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Adopting happiness

Pensive Mac
Mac eyeing Jake

If you treat them well, your adopted pets will usually give you back 1000% in smiles and unconditional love. I think that’s what most pet owners know.

“Mac was very happy this morning”, I said one morning to Naomi after I had taken the dog out for a short while.

“Dogs are usually happy no matter what, unless they’ve been abused or something”, she said.

Being a fairly new dog-adopter, I’ve been privileged to experience the nonsensical happiness Mac provides daily. He picks up a toy and entertains himself for a long time, even when we’re both hunkered down with work. Having a playful housemate in Jake the Cat provides Mac with even more entertainment as he stalks, chases and bites (gently) Jake all around the apartment.

Not that the harrassment is all one-sided. Once I was amazed to witness Mac chase Jake, then Jake do a U-turn and chase Mac back until he caught up with him and then leap over the stunned dog.

Mac even had a couple of battle scars from the rowdy encounters, but they’re all healed now. Sometimes they get too boisterous, and we have to separate them for a few hours to get some peace.

Cats on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish altogether. They’re a little more unpredictable, although with Jake, we know how much he craves company and attention, but on his own terms. He’ll meow his head off until we open our bedroom door in the morning just so he can see us for a minute, then he skulks off to another part of the house.

He also takes to provoking Mac into chasing him most days. Running at full flight at the dog and then away, so that he’ll get chased.

I don’t know how to explain seeing and envying a dog’s and a cat’s simple life of play, eat and sleep adds to our happiness quotient. It just does.

And if you do want a little slice of happiness this way, please, do like we did. Adopt, don’t buy. There are plenty of animals who need a loving home, and who’ll bestow upon that home 1000% returns in investment.

Visit the SPCA, and this blog written by an SPCA volunteer, and see for yourself.

Partial recall

UsfdaWhile idly on the ingterneck a couple of mornings ago, we decided to see if the cat food we buy for Jake was on the recalled brands list. So we googled, and got on to the USFDA’s website, and to our shock and horror, the list was like, damn long lor!

A quick scroll down the list found the brand of cat food we normally feed Jake, and a call was made to the pet shop to see if they’d done anything about it – i.e. taken it off the shelves. The friendly pet shop boy on the phone said the distributor had just called the day before and asked for them to take the brand off the shelves.

(It turned out that the dry cat food we buy for Jake wasn’t on the recall list – only the wet cat food was)

AvaLater, we decided to take a look at the AVA (our friendly local government agency tasked to deal with such matters) website, and not surprisingly, the website was last updated on 10th April, and the latest press release to do with the pet food recall matter was dated 20th March, whereas, the USFDA’s page on the matter was updated 20th April, which was like, two days ago.

There was nothing on the AVA’s site to suggest that there was any cause for concern, as the site merely says:

According to the recall information available so far, the products are sold in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Nevertheless, the AVA is currently carrying out investigations to determine if the products had been exported to Singapore…

A chat with the pet shop boy suggested that the best place to go to for the latest information would be the pet shops, ‘because we get information from the distributor who get information from the manufacturer direct’.

I suppose, then when they feel like it, they then tell the AVA, and the AVA might just update their website with the latest information.

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Scratched deservedly

HatchchanSomeone left a comment pointing me (and all youse readers) to a cat’s blog/website, which I’ve been enjoying to as much I as possibly can without knowing a word of Japanese.

Hatch-chan, the cat, is extremely photogenic, and I’m sure, gets up to as much mischief as Jake the Cat.

I’m the kind of pet owner who likes taunting his pet, and with Jake, that usually means dangling my foot or hand near him but not near enough for him to swipe/grab/bite. Or so I think.

Recently, I’ve been sporting a couple of bites and scratches on my hands, legs and nose. I think age is having an effect on my agility. Naomi just thinks I’m dumb.

At work
Jake at work

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There’s always time for a good nap

Cutest cat in the world
Jake ZZZ

Some nights I sit at my desk trying to type up something for an article, or looking for nonsense news online, I turn and see Jake lying on the chair behind me. He’s pretty content to sleep near me most days, and he’s been a real sweetie with everyone lately. And that has probably got nothing to do with the fact that he recently destroyed his fifth full toilet roll when I forgot to close the bathroom door.

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