Barracuda, chicken and marbles

Wuppie, the original 'Weighty Matter'

The name of my blog is Weighty Matters. It wasn't always that, it used to be 'the life of Mara'. Boring isn't it? Then one day I was blogging about my monster Wuppie. And he is a monster. A big hefty weighty monster. And the title of that post was Weighty Matters. I thought it was a nice name, stuck it on my blog and hey presto. Nothing much to do with weight in the literal sense, more a floaty sense of the heavier decisions I would have to make.

Sophie on her way to the Vet

Last year Sophie (another of those monsters) was ill. Cancer to the bladder wall. They managed to cut the tumor out, but instead of saving 1 1/2 centimeters  (about half an inch) of clean cancer free bladder, they only had 1 1/2 milimeters (about one tenth of half an inch) left to work with. The vet also told me, that were she to get sick again, it would be the end of her.

Linette climbing a tree

Recently my cats have all starting losing weight. Partly to do with summer: they just eat less. Partly to do with being able to go outside: why eat when you can enjoy the great jungle (also called my garden, but that is an altogether different story). However, Sophie never lost a lot of weight. She was always a stable slightly overweight cat.

Mathilda loves the shade more than the sun

Yes, you've guessed it: Sophie turns things upside down this year by losing weight. A lot of it. You can see her backbone. You can feel her ribs. She's always loved cleaning out my plates. I let her do it now, even leaving some extra, because she will not eat properly. But yesterday I realised I had a small tin of catfood left. I showed the other two 'hungry' monsters (Wuppie and Mathilda) out of the kitchen, closed the door and emptied out the tin.

Barracuda, chicken and marbles

She was ravenous! The marbles* confused her a bit and I had to jiggle them about a few times, but she cleaned out her bowl. The best thing though: she managed to keep it all in as well: no throwing up at all...

*Cats who don't often get treated tend to just gulp the food in almost one go. Putting big marbles in the food, makes them having to search more and move more. Because of that, they eat slower. Not having another scrounger in the area will help as well.