My Parrot Food

I tweak this every time I make it, depending on what I have around, and what’s in season. For example, in the Fall, I tend to use more squash, apples, etc. in summer I may add some berries and fresh carrots.

This recipe makes about a month and a half  of food for Hector. I make the one big batch, then freeze in 16 ounce mason jars. One jar gives me about 4-5 days of food, so I just defrost a new jar as needed.

Here’s the basic recipe. Feel free to substitute and change it up to meet your needs.

1 cup of fresh fruit – apples are my go-to, but sometimes it is berries, melon, etc.

1 box of whole grain veggie pasta – I try to buy different shapes for variety

1 can of beans – Hector isn’t a huge fan of beans, so I usually mash these pretty well and mix them in. I change the type of beans, red beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, etc.

1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds, raw and unsalted

1 lb of organic greens – this can be kale, collard greens, mustard greens, etc. sometimes I replace the greens with chopped broccoli

1 lb of frozen organic mixed veggies, usually a standard peas, corn, carrots kind of thing

2 fresh sweet potatoes – sweet potatoes are Hector’s favorite! I leave skin on, but scrub them clean and cut into small pieces

1 cup of other veggies – depends what is in season, cauliflower, squash, I try to add a variety of colors

3 cups of grains – I usually use Farro and/or Quinoa, but Kamut, whole grain oats, etc can all be used to change it up.

1 heaping teaspoon on Tumeric

1 tablespoon of organic cinnamon

I start with a about 1.5 times the amount of water required to cook the grains I’m using, bring it to a boil and cook the grains. They should be a little more watery than usual. I add the sweet potato chunks when the grains are about half cooked. If the mix seems, dry, just add more water. Once that mix has softened up, I add the pasta and mix it in. I don’t really cook the pasta. It softens up enough in the mix and adds a little consistency.

Next I add the fruit, spices, mashed beans, greens, veggies, and mix well. Last, I fold in the pumpkin seeds.

I let the mix cool a bit, then divide it up into Mason jars, not quite filling them to leave room for expansion when they freeze.

When I finish a jar of food, I take a new one out of the freezer and leave it on the counter to defrost for a couple of hours then put it into the fridge. Next morning I just scoop it out and feed. Sometimes as a treat, I’ll add a little scrambled egg to her regular mix, or other fresh fruits and veggies.

Experimenting is key. What does your bird like? What consistency do they prefer? Do they like minced food or big chunks? Is there a veggie that they always pick out and don’t eat?

This is Hector’s main food, but not her only food. She also always has free-choice pellets, and she gets more fresh veggies when I’m making dinner, nothing fancy, just bites of whatever things are appropriate for her like cucumbers, carrots, peppers, etc.

 

International Bacon Day!

Who knew? Apparently tomorrow is International Bacon Day! Cali and I are both pretty excited.

As a big fan of bacon and Stella and Chewy’s products, I have to thank them for the reminder that tomorrow is International Bacon Day! If you follow @stellaandshewys on Instagram and tag a friend, you will be entered to win their Bacon Prize pack! Go follow them, and tag @petmomma.co and/or @puckthestar Maybe you’ll win yourself a Tee Shirt and some bacon treats!

 

 

Review: Stella & Chewy’s Surf ‘n Turf Dinner Patties

Hector Supervising While I Write
Hector – She has nothing to do with today’s article other than she is hanging out with me while I’m writing it!

What do you do with your pets when you travel? For me, the dog goes to a friend’s house. The cats, parrot, and dragon stay home with daily visits from a pet sitter. I like to make things as simple and easy as possible for everyone that helps out with my pets.

For the dog, that means making feeding time as simple as possible. At home, Cali gets a spoonful of canned food mixed with some dry food. This works for the pet sitter, of course, but it’s a bit of a pain for her to have to keep canned food in the fridge, measure everything out, and mix it up. I started making mason jars with the food all set and she just had to put it in a bowl, but the jars had to be refrigerated because of the canned food, another hassle.

For my last two trips, I discovered Stella & Chewy’s Dinner Patties, and they are exactly what I needed. The patties are freeze-dried raw, and grain-free. At the advice of my vet, I don’t prefer a fully grain-free diet, but I feed a dry food that has grain along with these patties to balance it out. Since they are freeze-dried, they are shelf stable.

