The Vine: June 18, 2010
Hi Sars,
I have a perfect birthday gift idea for my sister. At least, two-thirds of a perfect birthday gift. I’m hoping you or your readers can help me find the final third.
My sister loves gardens, and she also has three kids. I’d love to combine the two and give her plants that have names in common with her children. I’ve been able to find a flower with the same name as my niece (Miss Lucy oriental lily), and a vegetable with the same name as one nephew (Jacob’s cattle beans). I’d love to find a plant that shares my other nephew’s name — Samuel. Or Sam. Or James, his middle name, will do in a pinch.
It can be any sort of plant — flower, shrub, tree, vegetable — it doesn’t matter. She lives in growing zone 5, but has enough of a green thumb that she could make most North American plants grow. I’m going to get each kid to decorate the pot for their own plant, so they can be indoor or outdoor plants.
I’ve searched quite a few online seed catalogs, and haven’t found anything. Would you or any of your readers be able to help me find my elusive Sam plant?
Thanks for your help!
If my sister reads this, I’m the aunt of a different Lucy, Jacob, and Sam who live in zone 5…
*****
Sars,
Seeing all the “help me find this book” requests has inspired me to finally send in my own. I’m a librarian and usually pretty good about finding books from obscure clues, but all my Google search skills have failed me. I hope the talented Tomato Nation readers can help!
I’m trying to track down a couple of juvenile mystery books that I read in the early ’80s. I don’t think they were that old then, so they probably date from the ’70s or later.
The first book was set in England. In it, several kids (siblings and/or friends) find a girl in a boat. The mystery revolves around who she is; she refuses to say, and seems to be hiding for some reason. I think she turns out to be wealthy when they finally find out her identity. The cover may have shown the back of a red-haired girl’s head, but that could be a complete fabulation.
In the second book, the same kids take a trip to Scotland. In the course of solving the mystery, one of them winds up being trapped in the dungeon or oubliette of a Scottish castle. The cover may have featured a grassy hillside?
I don’t particularly want to read these books again, but the fact that I can’t find them is driving me crazy! I know I didn’t make them up, but I can’t find anything that matches. I’ve posted on BookSleuth, and nobody there had any suggestions, either.
Any ideas?
Sherry
*****
Hello Sars,
I have a huge cat problem. By “huge” I mean a cat who keep gaining weight despite having been on a diet. My cat Boris is a real sweetheart of a kitty, but he’s packed on the pounds the past couple of years. When we began seeing our current vet in 2008, he weighed 12.5 lbs. Not a small kitty, but not huge. The vet was very alarmed that in a year and a half he gained over 2 lbs. So she exhorted me to cut down on his dry food, and up his intake of wet food, believing that less carbs would result in some weight loss over time.
Well, I did everything the vet said. We cut down both cats’ dry food (the girly cat also had somewhat of a portly figure, so I figured, why not?), and added some grain-free wet food to their diet. Everything is portioned out, so that they split half of a 5.5 oz can of food, and get about 1/3 of a cup of dry food. This is a far cry from their portions in the past (I’ve never free-fed them).
Both cats love their new food. But apparently Boris loves it a little too much. After 4 months of this diet, I found out that he gained a whopping 1.6 lbs. The vet nurse GASPED at that. Then she suggested we switch to all wet, or to a diet food for Boris (yeah right, as if he wouldn’t go and eat the other cat’s food in retaliation), and if that doesn’t work, testing to rule out health issues (he appears in good health, but apparently stuff like a thyroid condition or diabetes in cats can often have no symptoms other than excessive weight gain or weight loss as a first stage).
We’re going to try the changes the vet nurse suggested. We’ll try all wet food first, and if that doesn’t seem to work, we’ll go with diet food (I am not enthused about that: most cat diet food is full of carbs…how could carbs help a cat lose weight?). But I’m really worried. I thought we were doing well, and initially, Boris had visibly lost some weight the first month in (he looked slightly leaner), but somehow that must have lulled me into a false sense of safety such that I didn’t notice how he gained it all back and then some.
