Krista's Care

[daftcat75]

8.1 ounces for 267 calories

And a pumpkin perfect at 3am.

In case you’re curious about what I consider pumpkin perfect, I’m including a picture below. It’s a scratch n sniff picture. Not far off from the truth though. It’s very low odor and well-formed. But it’s plumper than a cat poop should be because of the pumpkin. She manages.

It’s a huge improvement over the puddles and soft serve she’s been having off and on since summer!

 

[tarasgirl06]

8.1 ounces for 267 calories

And a pumpkin perfect at 3am.

In case you’re curious about what I consider pumpkin perfect, I’m including a picture below. It’s a scratch n sniff picture. Not far off from the truth though. It’s very low odor and well-formed. But it’s plumper than a cat poop should be because of the pumpkin. She manages.

It’s a huge improvement over the puddles and soft serve she’s been having off and on since summer!

While some may think it's weird to share photos and descriptions of, uh, pumpkin perfect etc., we understand. Because we know.
We have a favorite food that is almost guaranteed to please even when someone is sick and not wanting to eat. But Tarifa seems recently to be throwing it up, and since it is a salmon formula in gravy, it looks very, very scary. At first I was praying like crazy when I saw this the first time. Since then, knowing it's just regurge, it's not as scary. It just takes a LOT of Nature's Miracle to clean it up completely off of celery shag carpeting (yeah, I know.) or "French Alps" (read: bluish green) carpeting.

 

[daftcat75]

While some may think it's weird to share photos and descriptions of, uh, pumpkin perfect etc., we understand. Because we know.
We have a favorite food that is almost guaranteed to please even when someone is sick and not wanting to eat. But Tarifa seems recently to be throwing it up, and since it is a salmon formula in gravy, it looks very, very scary. At first I was praying like crazy when I saw this the first time. Since then, knowing it's just regurge, it's not as scary. It just takes a LOT of Nature's Miracle to clean it up completely off of celery shag carpeting (yeah, I know.) or "French Alps" (read: bluish green) carpeting.

I have beige carpet with brown flakes. It is pet mess camo.

At least a few times a week I'm zooming in on the cameras, checking out different cameras, and turning the night vision on and off. Second only to the "Where's Krista?" camera game is the "New Mess, Old Mess, or Just the Carpet" game.

 

[daftcat75]

Shoot! I thought we were past the poop issues and poop pukes.

I thought things weren't looking good when she went longer than 8 or 9 hours between poops. That seems like a short time between poops but not for this cat. Not for how much she eats and how much pumpkin is in her diet. The plump pumpkin poop pictured above was on an 8 hour poop schedule. The first poop tonight looked like that. Then she had a sludge after that which could have been its own poop in a few hours if the first one came a few hours earlier.

I have a few theories. But I think it all comes down to she's eating too much or eating too much pumpkin. And if I could get the Rawz turkey off her plate altogether, well, we may not need so much pumpkin. Maybe then I could just mix regular rabbit with rabbit with pumpkin. She can continue to have turkey in her homemade portions.

She won't ever eat enough of just the plain rabbit. I put the three foods in lines for her to see how much and how fast she eats each. She mows down the turkey line first every time. Then it's often a toss-up between the two rabbits. In the feeder portions, she's preferring the rabbit and pumpkin over the frankenrabbit.

Two goals for next week:

1. Get her back under 8 oz a day.
2. Replace frankenrabbit with regular rabbit to reduce the amount of pumpkin she eats

 

[daftcat75]

I discouraged the carpet bombing. She has her tells. But one of her tells is butt scooting.

You've made your case, Krista! We're taking a Christmas staycation next week so I can do some carpet cleaning and flea treatments without you and your little lungs underfoot.

 

[tarasgirl06]

I discouraged the carpet bombing. She has her tells. But one of her tells is butt scooting.

You've made your case, Krista! We're taking a Christmas staycation next week so I can do some carpet cleaning and flea treatments without you and your little lungs underfoot.

Wishing you and Krista a more "stable" staycation!!!

 

[daftcat75]

Final score: 8.1 oz for 270 calories

Our current meal plan is 6.5 oz scheduled with a burst to almost 9 oz. She's been bursting with a healthy cleaning of the feeders. Problem is, she bursts in the litter box because I don't think she's pooping often enough for the amount of food and specifically the amount of pumpkin in her food.

Our new meal plan which I'm sure will take some getting used to on both of our parts is 6 oz scheduled with a burst opportunity of 8 oz. In addition, I'll be working on replacing frankenrabbit (Rawz Rabbit pate with pumpkin puree added) with regular Rawz rabbit. I can cut the rabbit with pumpkin pate with plain rabbit to adjust the pumpkin content in her diet. I will likely also need to remove or reduce the Rawz turkey from her diet to make the pumpkin less necessary as well. We have our work cut out.