With the Stella & Chewy’s patties, I can make up mason jars, pre-measured for each meal. They don’t need to be refrigerated, and all my pet sitter has to do is add water, shake, and pour in a bowl. Super easy and convenient!

 

What do I like about this product? The convenience is definitely what brought me to this product, but I’m also really impressed with the quality. These dinner patties are offered in 13 different varieties. I chose the Surf ‘N Turf variety with Beef and Salmon. Cali has allergies, so I find that fish based foods help her with her itchiness. The ingredients in this food are impressive: the first ingredient is beef, and the second  is whole ground salmon. Each bag contains 14 ounces which lasts me a LONG time with one 10 pound dog.

 

Recommended feeding is 3 1/2 patties per day for a dog Cali’s size, but I supplement with regular dry food. For this last trip, Cali was fed 1/2 of a patty, plus a handful of her regular Halo Salmon dry dog food per meal, two meals per day. Two weeks of travel meals and I still have almost half a bag of the Stella & Chewy’s left over. One bag is priced at about $29.99.

If you are interested in a convenient raw diet, or if you want to do what I do and supplement some raw foods, I definitely recommend this product.

 

Pros: Convenient, Easy to Use, Good Ingredients, Raw food, Versatile (can be used as is or rehydrated,) Liked by my picky eater, great variety of flavors

Cons:  I don’t have any real complaints about this product. It is a bit pricey, but all high quality foods are. I don’t like that it is Grain-Free, but that is a Pro to others.

 

 

Portland, OR

Just spent a bit of time in Portland, OR and I have to say it seems to be an amazingly Pet Friendly city! I was so excited to see dogs everywhere, all over the city. All the hiking trails we went on were dog friendly. Many restaurants in the city allowed dogs. We even saw plenty of dogs at a couple of beaches we visited on the Oregon coast.

In my area of New England, there are some dog-friendly things to do, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular to bring your dog along around here as it did in Oregon. Where are you from and do you find your area to be very dog-friendly?

No Pictures

No pictures for today’s post. Trust me, you don’t want them.

If you’ve ever been on FaceBook, or Instagram, I know you’ve already seen the pictures, maybe even videos. The robot vacuum that seems like such a fantastic idea, well, one day it goes bad.

What will it get into? Cat vomit? Litter box remnants? Bird seed? Nope.

I woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, threw on some clothes, found my glasses. said Good Morning to the dog and headed downstairs to put her out. It seemed like a normal day, maybe even a good day. I slept well last night, I felt rested, and my allergies weren’t terrible, yet.

As I headed downstairs, I noticed the carpet was askew. I went to fix it, and yikes! Dried up poop smear everywhere. I don’t think the dog really needed to go out anymore. She did what she needed to do in the living room, then my very helpful RoboVac tried to help clean it up for me.

New rules for the RoboVac – She will no longer be allowed to run unsupervised. It may seem like a good idea to set your RoboVac up to clean while you are happily slumbering and don’t have to listen to her, or trip over her. That’s not going to happen here anymore. Supervised work hours only!

As hard as it is to say this right now, I was lucky. My vac seemed to have found this mess on it’s way back to its station, so the mess was contained to a single room and a hallway. Only one carpet was involved, and it is one that can be thrown into the washing machine. The rest of the trail was on our hardwood floors. Scraping poop off wood isn’t the most fun way to wake up ever, but it could have been so much worse.

Floor cleaned, wood polished, rug in the wash, great! Time to get back to my morning routine. Unfortunately, the living room still smells, what did I miss? OMG, I missed the vac itself. It’s tires have little treads. Again, I need to be thankful, since the vac was on it’s way home, it was full. Very little ended up inside the vac, I just had to clean the outside. There are brushes, wheels with treads, a brush roller. This was clearly an outside job. Toothpicks, spray cleaner, old towels, and a lot of patience. I think the RoboVac will survive to clean again one day. That day will NOT be today.

The Sh*t Show

Good News and Bad news, first the good! It only took two mornings for Bean to learn that waking us up at 4 or 5AM was not good for anyone. We did a few different things, so I’m not exactly sure which one worked, or maybe it was the combination.

Master Bean and his sidekick Hector D. Byrd

The first thing I did was to stop feeding the cats canned food in the morning. They have dry food available at all times. They didn’t need breakfast. They asked for it for the first couple of mornings, but then they seemed to forget. Now I’m giving them a big serving of wet food once a day instead of the two wet food meals. Easier for me, no morning expectations, and easier clean up.

