Today's entry is a small detour but important to share, it's the beginning of quitting meat and although small in length it's ultimately the beginning note to some big changes.
So I yakked on about eating/not eating dairy - paralling at the same time to this one of the most traumatic things happened to me.
Alone upstairs in our old house I heard this horrific shrieking/crying high pitched squawking coming from below. I ran downstairs to where my eyes met with Gremlin (our cat) and in his mouth, an amazing pale faced rosella – sad story ender, the bird died. I'm not sure I can explain the horror of that exact moment. Looking back, it was lucky our neighbours were hundreds of metres away because I was a blabbering screaming mess - I'm sure an Oscar winning performance or at least deserving of a police call. I kept screaming at Gremlin over and over to drop the bird like some madman but it was all too late. Sadness turned into anger and I couldn’t even look at gremlin or speak to him yet everyone around me assured me it wasn’t his fault it was just his nature. The irony being that for dinner that night I cooked myself a chicken pasta. The irony wasn't completely lost on me and I contemplated for about 3.4 seconds whether this made sense. Chicken is delicious though so I gave myself some solid reasoning :)
My main concern at that time was to stop the bird killing (the Gremlin bird killing) we tried a few things, extra bells, a slightly earlier then intended de-sexing, keeping him in at the key bird times, dawn and dusk but despite this over the next few weeks there were still a few close call bird incidents – all good story enders but we still needed a permanently solution. That solution came in the form of a cat bib – aka the bird life saver :)
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| A simple invention with a velcro top to latch onto your cat's collar. |
When we put the bib on I realised we were making Gremlin make a forced sacrifice so I endeavoured to play my part as well. I decided that I would no longer buy meat at the supermarket, I made a pact with myself that it was okay to eat meat out but I wouldn't directly contribute.
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| Gremlin with his cape aka Cat Bib. |
The first month of this plan was awful. I stuck to my word but found that all my favourite dishes had meat in them. I used to be one of those people who not only said I didn't eat much dairy but definitely said, shouting from rooftops that I didn't eat much meat. In hindsight, a slight misconception on my part there :P Being a fish, seafood but mostly chicken consumer, I read online that tofu was the perfect substitute for chicken. I simply started to cook all my meals with tofu instead. I tried so many ways of cooking tofu and they were all terrible. I’m not even an advocate against tofu (the Japanese do some amazing things) but the tofu at my supermarket combined with my cooking skills were making something awful!
So here I am, an 80% dairy consumer, an 80% non-meat consumer, on a balance beam, feeling pretty disheartened by my new restrictions and diet and let's be honest contemplating throwing it all in but then a chat with Elvis’s wife Bronwyn changed everything. Next time, I'm going to be introducing that scary word...
ETHICS!
(I told you this part was short but the next part is LOOONG!- well longish so be prepared)