And I need to make a new batch of homemade today or tomorrow. With the baggie portion I pulled from the freezer this morning, we have one more left in the freezer. Each baggie is about an ounce and a half and she eats a little more than an ounce a day. She will run out over Christmas if I don't make a new batch before then. I guess I'm trimming turkey thighs today and doing the grinding and mixing tomorrow.

 

[daftcat75]

We hit the giblets jackpot at the grocery store today. Butcher had fresh turkey livers and hearts. At least a couple batches worth of hearts and many more batches worth of livers. I sorted and weighed out individual 1 lbs batch worth of each (75 g hearts and 45 g liver.)

I also picked up turkey two legs for her. I’ll cut up the thighs for as much meat as I can get from them and use the drumsticks to backfill if needed.

We’ll make food tomorrow. I’ll cut up the thighs and legs in the morning and put the chunks in the freezer—the better to grind them in the evening if I don’t want to make pink slime.

 

[daftcat75]

Not a creature was stirring, not even the cat under the bookcase.

 

[Rylka]

I'm jealous of your store selection! I'm still trying to find one that would work for sourcing full turkey homemade and ideally isn't an hour away

 

[daftcat75]

I'm jealous of your store selection! I'm still trying to find one that would work for sourcing full turkey homemade and ideally isn't an hour away

They don’t sell the giblets in the meat case. I have to ask for them. And they don’t always have them. And sometimes they are frozen together like a grab bag of gizzards plus some liver and heart. It’s rare I get as much as I did today, and rarer still that they aren’t frozen. If I can save them one thaw-freeze cycle by not having to thaw them to sort them, that’s going to make a difference in the freshness and flavor for Krista.

And every batch worth of hearts I can get from the butcher, that saves me a 3 hour errand to the raw feeder coop and/or freezer space I really don’t have.

 

[daftcat75]

I'm jealous of your store selection! I'm still trying to find one that would work for sourcing full turkey homemade and ideally isn't an hour away

A decent meat counter probably processes full turkeys into various cuts daily. Talk to the butcher and find out what they do with the giblets. They probably save them in the freezer for those who know to ask for them.

Weston #10 Manual Grinder is a very competent and affordable starter grinder until you’re ready to invest in an electric grinder.

 

[daftcat75]

The air quality monitoring does not distinguish between water vapor and poop vapors. Or dust. It’s simply showing when levels of inhalable particles are elevated. The first spike is my shower around noon. The water vapor from a nice steamy shower counts as an inhalable particle. But that second spike, I can correlate it with the motion detection notification from my Poopcam cameras. I can’t say for sure that’s the poop spike. But I don’t have any other Poopcam notifications and I did come home to one in the box. Realistically, that’s probably the dust cloud she kicks up rather than airborne poop particles themselves.

 

[daftcat75]

Final score: 7.7 oz for 255 calories.

Pumpkin perfect poop at 5am. She seems to be back on a twice a day schedule and that makes us both happy.

Dosing day went well. With tomorrow being an off-day, Krista's Christmas gift will be another Mirtaz wet willy in her ear.

But my early Christmas present was weight gain on the scale. 7.5 lbs!

And she's taking a victory fast under the bookcase. I don't think she's impressed with the plain rabbit. We'll work it out. She'll likely finish most or all of first breakfast before it's time for second breakfast. And if she doesn't, feedings are like buses around here. If she misses one, there's another one coming soon enough.

 

[daftcat75]

And we had a good poop at 9am (5 hours? That's too soon!) Then unsettled behavior. Was she going to carpet bomb first or puke. I managed to get her poop pukes onto the hardwood but she bombed the carpet--a liquid messy one--in the thirty seconds it took me to use the handheld wet vac on the puddle. At least the carpet mess managed to be contained within a Spot Bot's spot. But I feel more bad for Krista than I do for my floors and carpets.

She really hates Mondays!

 

[tarasgirl06]

And we had a good poop at 9am (5 hours? That's too soon!) Then unsettled behavior. Was she going to carpet bomb first or puke. I managed to get her poop pukes onto the hardwood but she bombed the carpet--a liquid messy one--in the thirty seconds it took me to use the handheld wet vac on the puddle. At least the carpet mess managed to be contained within a Spot Bot's spot. But I feel more bad for Krista than I do for my floors and carpets.

She really hates Mondays!

There are a few foods that, when I feed, I always ask them to eat slowly so they don't puke it right back up. Of course, I fed one of them today and of course, Elvis regurged right on schedule. Oh, well, he's a little overweight anyway.

As for weight gaining, I haven't weighed, but think I'm probably a little more prosperous due to all the FOOD around here with my roomies showering me with delicacies -- huge Korean pears and apples, chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, and one of my favorite things, kake no tani (Japanese rice crackers, in wasabi -- horseradish -- and hot chili flavors, my favorites). I cut myself some slack around this time of year anyway, though -- it's expected!

