It was a week of reckoning for Ripley. Last Thursday she went in for her annual vet visit, which, among other things, involves getting weighed (if you don’t quite recall, Ripley broke our home scale a week into her diet and we’ve had no way to measure her success). After seven weeks of eating right and exercising, Ripley has dropped from 22 pounds down to 15 pounds. She has practically shed a cat’s worth of weight.
Also at her vet visit, Ripley got her annual lion buzz cut – since she has so much fur and is overweight, she has trouble grooming herself if we don’t help out. Not only is her lion cut absolutely the most hilarious thing we’ve ever seen (it looks like she’s wearing those tacky shaggy 70s boots on her paws and has a pom-pom glued to her tail) but it also showed us how well Rips is progressing – her belly is much, much smaller than last year and she now has an empty little pouch where it used to be.
Sure, the early morning kitty alarm has been trying for both humans and kitty and sure, Ripley has probably spent many long, hungry nights scraping by on whatever cockroaches she could catch, but it’s all worth it for how much healthier she’s looking and acting. Anyone who thinks that their obese pet is too cute and cuddly to alter should see what a wonderfully changed and energetic kitty Rips is today.
Also this week Ripley received an important missive from fellow kitty Tiger Harris, of Des Moines. Tiger informed us that there was a free kitty toy even better than milk tabs: milk rings. Tiger, who sounds very learned and dignified, writes in part:
Unlike the discontinuous tab-based milk cap holder, the milk ring rolls and bounces seemingly of its own accord. Moreover, the ring is suitable for holding around one’s front leg and chewing on vigorously.
Please find enclosed four such milk rings. While I have matured beyond the need for such a large supply of milk rings, I am delighted to share the wisdom of my experience. Play with them in good health.
Just as Tiger wrote, Ripley did prefer the milk rings to the milk tabs – they bounce and move better. And, unlike the milk tabs, Ripley will play with them on her own throughout the day without our having to throw one across the kitchen floor every once and a while. Not only that, but Ripley seemed comforted to know that kitties across the country are rooting for her continued success.
Ripley: Cat on a Diet (Week 5)
Ripley: Cat on a Diet (Week 4)
Ripley: Cat on a Diet (Week 3)
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November 2, 2007 at 11:26 am
meetzorp
Do you have two cats, or only just the one?
I’ve got two, one of whom needs a reducing diet, the other of whom does not. Trying to juggle their respective food needs is getting to be a real pain in the butt!
Congratulations on Ripley’s healthful transformation. She must have been utterly spherical to begin with!
November 2, 2007 at 1:44 pm
verdeverdad
Ha, milk rings! My mom once spent $5 or something on flimsy little circle shaped toys that were pretty much nothing but milk rings for her cat. I pointed out that she could just toss the milk rings on the floor and not have to pay money for them but my stepdad kept picking them up and tossing them in the garbage.
November 2, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Nathan Williams
That has to be the only real benefit to paying money for cat toys: you don’t have to convince yourself that it’s okay to have trash on the floor all the time. But really, a decorating scheme based on milk rings and old catalogs is no stranger than the act of keeping an animal in the house and letting it poop in a box in the closet, right?
November 8, 2007 at 1:59 am
Ripley: Cat on a Diet (Week 8) « BROOD
[...] Read the last installment of Ripley: Cat on a Diet [...]
November 13, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Amy
Way to go, Sarah. HoRo pretty much had the same dramatic weight loss, although it’s true, somehow the long hair made Ripley a little more dramatic looking…
Other good toys: beer bottle caps (you gotta toss them to get them started, but they slide really easily across hardwood and make obnoxious sounds!) and the little plastic pull tabs inside those milk and orange juice containers (you know, the modern version of the cardboard boxes with the little handy spout; the pull tab is similar to milk tabs but bounces even more unpredictably!). P.S. I love your blog. And now I have months’ worth of reading to catch up with. 