When I was a year old my mom heard a knock at the door and decided to go see who it was. It turned out it was a representative of a cable company asking everyone to sign a petition requesting that our isolated part of the mountain now be serviced with cable. Today it may seem odd to contemplate there was a time when cable did not exist everywhere, but back in 1979 many isolated placed did not have cable, and only a few people had satellite dishes. Most of us made due with an TV antennas that allowed us to get two or three stations out of Bakersfield, which was much farther way than the closer major networks that broadcast out of Los Angeles. With the transition to from analog to all digital broadcasts it is phenomenal to realize that a short while back cable was a novelty.

My mom was so engrossed with talking to the young man and signing the petition that she did not see me go out on the porch and start eating cat food. Being a toddler I remember thinking that was the perfect time to try it because no one was watching. The good news is cat food will not kill you, but I would not recommend consuming it as it does not taste very good. Many kids have ate cat food and live to tell the tale, so if you come home one night and discover your child ate cat food do not panic, they will be okay!

I will admit this was not the last time I ever tried this "delicacy", but at the time my mom was disgusted because we were vegans and did not even use eggs in the house. So as you can imagine your child eating cat food would be quite a shock. On top of that my mom was afraid that cat food might do permanent damage to a child, so she called my pediatrician just to make sure I would be okay. She laughs years later to think how she overreacted at the time, but when you are a new parent you have to learn these things.

The cat food incident is one of my earliest memories and I still recall my mom's horrorfied voice as she discovered me with a mouth stuffed with cat food. She rushed me to the sink and insisted I rinse the entire contents out of my mouth, and chided me for eating this horrible substance. It may be for the cat, but is sure was not for a human. At the time it seemed fun to me because the cats did it and I wanted to see what it was like. Unfortunately this would not be the last time I tried cat food, but it would be the last time my mom knew about it for along time. When I was about five an older friend came over and suggested we all eat some of the cat's food. My first childhood memory of my mom's horror to discover that I ate cat food ensured I would never share this event with her, or not until a much later date.

Once when I was seven I decided to experiment and see what it was like to be a dog and a cat. I put out two small paper plates with cat food and dog food on each respective plate, and I sampled a bit of each one. Part of my investigative research was to discover why dogs seemed to prefer cat food whenever they had the chance to sneak it, and why our cats were always sneaking dog food. At the time of my little taste test I concluded cat food tasted better and had a more fishy taste, whereas dog food was harder and more grainy. Years later I want to gag when I think back to the times I tried cat food, and my mom laughed when I shared this story with her tonight.