 

[daftcat75]

Because my carpet is pet mess camo, I sometimes set down the paper towel roll near the spot so I know how to find it once I've grabbed up the solids and left it to soak in enzymes. Well, this time I must have set the roll on the spot. In true paper towel fashion, it started drinking up the liquid...vertically! I have a mostly unused paper towel roll that now smells vaguely of cat poop and there's no unwinding it and throwing out the smelly sheets. They are all smelly now. Doh! I guess I'm tossing that and getting a new one.

It was a runny poop. I ran the bot twice. Now I'm letting some enzyme stuff do the long soak now. This is the good stuff. The unscented kind. I now know why I couldn't find it last time. It is made specially for Pet Food Express which wasn't anywhere near Krista's dentist and the hotel when I picked up the other stuff.

I got about a 1 lbs and a half of thigh meat off those two legs. I also realize I just don't understand butchering turkey drumsticks vs thighs. The drumsticks have these tiny bone-like structures I don't understand. Are they tiny bones? Feather quills? Cartilage? It's challenging for me to find good pieces and they look tougher than the thigh meat. So I left most of the meat on the drumsticks as I have enough from the thighs. The drumsticks will go into the Instant Pot some other time to produce cooked meat and stock. Though I still have plenty of stock from the last time.

Krista got her sashimi portion. She's been restless and probably a little hungry since the morning poop pukes. I don't know what percentage she retained. But her second breakfast plate is pretty much clean with at least another hour and a half until first feeder. I'm thinking I'll give her an extra quarter ounce (7 grams) to tie her over until that first feeder opens.

Soon I leave her for the afternoon. When I return in the evening, I'll get her first dinner plated. Then I will bust out the grinder (whose auger, blade, and plate are chilling in the freezer now) and the supplements and make her next batch of food.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Because my carpet is pet mess camo, I sometimes set down the paper towel roll near the spot so I know how to find it once I've grabbed up the solids and left it to soak in enzymes. Well, this time I must have set the roll on the spot. In true paper towel fashion, it started drinking up the liquid...vertically! I have a mostly unused paper towel roll that now smells vaguely of cat poop and there's no unwinding it and throwing out the smelly sheets. They are all smelly now. Doh! I guess I'm tossing that and getting a new one.

It was a runny poop. I ran the bot twice. Now I'm letting some enzyme stuff do the long soak now. This is the good stuff. The unscented kind. I now know why I couldn't find it last time. It is made specially for Pet Food Express which wasn't anywhere near Krista's dentist and the hotel when I picked up the other stuff.

I got about a 1 lbs and a half of thigh meat off those two legs. I also realize I just don't understand butchering turkey drumsticks vs thighs. The drumsticks have these tiny bone-like structures I don't understand. Are they tiny bones? Feather quills? Cartilage? It's challenging for me to find good pieces and they look tougher than the thigh meat. So I left most of the meat on the drumsticks as I have enough from the thighs. The drumsticks will go into the Instant Pot some other time to produce cooked meat and stock. Though I still have plenty of stock from the last time.

Krista got her sashimi portion. She's been restless and probably a little hungry since the morning poop pukes. I don't know what percentage she retained. But her second breakfast plate is pretty much clean with at least another hour and a half until first feeder. I'm thinking I'll give her an extra quarter ounce (7 grams) to tie her over until that first feeder opens.

Soon I leave her for the afternoon. When I return in the evening, I'll get her first dinner plated. Then I will bust out the grinder (whose auger, blade, and plate are chilling in the freezer now) and the supplements and make her next batch of food.

Well, if you happen to have a very sharp sword around you could always give that roll a chop But otherwise, I guess file it in the "Life Lessons Learned" file...
Good luck for the rest of the day, and in food prep/service!

 

[daftcat75]

I was feeling pretty good about this new batch I made. Start to finish, this batch ran smoother than any before it.

Krista even approved of her fresh portion.

I packaged 22 individual daily portions of approximately 36 grams each into snack baggies. Placed a date sticker on each baggie and all portions into a larger freezer bag and into the freezer it all went. Smooth operation we have here.

And after I put everything away and cleaned everything else, I broke down the grinder to clean it.

I found probably about half the liver portion spun around like pink slime and never cut through. I estimate rather than being 10% liver content, closer to 2-5% liver cut through instead.

This is one reason why homemade remains a minority portion in her diet. Still learning. She loves her homemade portions, though. It remains her favorite meals of the day even if she's only getting 1/4 portion. Homemade makes her sing and dance and show up for her meals like canned does not.

 

[daftcat75]

We could be in for an eventful staycation. Another good poop. A pudding poop. And a poop puke.