"Which one do you want?"

"How about the one in the back, the one I didn't make eye contact with..."

Our older cat, Tuxedo, has been ill of recent. Actually, his affliction was first noticed back in November before we left for Asia, which would be 2013. This February something else came along and brought him close to the end, and after that was resolved, he's back to the weird and unknown ailment that we're trying to deal with.

Corrie's intent on eliminating food-allergy as the reason for his suffering (beyond food allergy, the causes are barely treatable), and this has us trying to find "novel" proteins.

A novel protein is one that animals have not been exposed to recently. Most cat foods are made of chicken, beef, white-fish and pork. We've tried all sorts of stuff in the last seven months: pheasant, turkey, lamb (barf-city), and bison.

One thing we did try, but it had been a while, was rabbit, but in the form of raw frozen hockey pucks that needed to be dealt with a bit. This was during the "raw diet" period.

On this most recent attempt, we decided to back with rabbit. We found a butcher two miles away that sold rabbit, so I rode my bike over to the place to procure some. One. Whatever, really, I wasn't quite sure how it would work.

I was planning on boiling it until it was soft enough to pull with little effort, then adding the tuarine and calcium, reducing the last of the stock until it was gooey and adding it back.

When I got to the butcher, which was a bodega owned by Bangladeshis with a back area for chicken (et al) butchery with two guys and one girl (all Latino), I went to the back and asked for conejo. One guy came over, printed out the ticket, and pointed me over to the register. I had to pay the fifteen bucks before they would move on the rabbit.

I paid, returned, and the guy waved me back. "Back there?" I questioned. He just nodded and motioned again. Through the swinging doors and into the cutting and washing area, through another set of doors into a small muggy room with huge steaming kettles, and then through another set of doors. 

Inside this last room the first thing I saw were the live chickens, dozens of them, in pens. As I moved into the room I started to notice the pigeons and the quails. The guy pointed to a pen behind me, above my left shoulder. I turned.

Inside were two terrified white rabbits. The guy said, "Which one do you want?"

"Uh, how about the one in the back..." and as he was grabbing it like Elmer Fudd with Bugs, under my breath I said, "...the one I didn't make eye-contact with..."

I told Corrie about it later and she almost teared up. I've been back a few times since and they haven't had me play Death again. 

Hopefully Tux comes out of this soon enough. The things we do for our pets...right?