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  • Showing only topics with the tag "food". Back to normal view
    1. Looking for some cat advice

      Caveat: I'm following up with my vet for most of this, but she's newer and is having to do a lot of consulting with other vets in the practice. Info: I have three cats, adult female - Nova, 13ish?...

      Caveat: I'm following up with my vet for most of this, but she's newer and is having to do a lot of consulting with other vets in the practice.

      Info: I have three cats,

      Ok so, my girl Nova has been diagnosed with diabetes. This has entirely upended our feeding schedule and she's not coping well with it. We'd previously used some automatic feeders that dropped food 6 times a day, because she would stress out about not having food and then overeat and would throw up in both scenarios. But now all three cats are on different food (all kibble), and at least Nova would prefer to eat any food but her own, or have seconds, but the others would too if left to it. So they're being fed in different rooms at the same time.

      Nova is ravenous, aggressively trying to drag her bowl out of my hands, headbutting the tub of her food (she caught it loose once) across the floor, running to the other bowls in case there's CC. food left once they're separated. She just dove for one as I was trying to just let a cat out of the room instead of pick the bowl up. She's always under my feet in a way that she used to be good about avoiding. I've stepped on her several times, and hurt my ankle and wrist last night catching myself.

      Any suggestions for the perpetually (thinks she's) starving cat? I just got her a glucometer and am figuring it out but haven't been taught how to adjust her insulin as of yet.

      Part of the difficulty here, and another area I need solutions in, is that she'll (mostly) inadvertently scratch my partner's leg when she wants his attention usually to be fed. I think occasionally it's intentional but he uses a wheelchair and mostly can't feel the leg - a cut can be dangerous for him, but also sometimes the touch/pain sets his leg off in a spasm cycle that is incredibly painful. On a bad day he's feeling guilty for how angry he is at her and is afraid he'll hit her (he probably wouldn't, but he doesn't have the control to say intentionally tumble her like a mama cat to a kitten, and she would probably claw or bite if he tried plus she's been sick and he's already afraid of hurting all the cats with the chair.) he's done the spray bottle thing in the past, she likes water and we know it's not ideal, but it's usually something that happens when he's not looking or can't see or hear her til she gets him.

      Finally I need a better storage method for the food. Something she can't headbutt open or into dropping food, but that I can leave out in an open space. Currently I have a bag in a bathroom vanity, a tub of the Rx food in a spare room, and a bag in a closet. They have torn the bags open in the past (working together as a team, I suspect) when they're not secured.
      I've thought about the microchip feeders but the youngest isn't chipped yet and frankly they're really expensive.

      Summary of Asks:

      • Help with a diabetic cat who's perpetually starving
      • Help with getting a cat to stop scratching a human's leg who can't see it coming (addressing the first might help)
      • Help with ideas for cat food storage/dispensing that would be more accessible than 3 bags in 3 closets in 3 rooms, two of which my partner can't access.

      Bit of a vent here too, just everything is expensive right now too so I'm trying the best I can. Pics added.

      21 votes
    2. Fast food pricing games are ridiculous

      This morning I found a receipt in my kitchen. It was from my roommate, who had ordered pizza from Dominoes the night before. When I looked at it, I was shocked. There was a single line item on the...

      This morning I found a receipt in my kitchen. It was from my roommate, who had ordered pizza from Dominoes the night before. When I looked at it, I was shocked. There was a single line item on the order, two large pizzas for the sum of $75.98 USD. I thought, "what the hell is this? How is he spending so much on pizza? And the junk they sell at Dominos? They don't even make the crust there!"

      But then I looked down to the actual amount paid and it had a discount: $54.00 off the price for buying two of them. So the effective price was a much more reasonable $10.99 each. That's less than a third of the sticker price. After tax and an in-house delivery fee, it was still under half of that price.

      I don't eat out that often, and fast food is especially rare for me, so I've been fairly insulated from this, but it seems that this kind of thing is happening everywhere. One pizza place I do get food from occasionally is Pieology. Their pizzas were roughly $10 not too long ago, but in recent years those prices have ballooned, with some locations asking for $15 for the same pizza order. But the secret is that they are actually still selling pizzas for those prices if you use their app - it's just that instead of giving you the real price, you get free "perks", which is your choice of a drink, cookie, and things to that effect. I never go to McDonalds, but I've heard endless complaining about how expensive it is. The retort I hear is, "you better get the app". The app is a privacy nightmare that requires practically every permission it could ask for in order to function, so rather than actually getting deals you're just subsidizing the cost of your food with the sale of your personal data.

