Let Them Eat People Food!

I share my food with my cat, and I think it's the right thing to do. I sincerely cannot stand when people tell me that they don't give their pets "people food." The only thing that I define as people food is processed, shelf-stable, fortified junk that people shouldn't eat, anyway. All animals, including us, deserve to eat fresh, healthy food. Whether there is enough to go around or not is moot in my opinion, because the majority of us here in the States are stuffing ourselves while our dogs sit, quivering and drooling, staring at us as we lick the bacon fat and egg yolk off our plates, or worse, as we throw away perfectly good scraps right in front of them.

Most people justify their choice to feed their pets only processed, shelf-stable, petrified, byproduct animal slurry compressed with corn, gluten, or other filler grains foreign to their digestive systems because it's easy, cheap, and they don't want their pets to beg at the table (like the rest of us). Domestic animals must know their place, and that is by their food bowls, eating crunchy bits of tasteless and nutritionally devoid junk food. Why not every once in awhile put those meat scraps in the fridge and mix them in with your animal's kibble when it's time for them to eat? Take one forkful of tuna out of that can and put it in your pet's dish when you're making your own tuna melt.

Stop wondering why dogs and cats get fat and smelly and itchy and cancerous when they don't have to, and start feeding them real food, even if only occasionally. Of course they want your food more than their own--because it's actually food. All of us animals evolved eating what was available in our immediate environments, or what we could hunt down and kill. We grew stronger, smarter, and faster eating plants, roots, berries, eggs, meats. Every species diet is slightly to vastly different, but pet food is still a humanmade product. Even humanmade (processed) food made for us is killing us, and we have a multitude of choices, unlike our animals. We are becoming weaker, softer, and dumber than our predecessors because of our certainty that easier food is just better, and that's simply not the case. Not for us, and not for our beloved animals.

Do I expect you to start preparing every meal for your pet, even if you don't prepare the majority of your own meals? Hardly. I certainly don't (though I feel guilty most days about that). But why not give your dog a carrot or some raw cabbage mixed in with her crunchies? Why not throw your cat some chicken or raw fish when you have it around? It's not like you're starving (and if you are, stop reading this blog right now and go dumpster diving ASAP).

With cats it's a little more complicated, because often if they've been eating kibble all of their lives they don't know what to do with anything else, even just another brand of kibble. So start small, and mix it in. Know for yourself that even if they don't know it's better for them (and of course tastes far better) that they will ultimately benefit from it. A commonly cited experiment is one in which cats were fed only cooked food, but the experiment had to end early because by the third generation none of the cats could successfully reproduce. There are flaws within the study (see Pottenger's Cats) but it's hard to deny that the vast majority of our housecats come from strays that had access to a rodent diet, and then (I HOPE) we neuter or spay them, anyway. There are books out there with recipes for nutritionally correct meals for both cats and dogs, but to keep it simple, just add a little meat to your carnivorous cat's diet whenever you have some to spare. Research what not to feed them and what's good for them, and seek out multiple opinions.

Dogs are more suited to an omnivorous diet, but there are some things you shouldn't share with them, like grapes (can cause renal failure), eggs, avocados, nuts, dairy products, et cetera, but just like humans, they need fresh vegetables and quality protein. If you want your animals to live long, active, and disease-free lives, treat them as you would yourself were you to be concerned with the same thing (and you should be). The dry and wet food you feed your pets should be grain-free whenever possible, i.e. no corn, wheat, barley, etc, as well as free of soy, any kind of byproduct (often simply cartilage, bone, lungs, spleen, even cancerous tumors, essentially all "meat" deemed unfit for human consumption), and brewer's rice. Know that by choosing to feed your pet packaged food without these fillers that your pet will require less to eat overall (plus, as a side benefit, they will poop less since more of their food is usable), so the extra dollars that higher-quality food costs is an investment that immediately pays off as well as benefits your wallet long-term in fewer vet bills--though, of course, if you have your pet around a few more years you'll have to feed them then, too...

Remember that we live in a nation of fat, malnourished human beings. This is only possible because we have access to cheap, fast and easy food that is virtually empty of nutritional value. Our bodies are starving because they need nutrition and we are giving them unhealthy, rancid fats, sugars, grains, and processed food instead. Don't fall into this trap, and don't throw your animals into it even as you decide to save yourself.

The Neighbor

I have stuck my head out the window to place myself in the sun for the first time in this long lazy day. It’s almost 5:30pm, and Carsten hasn’t made it home yet from work.

Hey. There he is again, the man I met last week, on the brick patio next door in a green plastic chair at a green plastic table, staring at the hedge in front of him. I lean out further and smile thinking about how funny our last encounter was. I have to say something.

Wait. No, I don’t. I walk away from the window after a minute. I don’t know if I want him to look up and find me smiling down at him. Danes are different than people at home. They’re closed and quiet and they don’t look at you on the street. But then I walk back and lean out the window again. I’m bored and have been in front of the computer all day.

Hey, Ken, I say out loud.

He looks up from the beer he has both hands wrapped around.

Hello.

How are you? I say.

Just fine, thanks.