We decided to also make getting at food more work by setting meals out on top of a bookcase. Boris is not happy about it, but after 5 minutes of loud complaining, he does climb the bookcase (did I mention that cat loves food?).
I’m also going to try to structure more exercise in his day if it kills me: I used to play with the cats twice a day, but since becoming pregnant and starting a new job almost simultaneously a couple of months ago, I have been too fatigued to do it every day. I have asked my husband to do it, but since he already has to do litter all the time, he grumbles that he doesn’t have the energy to do so either after a long day at work, and I’ve let it slide because he’s already had to take over a lot of other household chores due my constant fatigue. I realize that we do have to work on that, so we’ve already had the talk (that this is a serious problem that we have to work as a team to tackle).
Honestly, I’d get a dog to chase him around the apartment if only we were not at our lease’s limit insofar as domestic companions. Our other kitty is younger and was supposed to help in that respect, but as it turns out she’s even lazier than he is, so when he does get exercise, it’s of the chasing her, causing her to hide under the bed (which she knows will work because he’s too fat to chase her under there), and Boris spending the next five minutes going “MOOOOOM! MOOOM! The other cat won’t play with me! Make her come out of the bed!” variety.
I was wondering if your readers had any wisdom about managing one cat’s weight in a multiple-cat household (Gracie, the other kitty, has definitely and visibly lost weight and is keeping it off, so I am not as worried about her). I’m really worried that this will start to affect Boris’ health, and since he’s the worst cat to pill, I do not want to have to manage a lifestyle illness for him down the line (I’m pretty sure hubby would be no help here…he loves our cats, but he hates pilling them even more than I do).
So what else has the TN readership tried aside from the aforementioned “more exercise built in, more low-cal food”? I’m really getting desperate here.
My Husband Thought The Weight Gain Was Funny, Until I Burst Into Tears About It
Dear Gain,
Little Joe has lost a goodly amount of weight since we moved into a house with a flight of stairs in it; I also changed their food to a super-fancy brand in which you can see the chunks of seafood and vegetables.
If you don’t have the budget to buy real estate and/or food that’s better than what you eat yourself — and I don’t either, really, but here we all are, somehow — then you may take comfort from what my own vet told me a couple of years ago, when Joe bent the scales at over 18 pounds.
Dr. Tom reminded me that, despite millennia of living with humans and relying on them at least in part for food, cats’ systems are designed for a feast-or-famine hunter lifestyle. It’s why they do all that sleeping: either they’re resting up for a burst of chasing, catching, mauling, and devouring; or they’re digesting after a burst of chasing, catching et al. We human companions, in the process of assigning them various human qualities, also sometimes mistakenly assume that what works for upright omnivores like us — lower calorie intake; regular cardio — will be effective on the feline system.
And it’s not totally useless, obvi, but it doesn’t have the same results that it would with us. Boris is designed to 1) eat an elk in one sitting, and then 2) conserve that protein by napping in a sunbeam, regardless of his provenance as a domesticated animal who, if he’s anything like Little Joe, couldn’t catch a cab at a cab stand, much less a gazelle.
Try tweaking the food, for starters. Do you feed half a 5.5-oz can twice a day? That sounds like a lot; mine get a quarter of a can that size twice a day, and free-feed hairball-control kibble. You might try changing to a kibble with big chunky pieces, like Science Diet’s hairball formula, that takes them longer to eat.
Observe how they eat for a few days — do they both wolf? Do they both graze? One of each? I couldn’t do the “pick up the bowls after five minutes” thing with mine, because Hobey is a grazer, and only he ended up losing any weight. If Boris is a wolfer, cut his wet-food portion in half and feed him in another room, and see if that has any effect.
Not every cat puts on a ton of weight from free-fed kibble. A lot of cats do; with mine, that wasn’t the issue. You may want to tweak the feeding regime from month to month and see what results you get. But the thing to keep in mind is that cats are built to conserve energy and meals for long stretches, so 1) restricting their food sometimes will make them eat more/faster, because their systems see it as future privation; and 2) it just takes a really long time for a cat diet to work. And “working” can mean a teeny victory like “0.8 pounds in a year.” Been there.