The next thing I did was to mess with Bean more at night. I played with him, patted him, groomed him, basically made sure he got lots of attention, whether he wanted it or not!

Finally, I brought a squirt bottle to bed with me. I didn’t want to use it, but he had to learn that screaming at 4AM was not the right way to get our attention. The first morning he came in and howled, I told him “no” and he did it again, so I squirted him. I aimed for his butt, and I’m not even sure the water hit him, but it did startle him. He left and didn’t come back.

At bedtime, I made sure that a quiet Bean knew he was welcome in our bed. I cuddled him and gave him lots of pats. I didn’t want him to think we didn’t want him in there. The next morning, he howled, I squirted way behind him, and he darted out of the room. He hasn’t been back to howl early morning since!

The bad news? I spent most of yesterday cleaning up Diarrhea. I currently still have two area rugs outside drying, and I just brought a third back to its normal spot after being washed, fun day, NOT!

It was one thing when the three cats were having diarrhea, but when the dog also started, I was so confused. The cats don’t go outside, they all eat different food. The dog doesn’t get into plants or anything like that the cats might have gotten into. Finally, I posted the issue on Facebook, and someone suggested it might be the water bowl, brilliant! It’s the only thing all four of them share. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with our water, because everyone else in the house is fine, but maybe there was something funky with the pet fountain.

Hector found it amusing to watch me scrubbing floors.

While I figured out the fountain, a call to the vet was in order, but with all the restrictions during this pandemic, my vet couldn’t see them for a week! I couldn’t live like this for a week, and I knew my pets would all be dehydrated. I got a little annoyed with the receptionist that she couldn’t get me in sooner. I  told her I would find another vet and hung up. Before I got a chance to call my back up vet, she called back and asked if I would bring in a fecal sample. I explained that I did that last week and it was negative. She told me to bring in different poop. With all of the pets having the same problem, I didn’t think that bringing in another sample would yield a different result. I told her no thanks. She tried to schedule me for next week again. I hung up.

Then she called me back a third time. She had talked to the doctor, a friend of mine for the last 15+ years. He knows me and knows my animals. He agreed to try a medication for them while I waited to come in. I picked up the medication that night. After just one dose each, no more problems! Thank goodness! I was running out of cleaner and we all know how hard it can be to acquire cleaning supplies during this pandemic.

I changed to my spare water fountain and put in all clean filters. I don’t know what could have happened to the fountain, but it seems to be the only logical cause. The fountain went through the dishwasher, now I’m leaving it for a bit. I did buy some cheap, generic filters for the fountain, and I’m wondering if there is a chance there was a chemical or something bad in those filters. I bought a ton of them, but it isn’t worth the risk. I’ll be throwing them all away.

The cats got canned food again last night, they were so happy. After two days of medication, everyone still seems to be doing fine.

The Dragon doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about!

 

 

Kitten problems!

Cute, but loud!

No doubt Bean is sweet, loving, cuddly, etc. BUT he has been harassing us at 5AM every morning! I’ve never had a cat like this. As soon as the sun comes up (I think) he comes into our bedroom and howls. He quiets for a few minutes if you pat him, but starts right up again if you stop. When we lock him out of the bedroom, he just howls out there.

I’ve been having enough trouble sleeping lately, the last thing I need is the cat howling at dawn. I’m really not sure what to do. I feel like we may have to resort to locking him up away from the bedrooms for a couple of nights to see if that breaks the habit. Anyone have a loud kitty? This is going to be a challenge!

WePet Litter Mat

With three cats in the house, one of them a Maine Coon with long hair, there is always litter everywhere. I’ve got four litter boxes. One is a Breeze box which actually isn’t too messy, but the cats don’t love it. They use it to pee, but that’s it. It has a pelleted litter in the top with a slatted bottom, so the urine goes into the bottom tray where there is an easy-to-change pad. The pelleted litter is great because it doesn’t scatter as much as grainier litter, but after months of using it, my cats still don’t love it.

I’ve tried a bunch of different types of pelleted litter, paper ones, pine ones, it doesn’t seem to matter, the cats hate it. They have some not-so-subtle ways of showing me their displeasure with the pellets. I’ve decided to let them win. I’ll have to find another way to stop the spread of the litter from the regular cat boxes, and just let them have their standard clumping litter.

