For those that haven’t heard, there has been a massive recall on wet cat and dog food.

Symptoms range from the animal throwing up excessively to your pet dropping dead. Menu Foods, which manufactures about 80% of the pet food in the country, switched to a new supplier for gluten which they theorize may have been the reason for the food to be tainted. They have since gotten a new supplier and recalled everything that could be dangerous.

I called my local pet food store to make sure that my cat was safe (or not), and since we usually buy about 3 months worth of food at a time and are getting low we are safe.

According to the woman at the store, there haven’t been any cases involving Nutro foods yet (which is what my cat eats) but it was recalled as well as it comes from the same source that was tainted.

The effected food will be dated for December ‘08 through March ‘09, so if you have something that says it is best by before then, you should be all set. My cat’s food is all dated July of ‘08.

If you have any of the effected foods, call the store where you bought it so that they can verify whether what you bought has been recalled.

Recalled cat foods
Americas Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Best Choice; Companion; Compliments; Demoulas Market Basket; Fine Feline Cat, Shep Dog; Food Lion; Foodtown; Giant Companion; Good n Meaty; Hannaford; Hill Country Fare; Hy-Vee; Key Food; Laura Lynn; Li’l Red; Loving Meals; Main Choice; Nutriplan; Nutro Max Gourmet Classics; Nutro Natural Choice; Paws; Presidents Choice; Price Chopper; Priority; Save-A-Lot; Schnucks; Sophistacat; Special Kitty; Springfield Pride; Sprout; Total Pet; My True Friend; Wegmans; Western Family; White Rose; and Winn Dixie.

Recalled dog foods
America’s Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Award; Best Choice; Big Bet; Big Red; Bloom; Bruiser; Cadillac; Companion; Demoulas Market Basket; Fine Feline Cat; Shep Dog; Food Lion; Giant Companion; Great Choice; Hannaford; Hill Country Fare; Hy-Vee; Key Food; Laura Lynn; Loving Meals; Main Choice; Mixables; Nutriplan; Nutro Max; Nutro Natural Choice; Nutro; Ol’Roy; Paws; Pet Essentials; Pet Pride; President’s Choice; Price Chopper; Priority; Publix; Roche Bros; Save-A-Lot; Schnucks; Springsfield Pride; Sprout; Stater Bros; Total Pet; My True Friend; Western Family; White Rose; Winn Dixie and Your Pet.

This morning I heard a crashing noise and went to the window to investigate. The pumpkin (which we never made the time to carve) had been knocked off of our deck. The culprit? The largest squirrel I have ever seen.

This squirrel was not just large in size, but also in girth. It tried running away as soon as it noticed us, but it only managed a waddle. It was very obviously trying to run as fast as it could, and very obviously failing. We got to get a good look at it.

Some squirrels can have large tails, which will sometimes make them appear larger than they really are. This squirrel was certainly one with a large tail. However, there was no denying that this squirrel was extremely overweight. I can not help but wonder how it has managed to stay alive this long. I suppose that it is ready to hibernate for the winter, but watching it run does not make me believe that it has any chance of escaping predators.

I really need to start keeping my camera closer to hand.

I was hanging out in my back yard with my uncle this weekend, and was telling him that the trout that I had seen were just small ones. Not two minutes later, a couple of 2 or 3 pounders started swimming by right next to us.

The fish have grown a bit since I last saw them. There are still a few small ones in there as well. I wonder if the bigger ones live in the brook, or whether they got flushed a couple weeks ago when the dam was opened up.

Either way, I definately need to get some line and hooks for my fishing pole. I also need some oars for my duck boat. Next spring, I will definately be getting it out into the water. This year it never happened, which is a bit disappointing.

Our cat has made a new friend this evening. Well, not really; the beaver ran off and hid as soon as she got in the window. I managed to snake around the deck to get some pictures of it, but it was getting to be pretty dark and I couldn’t get a really good shot of it.

He seemed to be a little bit skittish. Freja is hoping that he comes back; she hopes any of her friends on the other side of the window come back.

This is the first time that I have seen a beaver at the house. I wonder if they have a dam nearby? The one down stream a bit is man made.

One of the great things about having our own house is that I no longer have to walk down two flights of stairs and then around to the back of an unlit building to try to grill my food. This summer, we went through about a tank and a half of propane grilling our dinners. We also ate outside a few times, which meant that the local insect population got to have a pretty good go at us.

Citronella candles certainly make eating outside much more enjoyable, especially now that it is getting darker earlier and twilight is much more likely to come while we are outside. The citronella candles keep most of the insects away. About the only thing that is not bothered by them seems to be the ants, which are much fewer and farther between lately.
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There was a cacophony across the water while my wife was out in the hammock this afternoon. I thought that it was a bird, but she thought it was a small animal. We could not see what it was, but it turns out that she was right. It was a baby squirrel.

I went out with my camera and tried to track it through the trees. I finally caught sight of it, and managed to get one picture where you could actually tell what it was. The rest of the pictures it had managed to duck behind a tree or out of frame, or else there was too much camera shake to see anything other than a small brown blur.

It was making a lot of noise for quite some time. The squirrel never really stopped to take a breath; it just kept squeeking away for about 20 minutes.

Well, our small ant problem that turned into a somewhat larger ant problem is for the most part solved. I never got around to use the gel that you squeeze into the cracks; the 6 bait traps outside and the 18 bait traps inside appear to have worked just fine. I came home at lunch time the day after I set the bait out, and there were still plenty of ants everywhere. That evening, though, you did not see as many. Now, we see quite a few but they are for the most part dead. Every once in a while I see a random ant here and there that is still alive. That is not so bad though. I would rather have to kill one ant every couple of days than have to kill three dozen ants every time I go into the basement.

We have been having ants in the house all summer, but never more than a few at a time. Trying to get unpacked and moved into a new house, plan a wedding, and plan for cutting our income in half seemed more important than getting ant traps set up. Thus, it has not happened until now. Now, though, it is finally time and finally necessary.

Over the last day or two, my wife and I have killed dozens of ants. In fact, I just heard her stomp on another one in the other room. My guess is that when we had our rehearsal dinner, some sort of food got left out to attract them in, and now that we are back from the honeymoon we are finding the results. I have not found anything yet, though.
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My kitten has been very lonely since we moved, as she had quite a few friends to yell down to from our windows when we lived in the city. Since we moved into our house, she has had the random squirrel to yell at, and she has been trying to make friends with the chipmunks in the back yard, but there have not been any other cats for her to talk to. She is an indoor cat, so she can not go out and look for them.

Last night, another cat finally ventured into our yard. He hung out beneath my truck and watched my cat do her very best to entice him closer to the window. He was just happy to watch her, though. She was very upset with me for not going out and making her friend come closer, or come back after he got bored and left.

I have seen the cat a few times as I drove down the road, but I am not sure if it is a stray or a neighborhood cat.

My kitten does not usually bother herself over the ants in the house, but heaven forbid a fly get in! She loves to chase them. When we lived in the apartment, she used to chase them and play with them. After the second or third time she had swiped one out of the air with her paw, she would tear off its wings so that she could push it around on the floor.

These days, she just scoops the flies out of the air with her paws, throws the fly in her mouth, and eats it. Maybe the flies taste much better out here than they did down town; less polution, perhaps.

A fly got in the house following me when I came home for lunch today, and it was buzzing around the kitchen. Freja chased it into the dining room and got a few good jumps in before she managed to catch it. She’s been pretty happy ever since.