Let's move onto something a little lighter, shall we?

Well, "lighter" is a figurative term…you see, Sophie's body max index has been an ongoing project in our lives.

She came to us as a scrawny malnourished rescue kitten. She was all length and no width; she looked pitiful. We left a bowl of food out for her at all times to eat whenever she saw fit. Cats are supposed to know when they are not really hungry anymore and stop, after all.

By her second year checkup with the vet, she had filled out drastically. She was still growing however, so we thought it was a phase. Not to mention, she is a larger cat breed. By year three however, she was officially overweight, weighing in at 17 pounds. I have to interject, for the sake of Sophie, that during that year we identified medical problems that require her to be on prescription cat food that is much higher in fat content.

But even with that interjection…Sophie doesn't eat; she inhales.

She was left to her own devices for too long in the wild and never lost the scavenger mentality. Nick and I had to be a lot more active in her diet by veterinary proclamation, or we were going to have a (fuzzy) walking beach ball on our hands.

All of her portion sizes have been reduced, and she eats from an automatic feeder that disperses a portion at 8:00 AM and midnight. I get home from work at 4:30 PM, and I give her a small portion of wet food for her evening meal. The vet warned us that putting a cat on a diet is much worse than any human on a diet, and boy he wasn't kidding.

In the beginning, she'd nag us to feed her, tripping us as she wound around our ankles. Eventually, when we didn't give in, she'd up and bite us. She got nasty all around. She'd run in from another area of the condo and head straight toward one of us to take a meaty nip from our legs. In case you don't already know this: cats like to be the boss. They constantly challenge authority.

Needless to say, when those feeding times hit, she is an eating machine. Nick and I have separated ourselves from the dry food with that automatic feeder (she now chews on that thing instead of us), but she still relies on us for the afternoon wet food. She is the pestiest of all pests when I walk in the door…and for what? Moments after I put her food down, it's gone. I doubt she even tastes it.

Sophie entertained us most of the afternoon yesterday. We had returned home from a shopping excursion in the Dells to find the cat spasmodically throwing herself at the door. Upon closer inspection, a small bug was resting outside the glass.

The entire purpose for the trip was to see The Cute One. Even so, when the plane landed it was the first time I had ever been in the Pacific timezone much less Sin City. I am not a gambler (there's usually a dress or pair of shoes that I would rather throw my money at), but I wanted to take in other parts of Las Vegas while we were there. Shortly after checking in, we headed to New York, New York to find a place to eat a light dinner.



After learning the price of a fountain soda at a sandwich place, I made sure to take advantage of the free refills. I consumed Diet Pepsi until you could see it splashing in the whites of my eyes. I drank well past the point of comfort and barely left any room for my black bean burger—but by God, I was going to make 'em hurt on the fountain soda.

After dinner, we left to do some touristy stuff on the Las Vegas Strip. We caught the fountains at Bellagio…



…and the Mirage Volcano. We took video of that too, but I am not all that entertained by it, so I won't embed it here. We waited quite awhile for the show to start since it was on Nick's tidy little list of must-sees. As such, since we both had cameras, we ended up with a lot of shots outside the Mirage hotel. Most of them were deleted because they looked the exact same as the other 50. Oh, look! There's a duck! [click.] Oh, look! There's the same duck! [click.] Oh, look! There it is again! [click.] Boredom bites, but thankfully today's memory cards support that level of boredom.



The "volcano" was disappointing for me. I didn't see the draw, but then maybe we were just standing too far away from the center of the action to be drawn in. I was very tired by this point as well. On a normal night, we go to bed at 9:00 (early morning people). The time change threw me off, and I was mad that it was still so light outside when I was ready to crash. Still, Nick had one last thing to see that night since it was going to be our only time to sight-see.

My fatigue was making me very cranky because my body was still on Wisconsin time and thinking that it was past 10:00. I never sleep well the day before travel (mind too busy), so I was even crankier than usual. I didn't mortally wound Nick with my stabbing glares, but I wanted him to at least hurt a little. This is a conflict that we run into on every single vacation. Nick likes to fill every second with an activity. I myself enjoy a little feline laziness when I go on holiday. I usually return to work more exhausted than when I left because my time away was all GO-GO-GO-GO.

I knew that I would play along and go to his last item on the list because I always fold, but I wasn't going to go quietly. He hailed a taxi to take us to see the Fremont Street Experience.



If I had been in a nicer mood, I might have let him know how much I enjoyed seeing the light show. As it was, I had a point to make, so I remained taciturn as I snapped photos and thought to myself, "Wow…"

Shamelessly, I love Jane Austen's stories (and some of the film adaptations). Her characters are timeless: strong women who learn to think and act for themselves, characteristics that bucked the trends of Jane Austen's time. Keeping these characters and the strict rules of early 1800s propriety in mind, this You Tube video is somewhat hilarious. I think even Jane Austen herself would appreciate this breaking free of convention.



(Though, after skimming Persuasion recently, I'm a little bummed that Anne isn't in the spoof...it seems only four out of Austen's six heroines made the cut.)

We adopted Sophie when she was six month old, long enough for her to have been trained as a feral cat. It was several months before she trusted us as humans, but she has never shaken the "I have to eat as much as I can because I don't know when I'll get my next meal" instinct. She has had her share of medical issues since we got her, and she will be on prescription cat food for the rest of her life (read: $$$) which has a higher fat content than most. After gaining three pounds at her 2009 exam, the vet hinted that maybe she needs a little help on the diet front.

The vet suggested that we hide little piles of food throughout the house to simulate her natural urge to hunt. Okay, first of all, who has the time? Secondly, besides the fact that she's still a scavenger, Sophie is totally down with the domesticated lifestyle. Seriously, have I mentioned that she rare expends the energy to eat sitting up?



We ignored the issue for awhile, but then I saw a news story about a cat that was taken away from its home because it had grown to 30 pounds and this was seen as a sign of neglect. (More like over-loving, if you ask me.) Sophie is no where near 30 pounds…yet. Instead of hiding food around the house, I started rationing how much dry food she got in the morning, and then I give her a second round of dry food after work, with a partial can of wet food. She is less than happy with me, and usually has her food dish cleaned out within 15 minutes.

She breaks into the squirrels' peanuts when she can get the cover loose, and will even get the top off of her food canister when she finds that it isn't sealed securely. While we eat, her eyes follow the path of the fork from our plates to our mouths. Sophie has not learned moderation in all the months that she's been dieting. Even though she's still very active, she always looks hungry, and I didn't rescue a cat just so she could feel deprived.

Yet, she ISN'T. This cat does not want for anything other than gluttony. Nick was awarded a gift certificate at work, and he has decided to use the money to buy an electric cat feeder. You fill five compartments with food and then set the timer to reveal a new compartment at specific interval. Man, and I thought that dieting for myself was difficult! I didn't have to deal with a pair of limpid eyes speaking ala Oliver Twist, "More, please?"



The night of and morning after my surgery, all I could hear was a cat puking. If you've ever owned a cat, you know the sound. Being in the post anesthesia gloom that always consumes me, I kept thinking, "Great. Now I'm sterile and my cat is dying." Typically, Sophie never has tummy issues, so we are thinking that she found something to eat that she shouldn't have. Was it the orchid that she literally deflowered, or the cinnamon-scented pine cones on the table? Was it a piece of rubber from a shoe or something she dragged out of a garage basket? Hard to say with this cat, eating will be her demise.