Fat

The Husband calls him "Pork Floss."

"He's fat," M said.

"He's fat," said I.

It took me a long while to understand that M and I mean vastly different things when we say the same 3 words. M means it as a compliment. That person or pet is well fed, prosperous and in the pink of health. When I say these 3 words,  I mean...

- Heart disease.
- Pre-diabetes.
- Metabolic syndrome.

M's life goal is to make us and all our pets fat. My life goal is to ensure we all stay lean and muscular.  These 2 goals conflict. Before we even recognised that there was conflict, we went through years of misunderstanding. I pointed out that Milo was getting fat, meaning that M should feed him less food. M took it to mean that she had done a good job feeding Milo, and fed him even more!

Milo put on 5 kgs before I questioned her exactly how much food Milo was getting. I asked her to halve the portions. This did not quite work because M was so very proud of our fatter dog. So, she took liberties with the word "half." Perhaps, the Myanmese notion of half is not quite mine either?

Milo only started losing weight when we weighed his food and told M to only give 600g at each meal. Then, Milo was NOT to snack.

The same issue is cropping up with Pistachio. Pistachio gets 300g at each meal. However, M complains that he is too thin. M gave the issue a rest when Pistachio grew fluffy. She was very pleased because Pistachio looked fluffy fat, and that could be credited to the high quality care given to him by M.

Meanwhile, I kept worrying that Pistachio was too fat. Then, when we brought Pistachio to the groomers, I was very pleased. Pistachio is very lean. M is not happy. She said, "Can feed more or not?"

Of course not!

Look at the tiny waistline!