Don’t cats deserve to be fed, too?

Today at lunch I was flipping through the pile of ads and saw one for C-A-L Ranch Stores. A C-A-L Ranch Store has recently opened nearby in what used to be supermarket. I went for a visit out of curiosity. It is a store that surely would be best suited for rural Nevada — I can’t imagine who in Las Vegas needs barbed wire fencing or steel poles for cattle pens, but apparently somebody does. They also sell baby chicks. Sweet.

So, I’m looking at the ad and there is a full page of food for horses (don’t they eat hay?) including food that empowers them and another one that makes their coat shiny. Huh. Perusing the ad further, I see bags of food for chickens which comes in pellets or crumbles and enhances their muscle development. Uh, is anyone else bothered by the idea of chickens with muscles?

Okay — now I see a bag of dog food for the active, adult dog, along with Milk Bone and some special dog treats.  So surely they sell cat food, too. And I’m looking …

I see rabbit food, pig food, turkey food and goat food. Oh, here’s a bag of wild bird seed, but no, nothing for cats.

The more I think of this, the more I wonder about the unfairness. (Disclosure: I am not a horse person.) What, exactly do you do with a horse? Well, you ride it, dumb-dumb. Okay, you ride it. And I guess you could use it to pull a wagon or a plow (although the pictures of the horses in the ad didn’t look like the plow-pulling type). So once a day or so you go ride the horse. Then you take it back to the stable and spend time wiping it down and brushing it. Then — whether at night or in the morning — I understand you have to “muck-out” the stall. I believe that is the equivalent of emptying the litter box. It’s bad enough emptying a litter box for a creature that weighs maybe 10 pounds, but a horse litter box? Gimme a break.

In addition to the stall where the horse lives, you also have to have some land for the horse to walk around on. This is called a pasture. The horse nibbles the grass — Oh, excuse me, the horse grazes. So he’s eating the grass on the land you bought for him, and you buy him hay, too, and oats I believe.  And now there is horse food that you buy in 50 pound bags. Oh — and lookie here: Horse Treats! Yes, a 20 pound bag of horse treats. Let’s stock up on those. I’m astonished at the cost of keeping four cats in kibble — I cannot begin to imagine the cost of keeping a horse and tell me again what use they are?

I once balked at the saying “worked like a dog,” because dogs don’t work, but my friend Sandy admonished me. There are guide dogs and guard dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs and police dogs and companion dogs. Okay, so some dogs work. Do horses work? Maybe race horses, but I’m thinking you have to buy them LOTS of oats and horse treats.

Back to the ad: Pigs — okay, I can see buying food for pigs because pigs are useful and desirable and we don’t have to go too deeply into that since I am eating a ham sandwich as I’m writing this.

Goats — they give milk (well, the girl goats do) and goat hair which can be used to make clothes.

Chickens. Yum! (the eggs — the eggs.) And bunnies, Awww… of course you want to buy food for your cute little bunnies.

So, don’t cats live on farms? Don’t cats work? I call keeping the farm rodent-free work. So don’t cats deserve to be fed, too? Perhaps they are full from all the vermin, but that hardly seems fair. And what happens when they’ve freed the farm from rats and mice? Hey, guys, how about some cat food over here?  And cats have other uses besides being walking mouse-traps. When you need someone to snuggle with, forget the horses!

And adding insult to injury, the big banner across the page says, “We have your essentials for any kind of animal.”

I guess I’m going to have to run over there tomorrow and give them a piece of my mind. And maybe a cat, too.