in her eyes, several crow's
feathers poking from her hair at odd angles and soot smeared across her
cheek, "we aren't savages."
---
We ate all four of them and washed them down with cough syrup and vodka.
We're going back to catch some more tomorrow.
nikolai
--
mm-mm good.
Ace Lightning
>We ate all four of them and washed them down with cough syrup and vodka.
>We're going back to catch some more tomorrow.
Ho Lee Fuk.
FTSD came early this year.
Kent Paul Dolan
> We ate all four of them and washed them down with
> cough syrup and vodka.
> We're going back to catch some more tomorrow.
I just wish, this once, that I had some way to
guess if that were a work of fiction or unvarnished
fact. Considering all the parties and the current
state of the climate and the economy of Oz, I'm
more inclined toward "autobiography" than "free
lance fiction".(*)
xanthian headed into the hills for a hike to about
the 10,000 foot level Friday, if we can get by the
snow line safely.
(*) Especially since Kate Orman's email address
mysteriously stopped working for me this week; I
sort of envision Oz crumbling around the edges
like a stale pie crust gone astray from its pie,
the whole going into the sea crumb by crumb to
refurbish the Great Barrier Reef, until only
Ayer's Rock remains.
Here's a lady who seems to have gone outside the
city limits to capture her meal:
http://www.photo.net/philg/digiphotos/200008-townsville/eve-holding-koala-1.half.jpg
Perhaps she had no taste for crow cuisine?
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Bob Bain
<xant...@well.com> wrote in message id
<afe5cf177a6ce615738...@mygate.mailgate.org>:
>I sort of envision Oz crumbling around the edges
>like a stale pie crust gone astray from its pie,
>the whole going into the sea crumb by crumb to
>refurbish the Great Barrier Reef, until only
>Ayer's Rock remains.
And Tasmania.
Don't forget Tasmania.
Belanger
>Here's a lady who seems to have gone outside the
>city limits to capture her meal:
>
>http://www.photo.net/philg/digiphotos/200008-townsville/eve-holding-koala-1.half.jpg
No way, man. This is the future, all right, and the dystopia is here.
"Gastrocephalus Australiense -- Bipedal mammal found in Australia.
Feeds on eucalyptus leaves and small birds...
"...the first specimen spotted in an auxiliary tunnel of a diamond
mine in the Australian outback in May 1978. Mine was closed in July
1978, following a series of mysterious accidents. Since then, more
and more specimens have been spotted across the continent, reaching an
estimated hundred thousand in 1995...
"...used the suction cups and the prehensile forelimbs to attach
itself to the front of the deer. The eggs were inserted through a
hole bored in the host's chest with powerful stomach acids ... within
minutes, the deer's brain was consumed and replaced by an organ not
known to modern biochemistry. The deer continued to function as
normal ... the withered husk released its clamps and fell off within
one hour ... life cycle requires more study...
"In late 2003, Australian parliament unanimously declared
Gastrocephalus Australiense an endangered and protected species ...
referred to it as 'the world's most important and lovable entity'."
Obstetrics Paladin
> http://www.photo.net/philg/digiphotos/200008-townsville/eve-holding-koala-1.half.jpg
Oddly, this is an image of my CS110 instructor holding a koala. It's a
small world, I guess.
OP
Ace Lightning
>(*) Especially since Kate Orman's email address
>mysteriously stopped working for me this week; I
>sort of envision Oz crumbling around the edges
>like a stale pie crust gone astray from its pie,
>the whole going into the sea crumb by crumb to
>refurbish the Great Barrier Reef, until only
>Ayer's Rock remains.
well, if Kate's location crumbled into the sea,
nikolai's would be gone too. since he's still
posting, it hasn't. Q.E.D.
nikolai kingsley
the water's up to my knees. i had to unplug the fuse for the power points
and run my pc from the light sockets.
nikolai
--
expecting sharks any day now
Ace Lightning
>>well, if Kate's location crumbled into the sea,
>>nikolai's would be gone too. since he's still
>>posting, it hasn't. Q.E.D.
>the water's up to my knees. i had to unplug the fuse for the power points
>and run my pc from the light sockets.
{insert "Jaws" music here...}
nikolai kingsley
> >expecting sharks any day now
>
> {insert "Jaws" music here...}
hell, yes! them sharks is good eatin'.
nikolai
--
shark on toast for breakfast.
Ace Lightning
>>>expecting sharks any day now
>>{insert "Jaws" music here...}
>hell, yes! them sharks is good eatin'.
then you'd be a... (wait for it...)
Man Eating Shark.
Kate Orman
> (*) Especially since Kate Orman's email address
> mysteriously stopped working for me this week; I
> sort of envision Oz crumbling around the edges
> like a stale pie crust gone astray from its pie,
> the whole going into the sea crumb by crumb to
> refurbish the Great Barrier Reef, until only
> Ayer's Rock remains.
