Ok – a serious story for your Monday evening, an allegory if you will. I have a cat named Ola Kimmy. I got her from a friend of my sisters (I can hardly say no to an animal) and she’s a very small cat. So small that we misjudged her age and didn’t get her fixed in time. So I also have three of Kimmy’s children (all are spayed now).

Kimmy is kind of an annoying cat. She meows a lot and is pretty creepy – like I’ll suddenly turn around in my house to find her perched on top of something staring at me. One day, however, Kimmy’s behavior became more erratic and weird than usual. She started meowing louder and more frequently, really more like a scream. Soon she stopped eating her cat food and got really, really skinny. She got a wild look in her eye. Then I kept finding her hiding behind a large fruit basket on our counter (cats on the counter are a big no-no in our house).

One day, when I went to shoo her off of the counter, I noticed lots of aluminum wrappers strewn about where she had been perched. They were empty and crinkled and I rolled my eyes at how nasty my husband was for leaving candy wrappers on the counter when the trashcan is two feet away. The next day, Kimmy is back on the counter in the same spot and this time, when I approached her, I could see that SHE was actually eating something in an aluminum wrapper – old Easter chocolate, forgotten about in the bottom of our fruit basket. I shood her away, cleaned up her mess, and googled what happens to cats who eat chocolate.

Basically, chocolate is like meth for cats. It causes irritability, excitability, weight loss (due to refusal to eat cat food) or weight gain (if they eat too much), seizures, and possibly even death. So I removed all chocolate from open areas of the house and set about detoxing my drug-head cat. The first couple of days were difficult. She wouldn’t eat and just screamed a whole bunch. I finally got her to eat a little canned food (not what they typically get) and within a week, she was back to eating her normal stuff and drinking water. Within a couple of weeks, she had gotten back to a healthy looking weight and became more calm and quieter. Now, she’s back to her normal, slightly irritating old self again.

My sisters still refer to her as Crackhead Kimmy behind her back but Kitty Detox was a serious business in our house for a few weeks. But really, Kimmy’s story can teach us the importance of thinking about what we put in our bodies and noticing the effects. Since starting Whole30, I can’t pass up reading a label and I’m truly horrified that most of what I used to consume isn’t even food. My new mantra for food ingredients is this: If you can’t pronounce it and have never seen it, don’t eat it. We really have to start thinking about what we consume.

And to do that, here’s a list of the ten most common “food” additives and the harmful affects they have on our bodies:

http://rense.com/general86/ppos.htm

P.S. I know you guys are probably picking up the phone to call animal protective services right now, but I also had another food emergency when my dog ate half a pack of Oreos. The vet assured me that she may have diarrhea but would otherwise be fine because Oreos actually don’t have much chocolate in them at all. In fact, chocolate and cocoa are pretty far down on the list of ingredients – behind HFCS, of course.

TL;DR: I detoxed my addict cat and here’s what we ate today:

Sarah:

B – scrambled egg bake with spinach and sausage

L – t was a fridge cleaning-out day so – leftover taco mix and cauliflower, burnt okra, and half an apple (I shared one with Tom, who joined me for lunch today)

D – turkey meatloaf minis and mashed sweet potatoes with cinnamon and a little almond milk

S – a handful of nuts, boiled egg, and 2-3 homemade apple chips

Lindsey:

B – banana

L – salad greens w/ carrots and honeydew slices

D – pork sausage

S – grapefruit, 2 boiled eggs

Caitlin:

B – banana, walnuts, and almond milk ( i cant stop!) l

L – leftover almond breaded chicken strips with sweet potato fries and paleo ketchup

D – paleo shepards pie

S – dried fruit and an orange

SALICA