But if Boris isn’t super-lethargic or super-thirsty, you’re probably okay. Keep an eye on it like you have been, and don’t beat yourself up if he’s not starlet-thin in three months.
Readers, anything to add?
Tags: Ask The Readers cats home 'n' garden popcult
@Gain – I was going to suggest getting a puppy until I got to the part about your lease. We got our chihuahua at 5 months, and he was immediately smitten with our overweight cat and never let her have a moment’s peace. A few weeks of wrestling with him was all it took to slim her down, and she’s kept the weight off ever since. And they are now best snuggle-buddies, so that worked out all around.
Another cat I used to have had one of those scratch pad toys that’s set into a round track with a ball – it kept her occupied and active for hours, until she figured out how to get the ball out of the track and proceeded to bat it around the room until it got lost. Up until then, though, it was a great exercise toy.
I also second the laser pointer as a good lazy way to carry out interactive play. Another thing the cats love that I can entertain them with from the couch is one of those long sticks with a bunch of feathers on the end. My cats get pretty acrobatic going after that thing. Also, I’m a knitter, and sometimes I’ll just hand them a ball of yarn and let them go nuts.
Not only that, but he managed to steal the roast and leave the aluminum foil still tented in the pan. A masterpiece of food theft.
Heh. My cat (same one who was on the special food) used to steal the ham from between the layers of sandwich bread when we turned our backs. Leaving the two slices of bread still perfectly in place, so if you weren’t paying enough attention, you didn’t even realize it until you bit into…nothing but bread.
Of course, this cat was also the reason we had to put childproofing locks on all of our kitchen cabinets. He would climb up into them, get to various food products, and not only eat them, but would throw them on the floor so that the other cat (who was, let’s just say not so bright) could also partake of the spoils.
Gain> It’s definitely worth getting a blood test or two just to make SURE there isn’t a thyroid issue or anything, if you can swing it. But I would also say that you should probably not be afraid to cut Boris’ food even more if you need to. I have a 9-yr-old Ragdoll, who is a big, solid cat. The last time I had her weighed, she was a little over 16 lbs. She eats Royal Canin Indoor formula and I give her half a cup of dry food per day. That’s it. Quarter cup in the morning, quarter cup at night. Every several days I’ll give her a spoonful of wet food for a treat, and to make sure she’s getting enough moisture (she doesn’t drink a ton of water and she has had urinary issues in the past). But just a spoonful, and not every day.
The thing is, she doesn’t usually even eat the entire half a cup in the course of a day. But she’s healthy, energetic, and still has a fair amount of belly chub. Now, I am lucky because she doesn’t overeat. I could give her a pound of food a day and she would still just eat about half a cup. (It’s AWESOME for when I go out of town, I can leave her three days’ worth of food and she’ll ration it out herself!) The wet food is different, she would cheerfully shank me for that stuff if it meant an unlimited supply.
My point is, even a big cat doesn’t actually need that much food to be healthy. Follow your vet’s advice and your own understanding of your cat, and don’t necessarily look at the instructions on the bag.
Honey Wheeler – No, it’s not Trixie Belden, either. I read that series, too, and this was a different set of kids. I’m pretty sure the author was British, just by what I remember of the tone and language used. Or if she was an American, she did British very well.
I feel better about not being able to find these books now. Normally everybody’s all over the book questions, but I seemed to have come up with a bit of a stumper.
@ MizShrew:
You bring up a pretty good point that all cat owners should be aware of. My other cat (skinny Gracie) has pica, and it manifests as a fabric or string fetish. So we have to be really careful about which items pass the “leave out when we’re gone” test anyway. Strangely enough she won’t eat felt balls or those tiny mice, but anything that is long and soft like a life sized tail? She tries to eat that.
