I went to Gelson’s today and they were fully stocked on my normal things but, because I love you guys, I went down the pet food isle for the first time ever. Damned if there wasn’t a lot of empty space and seemingly missing flavors in the cat food area. I also saw something that surprised me or maybe I’m missing something. The Beyond people make cat food now. I thought that cats were carnivores that had to have real meat.
Cats ARE obligate carnivores. I admit I don’t know a lot about Beyond products (unrepentant omnivore here), but I can’t see how certain necessary amino acids can come from a plant-based food. Taurine is one example I can think of.
Beyond cat food is part of the Purina line and grain free. It definitely is not vegetarian.
That’s a relief. I’ve heard of people trying to feed obligate carnivore pets (cats, fennec foxes, etc.) vegetarian/vegan diets based on the human’s dietary qualms. My position on that is if you’re morally opposed to meat being eaten, don’t get a pet that HAS to have meat to LIVE.
Yeah, I can see how that’d be concerning, but I think it’s like Dove chocolates and Dove soap, two separate companies with the same trademark name. I’ve fed it to my last two cats and the current two Beyond. They’ve had the chicken and salmon kinds and they do contain salmon and chicken not “salmon” and “chicken” 
I didn’t realize there were no plant-based sources of taurine. Apparently, in vegan humans, it’s unknown (but doubtful) that this makes any difference to health. But for cats or other obligate carnivores, I wonder if we could synthesize it in a lab.
Get yourself some rennet and start making your own flavored cream cheese. It’s a very simple process and tastes better than anything you can buy in the store. You can get rennet tablets at Safeway or Fry’s (baking supplies, small box, bottom shelf, usually around the raising agents) and about half the beer making stores carry the liquid (I like using the liquid better.) A lot of recipes call for CaCl2 but if you can’t find it, don’t worry about it. It helps break the milk down and slightly improves the flavor, but if you are going to be adding other flavors you really don’t need it.
Yeast has gone away in Prescott Valley. I don’t know when it went away because I don’t use it that often but its gone now.
Taurine is added to many cat foods anyway. I don’t know itssource, so vegan cat food might not. I’ll be back with a report.
ETA: I’m back. There’s a synthetic taurine that’s already the standard for use in commercial cat food.
I could not find canned cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. I looked in two stores. At store number two, I gave up and bought fresh cranberries.
I went to Ace Hardware in Prescott Valley AZ looking for a can of oxygen, which is usually on the same shelf as all the other canned gasses. The empty shelf was there and when asked the worker said they had no idea when they were going to get more and that I should call the other hardware stores before driving all over town to look at their empty shelves.
Here’s a weird one: we’re spending a couple days in another town near the end of the month. I thought we might like to visit a winery while we are there. One of the wineries I looked up had a notice on their website that their tasting room was closed - not because of Covid, but because they’ve run out of wine!
It’s the week after Thanksgiving, though. I imagine that both wine and cranberry sauce (Tarataratara’s hard-to-find) were bought at much greater rates in the past couple of weeks than most of the year.
Seeing some shortages, no regular oranges at grocery yesterday.
No rice noodles for stir fry, but I got a ramen type wheat noodle to sort of work.
I understand the supply chain issues, and the shortage of workers. That’s OK. I can still buy food.
But this just pisses me off - We have ONE grocery store in town. Been shopping there for 30 years. I know it’s marketing, impulse buying and such, but do you really need to switch the location of stuff? From one side of the aisle to the other, or the other end of the aisle? THAT seems ridiculous. Yeah, it’s in aisle 3, but now it’s on the other side at the other end.
It’s MUCH more crowded now because people can’t find things and have to wander around searching for them. This is not a good idea in a pandemic. I used to be able to target what I need, get it, and get out.
Ten minutes of shopping is now 20 or 30 minutes.
I did note yesterday at Walmart that paper goods and cleaning supplies looked pretty OK, but cat food was a bit scary. Glad I’ve got plenty of backup stashed for the Princess, and bird food’s not a challenge.
Bird food’s not a challenge, yet, but it could change unexpectedly like the tropical fish food situation. Please do yourself a favor and buy an small extra container of it while you can. You don’t want to spend a night looking for food like I had to for my fish.
I still don’t understand the cat food issue. It’s been going on for months, but dog food seems unaffected?
I give my bird a custom mix from the bulk section of a favored grocery store (oat groats, wheat kernels, and raw sunflower seeds). Prepacked bird food contains a lot of millet, and based on observing my current bird and her predecessor, doves do not like millet. She’s got a good supply in stock currently, but you’re probably right that more wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Can’t say about dog food, since I usually don’t check that section, not having a dog.
I can tell y’all right now that cat food (both dry kibble & canned) is weird. Wal-Mart usually has some of both, but it’s disconcerting to walk into Meijer (the “better” store) and see an entire aisle of barren shelves where the canned cat food normally goes.
Speaking of Wal-Mart, today they were entirely out of gallon drinking water. They only had the little “I hate the environment” bottles, and gallons of distilled water (great for humidifiers and CPAPs, not so tasty for drinking.)
I live in Michigan (motto: “Land of Questionable Municipal Pipes”) and have seen the interior of the pipes to my current rental house thanks to some unrelated plumbing issues, so … yeah, imma buy my drinking water, kthxbye.
After muttering into my mask (“Fine! But this mother-earth-loving hippie doesn’t hafta LIKE it”) I gave up and got the damn individual bottles.
Supplies of name brand diet soda are still sketchy around here. Caffeine-free Diet Coke, forget about it.
After stressing over fud for Little Shit (yes, that’s her name), I broke down and surrendered to an omnipresent ad on my Facebook for her favorite kind, delivered.
I have two Asian markets near me. I prefer one over the other - it’s cleaner and everything is very easy to find. They do tend to have fewer brand options. The other is a mess, and I try not to go there if I don’t have to.
We went to the first one figuring of course they’d have a particular brand of rice vermicelli noodles. Ng Fung is to rice noodles like Sargento is to cheese.
A few other sized noodles, absolutely no vermicelli.
In fact, in many aisles there were chunks of empty shelves. Maesri curry paste? Empty. SE Asian candies? Nope. Soup bases were very hit or miss.
We went to the other market and found the vermicelli. They also had lots of holes in stock. They had obviously done some shuffling as there were two completely empty rows at one end and signage didn’t match stock.
Rice stock was also very down. During the worst of the pandemic, rice was no where to be found, period. You’d hear a rumor of a shipment and people would wait overnight in hopes the rumor was true. Luckily, it’s not that bad, yet.