Luna

Since Tiger's passing, Luna has been very sad and quiet.  She has been hanging out in all of Tiger's favorite hidey-holes.  She's not been as talkative as usual. She's been disappearing for long periods of time, and when I find her, she's in one of Tiger's favorite quiet spots.  Because of this, we decided to take her to the vet.  We wanted to make certain that she is healthy, and find out what we can do to help make her adjustment to a life without Tiger a little bit easier.

Our amazing vet spent a half an hour with Luna, talking with her, cooing at her, giving her some awesome scritches and asking us questions.  Once Luna gets through her kitty mourning, she will be fine.  We don't know how long her mourning will last, but we need to keep her as happy and content as possible.  And we need to keep her challenged.

Our vet then shared with us information about Enrichment toys for cats.  These aren't the same as chew toys for dogs - or even catnip toys (of which she has many).  No, these are food puzzles.  It seems that cats in the wild only catch 15% of the food that they hunt.  Thus, they are able to keep themselves slim and trim.  In our house, the cats only have to walk over to the food dish and eat their fill.  It's seemed to be a good method, but Luna needs more stimulation right now, and she needs to lose a few of those little pounds that she has recently gained.

And so, we've spent the past couple of days making food puzzles for her.  Right now, she has an open egg carton filled with food.  She has to put her paw into the egg holes and get her food out.  We have each little cup filled a little over halfway with food.  She puts one paw down in the lid of the egg carton to hold everything still while she fishes for her food. 

We've been working on making the next one right now.  We've taken a small water bottle and cut a couple of holes in the sides.  The idea is that we'll put her food in the (empty) water bottle and leave it in the spot where the egg carton is now.  She'll have to bat it around in order to get the food out.  Our goal is to eventually have enough different kinds of enrichment feeders that we'll be able to put a new one out every day for two weeks without repeating anything.

If you'd like to find out more, you can follow this link that our vet gave us:
http://foodpuzzlesforcats.com/