RE: ☭ Chairwoman Meow Is Too Full Of Love 😻 Distributed Evenly Among Human Comrades 👲
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Chairwoman Meow is beautiful, and appears very loving!
However, in case no one has warned you, a cat needs a VERY high protein diet, and carbohydrates are quite bad for them. Just "supplementing" a primarily vegan diet with the occasional fresh kill won't be enough for her. She will suffer from many health problems, including (eventually) blindness and death. If you are going to keep a cat as a pet, make sure you feed her proper cat food. If you cannot bring yourself to do that due to your "silly vegan code," then PLEASE give her to a family that is willing to feed her properly. Here is a trustworthy article about some of the reasons trying to feed a cat a vegan diet is unethical. https://www.aspca.org/news/why-cant-my-cat-be-vegan
Well, the vegan thing is mostly a running joke we have. I am very aware of animal care, grew up on a farm in Indiana. Well, we are actually are vegan though, that is legit.
Cambodian cats are very different than American cats I think. Cambodian cats are true survivors, with all but a handful not even knowing cat food exists. I heard somewhere in the capital a foreign shop sells cat food, but a small bag is more expensive than the average monthly income here. I wouldn't buy it anyways because it's a bunch of dead chopped up heavily processed animals.
If you were a frequent reader of my blog, perhaps you'd understand my sense of humor a little more and Chairwoman's need for a funny backstory. She's also not communist, I read somewhere that is dangerous for kitties too.
I can't give Chairwoman Meow away because she's not ours to keep captive. She just wandered into our lives one day, I warned her we were vegans, but yet she continued to hang out with us. She goes missing for 12 hours quite a bit, sometimes a full day, and she is a ruthless killer of all things that move, no cat food required. She only nibbles a bit of seaweed, nutritional yeast, and some bread bits now and then, but then she goes hunting.
You must understand things are very different in Cambodia than the west. Nobody owns any cats here, they claws and fur and are free to travel wherever they like, and Meow only leaves us when she wants some meat. There are plenty of fish heads and random animal bits for her to eat throughout the village, but I made a deal with Meow that whatever she does outside the home is fair game. As long as I don't see it and she doesn't meow about it, it's like it never happened and Meow is not a godless killing machine.
This might be strange for some, but her favorite snack is grasshoppers and butterflies, and on a few occasions she's had access to meat and chose to swallow some butterflies. Most animals are smarter than we give them credit for, and will maintain a healthy diet on their own. All cats in Cambodia, vegan or not, eat rice and all kinds of vegan stuff all day long, it's just the norm here because even the humans often don't have enough money to feed themselves as much protein as they'd like.
Sorry to ramble, it's obvious you care about cats very much, so I don't want you to worry. I am often very cynical and weave some tall tales in my posts, and for a first time reader it's probably hard to separate the two.
I am indeed a cat lover. And as long as she has free access to all the wild prey she can catch, she should probably be okay. I rather figured that cat food might be a rarity in Cambodia, but also, as you say, did not understand how much humor was included in your posts.
I can definitely believe the bit about grasshoppers and butterflies. Every cat I've ever had has gone nuts over any critter that flies in the house, be it moth, roach, or lightning bug (the latter being poisonous, unfortunately). I tend to think it has more to do with the fact that they are both toy and snack in one, however. Though to be fair, grasshoppers are pretty high protein! Not sure about butterflies, as I can't find any nutritional info about them. I guess they're one of the few foods humans haven't considered trying to use to solve world hunger. :)
Thank you for clarifying, and I'm glad you realize that Meow is not a godless killing machine. As with all obligate carnivores, she's just doing what she must to survive. 💜