Thursday 16th April 2026 - Picky and Cutting Back

After discovering that most proprietary cat foods contain little meat (they are bulked out with other ingredients and not those that carnivores would normally eat), we moved our cat Sid onto chicken and fish.  We also give him dried food to keep his teeth clean and occasionally an all-meat cat food which comes frozen, from Kat Kins.  For some reason, Sid has decided he no longer likes the chicken.  This is typical of cats to ‘go off’ certain foods and usually when you have a good stock of that particular food.  This is exactly what has happened with the chicken I cooked for him, which is in a number of pots in the freezer.  These will stay there until he decides, I can put chicken back on his menu again.  Why are cats so picky?  I can’t keep giving him fish, he should have more variety in his diet, so I’ve ordered a sample pack from Untamed who sell all-meat cat foods in tins – I wait to see what he thinks of these.

I mentioned, in March, about trimming back our garrya/tassel bush to make it easier for Peter to take the mower out to our front garden, using the side path.  I’ve now been tackling the forsythia, adjacent to the garrya, again to give Peter easier access.  It’s just finished flowering and with new leaves appearing this is the perfect time to cut it back.  I hadn’t realised, it had grown into the climber on our neighbour’s side of the fence.  After a fair bit of chopping and pulling back the encroaching stems, the forsythia is now just bare branches with shoots.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed, I haven’t killed it but if I have, I’ll buy a climber that will use the branches as a frame.  On Tuesday, I borrowed a book from the mobile library, devoted totally to climbers and wall shrubs.  Using this, I’ll make a note of the plants that will be suited to what is a bit of a wind tunnel but of course, I could just replace it with another forsythia but this time…..keep it under better control! 

Today’s photo was taken on Sunday’s walk, looking across the crop sown field and towards the sea.