We’ve had to hide shoes with laces permanently, forego pet collars (she once had to have a colonoscopy done to remove a piece of Boris’ collar that was stuck in her intestine), and get rid of Boris’ beloved cat dancer toy (again, she won’t eat feathers off a stringy wand, but if the string part is soft instead of hard? Her brain goes “food”! She very slowly ate away about a foot of said cat dancer fabric, and learned to open cabinets just so she could get her paws on it).
When the problem first manifested (as a wee kitty… she’s always had this particular issue), we had her tested for nutritional deficiencies, but that turned up nothing. I still worry that even if it’s just psychological, it’s exacerbated by food bullying… so we’re on high alert for that right now. :/
Heh, our babies, Peanut and Harvey, are accomplished food theives, too–mostly Harvey. He has learned to open every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen, and tears happily into any wrapping that isn’t metal or solid plastic. As a result, anything that isn’t canned or sealed in heavy-duty Tupperware must be kept in the refrigerator or the top shelf of the hall closet, as Harvey sits before them, wailing and cursing the evolution that denied him opposable thumbs. Mmm, cold Doritos.
@ Boris’ Mom.
I can’t get too specific with recommendations because I’m a vet and I’ve never examined your cat but I do have some general recommendations. Ask your vet to tell you how many calories Boris should get per day, it’s more exact than switching from wet to dry and guessing at amounts. Once you have a calorie amount to start at call the company that makes your food and ask the the number of calories per cup and calories per can; it can be much more than you think. Then you can figure out how much he should get per day. Once you’ve had him on his new diet plan for 1-3 months call your vet to see if you can bring him by just for a weight check. If he’s maintaining or losing weight, great. If he’s lost a lot quickly then increase his food a bit – if he’s gaining cut down a bit. The number of a calories needed to maintain a certain weight is only an average and some animals need more or less than that – but it’s a starting point.
Increasing Boris’ exercise is a good plan; set yourself a 10 minute timer for play so that you have a set amount that you’re doing. Also get creative. My own chunky kitty will follow me anywhere if I have a full food bowl in my hand so when I pour out his meal I take the bowl and walk around a bit with him crying at my heels – easy way to get them to move more. If that doesn’t make Boris move you can also split his meal into two or more bowls and put them in different spots (though that may not work with the other cat).
Recognizing the problem is half the battle. This is a really common problem and you’re doing fine. It takes time and patience but just remind yourself that you’re trying and eventually you’ll find something that works for everyone in the house.
Betsey, thank you so much for that link to the Hemerocallis database! Very helpful for my in-laws who run a nursery specializing in hostas and daylilies. I don’t think they were aware of this resource.
Please, please please don’t anyone feed your pets Science Diet. It’s loaded with byproducts and corn, topped with half a dozen kinds of fiber so they can digest what they’re not supposed to be able to digest, then preserved with BHT and BHA, which are known carcinogens. Royal Canin is a little better, but only because it’s naturally preserved. There are so many better foods on the market that don’t cost any more than those.
Personally, I’m suspicious of a vet who keeps cutting the cat’s food without checking him for medical problems.
Hi Gain,
It may also come down to the type of protein kitty is eating.
If I may get a little Eastern on you =), certain proteins have certain effects according to Chinese food combining i.e. some are heating and some are cooling. It may be that the protein type (i.e. chicken=heating; turkey=cooling; beef=neutral) is incubating kitty’s weight gain/maintenance.
If you’re open to consulting with a holistic vet (www.altvetmed.org), they may be able to direct you to some food combining things you can do that fall outside portion control, etc.
Good luck! And good on you for being an observant kitty mom!
Sherry
I have read a couple of those books but am racking my brains to try and remember some more details! I remember the first one where they all meet – the red-headed brother and his younger sister are forced to stay with one of the brother’s school friends and his guardian one summer after their own guardian becomes ill (or the other way round!) They – and another girl – Daisy?? – form a group and have lots of adventures.
One I remember is them foiling some smugglers. They are staying with an aunt and her handyman – Joe? – is a true giant of a man and they trap him in one of his own secret tunnels. I remember the kids going out in a rowing boat at night to catch the rest of the smugglers gang!