I’ve got the three cat boxes in washing machine trays. They are great because they are big enough to hold the entire litter box, and have some room for the cats to step in and out of the box from on the tray. They are easy to clean up as well. The problem is the cats love to dig, and when they dig the litter flies. Even with the litter in the washing machine trays. The trays are just hard plastic, so the litter still scatters. The rug outside of the trays ends up feeling like a sandbox if I don’t vacuum every day.

The current set up

My next idea was to add litter mats to the trays. The ones I’m using now are by WePet. I had been using one of their mats upstairs, and now I bought two more for the downstairs cat boxes. So far they seem to be helping. There are a lot of features I like about these mats and I hope they continue to work out.

The WePet mat I bought was pretty inexpensive, about $11 on Amazon. The low price was definitely what tempted me to buy my first one, now I’ve purchased three! They are a good size, big enough to cover a decent sized area in front of the box for the cats to step in and out.

I also like the material they are made of.  It’s a soft mesh that seems like it would be comfortable on the kitty paws while still managing to help collect the litter. I’ve found the one I have been using upstairs easy to clean. I just shake it out, and occasionally run the vacuum over it. I haven’t had to wash it, but I’m guessing it would wash fine in the tub and I could easily hang it to dry.

The mats seem to hold litter well, they are slip resistant, making it easy for the cats to jump in and out of their boxes. For some reason, the cats like scratching at these, and so far they haven’t done any damage to the mats, so I guess that is another bonus.

I’ll make sure to post an update when I’ve had a chance to use these mats longer to see how they hold up downstairs with the three litter boxes.

June already?

Everything seems so crazy in the world right now. While I’m certainly concerned about all that is going on, I’m also happy to focus on the good for a few moments, so let’s talk pets!

The Dragon

The Dragon is cranky. It’s Spring shedding time and although much of her as already shed, she’s still got a lot of shedding to do, her head especially, and that seems to drive her crazy. I did discover some new greens that she is REALLY excited about. It used to be that the only green she really ate consistently was Arugula. I’ve tried so many different types of greens and she wouldn’t touch them. When I grocery shopped a few days ago, the store was totally out of Arugula. I thought I would try something different and I bought some pea shoots and broccoli sprouts. She is devouring them! This morning she ate a big bowl of them, and I just brought her another handful of the pea sprouts and she is gobbling them all up. I may have to bring her another helping.

I’m happy to find greens that she will eat so well!

Cali is doing fine, but she’s itchy. Spring is not the best season for her, and I’ve had to spot treat her skin, and also give her extra baths. I made need to bring her to the vet for an extra allergy shot, but so far she is hanging in there with the baths and spot treatments as well as her regular Apoquel.

I did clip her recently, and the short haircut also seems to help with the allergies. I can give her a really good scrub when I bathe her, and it is easier to get the topical sprays on her skin.

Hector is getting so brave! She’s still walking all around the house, and chewing and cardboard that crosses her path. The last few days, she has also been attempting short flights! I did clip Hector’s wings not long after we got her. I had taken her to the vet for a check up, and the vet suggested I clip her as she adjusted to her new home. I haven’t clipped her wings since. I’d prefer not to clip her, but if she starts flying and crashing I may have to clip her again so that she doesn’t hurt herself.

Hector has started a new little routine. After dinner and clean up, the family usually heads into the living room to watch a movie. Hector follows us to the living room now. I sit on the floor, play fetch with Cali, and Hector struts around checking everything out. Occasionally she will push a cat toy around or nibble on a dog toy. When she’s had enough, she makes this awful whistle/scream sound and we know it is time to give her a ride back to her cage.

Logan

Last but not least are all the kitties. All are doing well. Puck and Bean have been venturing outside on leashes a little bit. I’m starting to think it isn’t a good idea as Puck has been sitting at the door meowing like he is asking to go out. I don’t want outdoor cats, or even indoor/outdoor cats. I know everyone has different feelings on it, but it just isn’t my thing. The only time I’ve had an outdoor cat was when I had a barn in Texas and I had a barn cat. I used to worry every time I went out that I wouldn’t find him. I know I wouldn’t sleep if I had an outdoor cat and it didn’t come home one night.

Since I’ve given up on trying to get the cats to use new kitty litter, I’ve gotten a couple of mats to try and help contain the spread of the litter at least. I’ll post a review of the new mats tomorrow.

I’m also giving Primal cat food a try. I’ll get a review of that posted soon as well.

Stay well everyone!