      There's almost no way to definitively prove this, but one argument that I find compelling as to why restaurants are doing this is because of delivery apps. Delivery apps take omission from the purchase price, and people really don't like seeing that they're paying more for things on the apps than they would be in the stores, so shops are raising the base price of their food in order to make things seem more fair, while offering in-store discounts so that they don't lose out on revenue from lower-income people who wouldn't order from delivery apps. If that's the case, that would mean that people ordering from those delivery apps are not only paying more for the privilege, but they are actively pushing up the prices for everyone else as well. And that's just ridiculous.

      22 votes
    3. Fridge at 41°F - safe or not?

      Heya! So I've got a new fridge, a GE GTS22KGNRWW 21.9ft³. Skipping over the fridge water line bursting and causing thousands of dollars of damage followed by the fridge crapping out, we're just...

      Heya! So I've got a new fridge, a GE GTS22KGNRWW 21.9ft³. Skipping over the fridge water line bursting and causing thousands of dollars of damage followed by the fridge crapping out, we're just trying to make sure the fridge is OK before the warranty expires and because we have a baby in the house.

      The ambient air was still above 41°F a few hours after we got it, so I cranked it to full blast and put a glass of water in to have a better testing point. The ambient air has been fluctuating between like 39-44° F and the water glass measured between like 39.0°-41.0° F after about 24 hours with occasional use. I know I'm worrying because the last fridge just crapped out and spoiled a ton of food, and I know opening the door always causes it to drop (which I'm obviously doing to test it), but it seems kind of high to me for a brand new fridge if 41 is really the upper limit. Is this an acceptable range, or should we ask for someone to come out and look at it?

      16 votes
    4. Has anyone else had issues with the new low calorie sweeteners?

      Last year I went through a phase of strange fatigue. I constantly felt sick. Like I was physically, not emotionally, depressed. But also slightly brain fogged. Eventually this cleared up and I...

      Last year I went through a phase of strange fatigue. I constantly felt sick. Like I was physically, not emotionally, depressed. But also slightly brain fogged. Eventually this cleared up and I assumed it had resolved itself for good so I did not investigate it further.

      Half a year later and I felt the way again. I’d just gotten an order of magic spoon cereal (which is sweetened by allulose, a sugar-like molecule that has a fraction of the calories but tastes almost identical). I have a sweet tooth so I felt eating the cereal was something of a life hack. Infinite sweetness without any downsides!

      I realized that before when I felt off I’d also gotten a delivery of magic spoon. I assumed the correlation was meaningful and stopped eating it and felt better.

      Recently I’ve been drinking these stevia and monk fruit sweetened yogurt drinks. They seem to be making me feel the same way, so I guess I need to stop having those as well. It’s kind of a shame because I don’t think they even need to be so sweet - and I’d happily accept some added sugar or a sweet fruit puree mixed in.

      Am I crazy or is this a common occurrence?

      22 votes
    5. What are your favorite vegan pre-packaged foods?

      IMPORTANT: These do NOT have to be foods that specifically target vegans, like Amy's or many meat substitutes (though they certainly can be). For example, most Triscuits are vegan, but they aren't...

      IMPORTANT: These do NOT have to be foods that specifically target vegans, like Amy's or many meat substitutes (though they certainly can be).

      For example, most Triscuits are vegan, but they aren't generally thought of as a "vegan food" per-se.


      ALSO IMPORTANT: They don't have to be health-conscious foods (though again, they certainly can be).

      It's now cliche at this point, but the "Oreos are vegan" type of insight is also what I'm interested in. Sometimes you just want some junk food on hand, you know?

      31 votes
    6. What are you growing in your garden this year?

      I went all out this year, I meant to just grow a couple tomatoes from seed and some basil I had from years ago and it exploded into a whole thing, we’ve got peppers, a rosemary bush, lavender and...

      I went all out this year, I meant to just grow a couple tomatoes from seed and some basil I had from years ago and it exploded into a whole thing, we’ve got peppers, a rosemary bush, lavender and a fig tree that is a cutting from my friends fig tree.

      My tomatoes are just starting to come in!

      What have y’all got growing?

      26 votes