There’s another one where they come across a travelling circus and become involved with them. they end up camping out in caves at night – which seemed so exciting to me as a child!
Oh this is so frustrating! I really hope someone can remember more! I am English and the books were definitely all set in England – and weren’t Enid Blyton.
Katie
Further to my email above, I couldn’t stop googling the bits and pieces I could remember – the series I remember WAS in fact by Enid Blyton and was “The Adventure Series”. The first book with the smugglers is “The Island of Adventure”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_Series
Hope its the same one!
Katie
“pet-vs.-meal-for-whole-household stories just make me laugh.”
I have two of these. My sister had to get a very strong magnetic strap for her freezer because her cat, Biscuit, loved ice cream. Sis was tired of coming home to piles of half-thawed groceries & puddles of ice cream. “I’m cooking a roast. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a hundred and three degrees outside – talk to the cat.”)
The other was the Thanksgiving turkey. Mom had set it in brine in the sink to thaw while we were out of the house. When we came home it was under the kitchen table, little teethmarks everywhere, one leg mostly gone & one very round sleepy calico curled up IN THE TURKEY. We have no idea how she got it out of the sink, it weighed three times what she did! One of my sibs has a photo of Pandora sheepishly peeking out the turkey’s butt.
@Gain – I leave the carriers (3) on a shelf in the closet, with all the doors open & bedding in them. The cats all go in there to nap, and I have no problems getting cats in carriers. Maybe that’d work for you, too.
I second the idea of buying a hosta for the named plant. There’s an awesome-looking variety called “Big Sam” that’s purplish/blue: http://www.homesteadfarms.com/Hosta%20pages/hosta_a-b.htm
There’s also one called “Sam Spade” which I’d LOVE to have, but I can never find it, and I’ve heard it’s expensive.
@Margaret in CO:
“One of my sibs has a photo of Pandora sheepishly peeking out the turkey’s butt. ”
MUST BE POSTED. NOW.
The plum tomatoes are SAN Marzano, not SAM. It’s too bad, because they are mighty tasty.
And with the diet kibble: It turns out that a small but not insubstantial percentage of cats are prone to bladder stones on the diet kibble. This was something I learned the hard way, when we put my slightly tubby boy on it last year, and he turned out to be in that group. If you’re feeding the diet stuff, you should keep an eye out for any changes in litterbox habits, just in case.
Weight Gain:
Have you or your vet considered a raw diet for the cat? Essentially, it’s feeding the kitties raw fish, chicken and other meat. I’ve heard that it’s supposed to be healthier as it’s closer to what a cat would’ve eaten in the wild and (supposedly) what they are adapted to eating, instead of grains and the like. Proponents of the raw diet say that it helps the cats stay healthier, have less stinky poop and breath and the like, some say it’s supposed to help with weight problems too…
The meat should come from a trusted butcher and not just picked up at the grocery store.
You’ll want to do lots of research before implementing tho. I’ve only just learned about it myself, so I can’t tell you my mileage. Talk to your vet too, particularly if you trust his/her judgement. I know some vets get subsidy from pet food brands, and as such are hesitant to advocate anything else, but a good vet should be fairly well informed about this.
Some resources:
http://www.rawfedcats.org/
http://cats.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/rawfooddiet.htm
Nothing to add except that I cracked up at “couldn’t catch a cab at a cab stand.”
Not to mention Margaret in CO’s turkey story.
@ Gain,
I don’t know if your vet told you about this or not but absolutely DO NOT try to get your cat to lose weigh quickly. Losing even a pound in a short time is dangerous so the weight loss must be slow and gradual (just like it should be for us). If they lose it too quickly, their bodies start to break down their fat reserves and it inundates the liver, overwhelming it and they get fatty liver disease (which is very hard for them to recover from, assuming it’s caught in time).
Yes, I know that Boris should lose weight slowly. It’s the whole “gaining nearly 1 pound in 3 months even though we’ve restricted food intake” that threw me for a loop. The vet nurse told us (back in April) that our goal before his yearly checkup should be reining in further weight gain, and if we can, lose a couple of ounces to start us off on the path of wellness. I think all parties involved will be happy if the scale doesn’t nudge upward this time around.