Still here - I finally jumped ship from Pacific Internet after they
inexplicably stopped hosting Kate's Feminism Page (which also buggered
up my mails from Ebay), ignored my pleas to do anything about it, and
generally acted like clowns. I've lost trn and I'm still trying to
find a new newsreader.
In Midnight Oil's video "The Power and the Passion", Uluru is
transformed into a Big Mac.
- Kate
nikolai kingsley
> In Midnight Oil's video "The Power and the Passion", Uluru is
> transformed into a Big Mac.
deconstruct this, please.
nikolai
--
control-alt-left-shift-meta-bucky-bugger.
- me
cantueso
How about some
> fancier verbage such as "in a cat's visual perspective"?
I think that is a pleonasm. perspectives are always visual. but do you know what:
my cat likes zucchini. this is not a joke.
cantueso
> Valentines only appeal to humans because of the implied
> symbolism of love and acceptance. Cats don't read.
cats don't read! maybe there is too much Updike crap in your library.
get better things.
Ace Lightning
>Still here - I finally jumped ship from Pacific Internet after they
>inexplicably stopped hosting Kate's Feminism Page (which also buggered
>up my mails from Ebay), ignored my pleas to do anything about it, and
>generally acted like clowns. I've lost trn and I'm still trying to
>find a new newsreader.
well, it's a great relief to find that you have *not*
been kidnapped by UFO-borne aliens who have an inexplicable
passion for performing medical experiments of a sexual
nature upon humans.
>In Midnight Oil's video "The Power and the Passion", Uluru is
>transformed into a Big Mac.
from what i know of Midnight Oil, i'm not at all surprised.
Kate Orman
> well, it's a great relief to find that you have *not*
> been kidnapped by UFO-borne aliens who have an inexplicable
> passion for performing medical experiments of a sexual
> nature upon humans.
Actually I kind of have, but we won't go into that here.
- Kate
Shotgun Squad
news:3a20ff96.04051...@posting.google.com...
That's right. Kate will only be telling her closest friends. She brought it
up to show you that she has SECRETS from you. I will act as a portal to
present a less sensitive version of events, if you wish to contact me.
--A licensed Kate Orman representative.
--
People start thinking about a better time
When shotgun squads kept the people in line
Vigilantes walking the streets with a gun
Is said the real way that the West was won
Scott Dorsey
Those are Canadians, and they are not UFO-borne.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Kent Paul Dolan
> Ace Lightning <ace.li...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> well, it's a great relief to find that you have *not*
>> been kidnapped by UFO-borne aliens who have an inexplicable
>> passion for performing medical experiments of a sexual
>> nature upon humans.
Hmm, but if Kate hasn't been consumed in the wholesale
de-pie-crust-ification of Oz, or nabbed by the alien
perpetrators...
> Actually I kind of have, but we won't go into that here.
If that beast is having his husbandly way with your during
"Best of Dr. Who" specials again, interrupting your note
taking for your next novel, send him packing back to
Arcturus, or wherever.
However, I've discovered an alternative scientific explanation
for the sudden Silence of the Aussies(*):
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/EnvironmentMadden/environmentCartoonGIFS/ship%20of%20fools.jpg
which would confirm nikolai's reports of higher than usual
water levels and more primitive than usual diets.
[Of course, science being science, for every reasonable explanation
such as the one given by the link above for rising water levels,
there is an unreasonable explanation:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=5167002
to bite it on the backside.]
xanthian.
(*) via links:
http://www.idrink.com/indexnew.htm
http://www.cartoon.com/?show=cartoons
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/EnvironmentMadden/main.asp
[Okay, I _might_ have come back from the Cheap Eats store with
a giant economy-sized can of coconut nectar; stifle it.]
Kate Orman
> Those are Canadians, and they are not UFO-borne.
The aliens deliver them nasally. By Sneezarian section.
- Kate
nenslo
>
> "Caustic Soda" <me...@noneofyourbeeswax.org> wrote:
>
> >"nenslo" <nen...@yahoox.com> wrote in message
> >news:40A1CDF1...@yahoox.com...
> >
> >> My cat really enjoys eating food shaped like hearts and stars.
> >
> >would appeal to almost any carnivore such as cats are.
>
> I'm not sure whether the cat would recognise the shape of a meat heart
> in its kibble anyway, since they usually swallow mice whole.
>
> Similarly, I've got my doubts whether the cat would recognise a "star"
> shape as resembling a star. Any self-respecting cat would know that a
> star is shaped roughly like a sphere, and not like a so-called
> "starfish". I believe that if a cat were to try to eat one of those
> it would end up with a solaster stuck to its face and/or a belly full
> of poison.
>
My cat likes the HEART SHAPED and STAR SHAPED foods. That's all. It's
not like he puts a lot of thought into it. He also liked some of the
snack foods shaped like a drawing of a mouse.
Jo
NoNews