A shout out for the Butcher in Carrefour!

(which may seem like a bizarre title for a post, but read on…)

As you may know, as I’ve mentioned it a bit recently, I feed the poor cats who live near the HLM housing in our village. They came to my notice when we were looking for George (still no sign. Sad face) because there is one who looks very like George, but also because it was obvious that there was someone else feeding them, who perhaps didn’t have much money, as the cats would often have plain pasta or mashed potato in the big plates that were put out by the kennel/ rabbit hutch affair. Now we’re not rolling in readies, but I can certainly afford a couple of tins of cat food and a bag of croquettes each week, so I started feeding the cats a couple of times a week, with cat food, and rejected cat food (from our fussy beasts) and any scraps we had.

Yesterday evening I went out to see the cats at about 6.30 when we got back from work and they were SO happy to see me! They were flocking to see me – usually they won’t come near until the food is down & I have retreated some distance away, but last night I was tripping over them. They were very hungry. Sadly I only had one can of food, mixed with biscuits, which didn’t go very far. I was able to fill up the croquette tray as well, but I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t brought more food.

So this morning I went to Carrefour to buy some more food to give them tonight, and I had a thought about buying a cheap cut of meat for them. So I went to the boucherie counter, and thought maybe he has some scraps…So I explained that I fed the stray cats and asked if he had any scraps of meat or fat I could have. He gave me what must have been about 3 kg of scraps – mostly solid fat, but also with bits of meat hanging off as well – completely free! I bought some liver too – relatively cheap, at 1.45€ for 2 big slices – which I’ve cooked up for their dinner tonight. The scraps were all cut up, and put in the slow cooker with some water and some rice – once the meat is cooked, I will put it in the freezer, so there’s a good supply of meaty goodness to mix with the possibly not-so-meaty- goodness of the cat food! I cooked the liver, and then put water in the pan, and cooked up some pasta to soak up the juices that were left. With a tin of food this should make a banquet fit for a Poor Cat! (or 10) Pomme was very interested as I was cutting up the liver, and may have received quite a few snippets!

So a big fat dormouse shout out to the generous butcher !

I am very sure that the Poor Cats will be very, VERY grateful!

I’ve named this cat Nikki, after the cat that my nan used to have. I’m slowly naming them all – there’s Red (the George look-alike), Nikki, Sophie (looks like a Sophie-cat we used to have), Barney, Smudge, Gobbolino, Binkie and Patch. There are still more, but they’re not named yet.