Also, while I will never feed Science Diet and the like, neither do I have the time and inclination to feed them raw. For one thing, attempts to do so in the past have really backfired, and I’d rather keep my cats eating a little than not at all. For the other, I will soon have my hands full with a newborn, so I wouldn’t have time to put together meals from scratch for even the humans living here. This is really why I want to get the weight gain under control now, as opposed to just letting it slide and ending up with a grossly obese cat later on. My cats are like children to me, I love them and I try to give them as much attention and care as I possibly can. But at the very least until I get a handle on the new baby situation looming at the end of this year, I have to concede the possibility that Boris will not get the undivided attention his eating habits currently warrant.
For those who wonder, both cats are on a combo of Wellness dry and Weruva (neither of which could be considered cheap and/or badly made food). It took a long time to transition the cats to this combo, one of the healthiest diets we can feed without going the raw route. Evo, which has been suggested, had been tried (both dry and wet) before that, and has not passed the felinity inscrutability test in our household, for whatever arcane cat reason. Other high end foods were also slowly rotated in previously, but their nutritional balance probably contributed to the weight gain. Taking dry food off the menu is probably our long term goal, and we’ve definitely made gains on that front, but given that the skinny Gracie is a kibble addict and willfully goes on hunger strikes if she doesn’t get her kibble once a day, we can’t do it too fast. :/
… Lastly, thankfully neither cat has ever shown any interest in family meals or in where the human food dwells when not being eaten. That’s the last thing we need, for Boris to develop a fondness for opening the fridge (he already can open bathroom cabinets and closet doors, and has destroyed countless rolls of TP during his tenure as chief resident pest).
Thank you so much for your suggestions, everyone! I have a Big Sam hosta headed my way. The sources that you gave me were so excellent that this may become an annual thing – my oldest nephew has been looking through sites with me and suggesting different themes we could try other years.
Gain,
The trick I used with my lazy food-lover cat was “kitty aerobics”. I would sit on the couch before his dinner time when he was nice and hungry and I would throw kibble across the room. He’d have to run or walk over there to get it and eat it. Then I’d throw another at my feet and he’d have to walk back.
Pop in a good DVD and the 30 minute aerobics just flies by. Having a second cat helps because there is a time crunch. If he doesn’t get to the kibble fast, then the other cat eats it. Do this three times a week or every day. He should lose weight if it isn’t a medical condition. Also his little house-cat heart will be much healthier. This game mimics the bug eating that feral cats do in the “wild”.
If you are lucky enough to have stairs, throw a few down the stairs and then make him come back up for the next one. And so forth.
@Margaret in CO
“The other was the Thanksgiving turkey. Mom had set it in brine in the sink to thaw while we were out of the house. When we came home it was under the kitchen table, little teethmarks everywhere, one leg mostly gone & one very round sleepy calico curled up IN THE TURKEY. We have no idea how she got it out of the sink, it weighed three times what she did! One of my sibs has a photo of Pandora sheepishly peeking out the turkey’s butt.”
This is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. The image in my head right now is awesome. Please post a photo.
@Sarah D. Bunting — the only interesting part of that Cindy McCain cover story was her laughing at Sen. McCain getting pissed at a dog for stealing a beef tenderloin:
“The Harpers’ chocolate Lab has absconded with the tenderloin the senator has been fussing over since breakfast. An inveterate griller, he is very serious about the whole process, his wife says, though she herself has not been able to contain deep peals of laughter. Sure enough, the next, slightly more indignant, call is from McCain: “That dog got away with a hundred-and-some-odd dollars worth of meat in his mouth.” She calms him down and leads him reluctantly toward Dinner Plan B (a less cosseted tenderloin thawed out in the microwave), but when she hangs up she allows herself another hearty laugh.”
http://www.vogue.com/feature/2008_June_Cindy_McCain/
Could the book be “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” by Avi?