For some reason his English over-enunciation makes me laugh to myself. It’s as if he’s seen someone say this in a movie and he’s trying it out for the first time. He’s looking for something else to say, I can tell, but doesn’t know what.

No. I’m lying, he says next.

You are? What’s wrong?

My mother died.

Oh no. I’m so sorry. When? Today?

I didn’t know what else to say. I said to myself, of course not today, you dumbass.

Two weeks ago. She had Parkinson’s, you know, that stuff. Alzheimer’s, too.

Wow. That’s not a good way to go.

No.

A few minutes earlier I had read about a music conductor and his wife who went to an assisted suicide clinic to die together. She had terminal cancer in her late 70’s and he was about 85, I think. They held hands on the beds next to each other and went to sleep together, never to wake up. To me, it sounded almost like the perfect way to go.

He stands up and walks to the gate so I can hear him better over the noise from the cars on the adjacent road.

She was still very much alive, still working in the garden most days, still tending the roses. Not all there all the time, of course, but you know . . .

Oh, I walk by those roses a lot. They don’t really smell like anything, though. Hold on, I’m coming down.

I do walk by those roses a lot, and every time I would smell each kind within my reach, and none of them smelled like anything. I pull some pants on and walk out the door and down the stairs in my bare feet.

As I walk out the door he begins again.

There was this one red kind that had the most wonderful perfume. Wait here, I will bring it to you.

I wait by his gate for what seems like a long time, and look down the road for Carsten approaching on his bike, but only a few bikes pass, bouncing over the speed bump out front, none carrying him.

Ken walks back across the brick patio and hands it to me.

It’s in pretty bad shape, with wilted petals and brown spots all over. I put it to my nose but smell nothing.

It smelled really good up until a couple of weeks ago, Ken says, but I think it’s gone now.

He shrugs an apology.

I’ve only been here for a few weeks, so I guess I arrived just in time for all the roses to lose their scent. I was beginning to wonder if all the roses in Denmark were of the unscented variety.

Last week I parked my bike in the central courtyard with everyone else’s and walked back out front toward the street to go in the apartment, and I almost walk into a man in his early sixties who seems to be coming from the door I’m going in. There are only three apartments up these stairs, the guy on the first floor I’ve never met, Carsten’s above him, and the old lady on the third floor who spent a lot of time last year banging on the pipes leading to her radiator, thinking we were making noise when it was actually her neighbors through another wall. So this guy and I both stop and just stare at each other. I think he must be thinking what I’m thinking—that he’s the guy on the first floor and I’m the girl on the second floor, and we should say hello.

Hello, I say.

Hej, he says back. He seems a little taken aback, even though he stopped the same as I did. I assume it’s because I said hello and not hej.

What’s your name?

It was kind of a bizarre question at that point, which made it seem appropriate.

Ken, he responds.

He now looks as if he thought I was someone he knew, but now realized I’m not.

Are you the guy that lives on the first floor right here?

No, he says. I live around the corner. You live up there?

Yep.

I think we’re both amused this encounter is happening, especially considering the standard behavior for Danes: remain silent and appear absorbed in thought.

Well, alright, I continue. Did you think I was someone you knew?

Yeah, well, I’m not sure. Maybe.

Ha, alright. Well, good to meet you, Ken.

Well, what’s your name?

Lydia.

Alright, good to meet you, too. See you, okay.

Yeah, see you.

And we part ways, and I look for him after that, the uncommon Dane who stopped to talk to me out of the blue at the same time I wanted to stop and talk to him. I am a little lost without my usual daily casual interaction with a few dozen people at the store, or Immac, or at the Hunter Gatherer, or with a hundred or so people when I’m picking up time at the café. I miss the ability to say any random thing to people I don’t know, to make people laugh at nothing in particular. Most people here speak English, and seem to enjoy doing so, but when people don’t smile or look at each other on the street it’s a lot harder to take the risk. Carsten’s at work every weekday, and half the week I hang out with Hunter for a few hours, but my friend Jacob is out of town for weeks and I’m accustomed to a lot more human interaction.

So when I see Ken out the window I want to talk to him, even if only as a person I can wave to when I pass by any given day.

Somehow we get on the subject of family names, and I tell him my last name, one about as Scottish as they come. He becomes more animated and tells me I have to hear this Scottish band he loves, Runrig, so I follow him onto his deck, where there are rows of beer bottles awaiting refund. He walks inside to put a CD in the stereo. A very old man in a plain white undershirt and blue shorts is sitting inside, his brows furrowed at nothing in particular.

Ken says something to the old man in Danish after we have stood talking about music for a couple of minutes, so I walk over and shake his hand. He’s fine with that but doesn’t have anything to say.

Is that your dad? I ask Ken.

Yes, that’s my dad. This place belongs to my parents. I live next door.

Okay.

My phone rings. It’s Carsten, so I tell him that I’m next door, which he no doubt thinks is strange, but he gamely walks over and says hello to Ken, who insists that we borrow a Runrig concert DVD before we leave.

Then he spends the rest of the evening sitting in that chair at that table with a beer, staring at the hedges in front of him.