Do you feed your dog (or cat) your own food?

I am also a cat lover, and sadly for the last six months we are without a cat in the house after 43 years of married life. One of our cats would do anything for a piece of cheese, and we developed a routine of giving him just a tiny corner when preparing packed lunches. He was always in place at the same time each morning, and woe betide us when holidays intervened! Another cat, a Burmese, loved sweet food, which we never gave to him - one day he climbed up on the worktop and finished the remains of a rhubarb crumble I was saving for the next day.
We have also had one dog, who lived throughout my son's formative years. Nancy was a collie cross who had a mixture of scraps, tinned dog food and dog biscuits. I have never believed either dogs or cats can live happily on just dry biscuits, however well balanced.

It is easy to be anthropomorphic about our pets, but of course in the wild most animals have an extremely restricted diet, many species eating only one food item . I don't believe domestic pets need a varied diet either although I know some learn to like all kinds of foods.

One of my Burmese had a liking for socks and Arran sweaters. The other liked plastic bags. I loved them dearly but they were really hard work. However, I never found a cat to replace them. I'll never forget the first one I had; when she looked at me as a tiny kitten.... I'd never been scrutinised by a cat in that way before. She walked up my jeans, made her way up to my eyes and gazed into them as if trying to suss me out. I'll never forget that moment. Sadly she escaped onto the street when she was quite young and got run over by a car. Our house became Fort Knox after that, but it was hard work trying to keep cats indoors, even though they had their own enclosure outside.

What you realise looking back over a life looking after, or being allowed to look after cats, is that there are a lot of stories, which become family folklore. I have now started writing these stories down and every time when GD1 comes I have written a another story about Micky who was my first cat, and who was an alpha animal in the days when I didn't know what that was. He was a big black Bosscat and had a huge revier of cats who were frightened of him.

I enjoy these stories and refer to myself as Margaret in the story and my granddaughter is now realising that I was not always Grandma. I must add that there is only one GC who appreciates it all, as she writes poems and stories herself.

Our JR the lovely barney always parks himself in front of the oven when a chicken is roasting little mouth working away in antisipation of it jumping out of the oven into his bowl,he gives us no rest until the said bird has cooked and cooled down and he can have a slice in with his normal dried dog food,he will always eat the chicken first even though we now put it in the bottom of his dish,he will also sit by the fridge if the leftovers are put in there expecting a treat when the fridge is opened.
We had a cat who was half siamese who made it his business to help himself to many a hot piece of cooked meat from neighbouring houses during his lifetime,we never found out where he stole from and he never seemed to get caught by anyone we knew locally.

I have a miniature dachshund and a horror of those overfed little barrel specimens of the breed you see dragging their poor little tummies along the ground. With this in mind he is never fed biscuits or sweet treats but he is a great opportunist and 'vacuums' the kitchen on a regular basis! He does like apple and carrots, but his top favourite is if my OH comes home with a Chinese takeaway. Prawn Crackers are apparently what a dachshund was born to eat, thank goodness for those little stumpy legs...