Fat cats and fat cats!

Yes, bit of a strange title for this blog post but all will become apparent. This morning Marmalade was booked in at the vet's for her annual health check and immunisation booster.I had to pluck up courage before I went in because Marmalade is overweight. The lectures we get, especially from the veterinary nurses and younger vets, are particularly shaming.'We are making her obese, she will become diabetic and her kidneys will fail etc etc.' Okay, she is 5kg which is I suppose slightly chunky, but for a pampered puss who spends 23 1/2 hours a day sprawled in the warmest place she can find, sleeping, I don't think it's too bad. She is contented, loved and cared for and at almost 12 years old has earned the right to be slightly chubby. How many of us can reach the twilight of our years and say we aren't slightly overweight. They have insisted that she have a certain type of diet food, which incidentally we can only buy from them at almost £50 a bag. Yes, you did hear correctly, £50 a bag. It is a big bag which lasts 2-3 months but even so it's a lot of money to shell out at once.Since we are all tightening our belts these days we decided not to buy it anymore and buy a supermarket 'light' version. Anyway imagine my shock this morning when the vet, a lovely middle aged lady (Norwegian or Swedish going by her name and her accent) said she was a lovely cat, yes a bit overweight- maybe in human size a 14-16!! but she didn't start the emotional blackmail. I confessed about the food being expensive and we had taken her off it and she was fine. If she didn't approve she didn't say so. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I got out of there!

My second fat cat story concerns my thoughts about the horsemeat scandal going on in this country. We choose to buy our meat from our local butcher and he has just put up a big sign in his shop saying 'No horsemeat sold here'. We buy small amounts of meat which is eked out with lots of veg and would rather have smaller amounts of good quality than large amounts of goodness knows what. I have just read one of  today's newspapers and I know they sometimes distort facts or indeed I suspect make up things they don't really know but they have reported that one of the owners of the factory making horsemeat lasagne(in the news over the last few days), who incidentally is described as a 'multimillionaire' deliberately sought to source cheaper raw materials, and the paper has quoted him as saying a way of doing this is 'to try to engineer the products'. I suppose that could mean anything but the suggestion to me is source cheaper meat,and  if that includes horsemeat then as long as they can get away with it thats okay.I know some countries do eat horsemeat and that is okay if people are aware that that is what they are eating. At the heart of the 'Mad cow disease' scandal other countries were avoiding our meat, indeed banning its import so why aren't we doing the same to these countries who are now supplying the dodgy horsemeat? I'm afraid the older I get the more I realize you get what you pay for. Presumably the multimillionaire isn't eating his own horsemeat lasagne, he will be able to have the finest for his family no problems.What do you think about it all? Do you care that you may be eating horsemeat?