Associated Wholesale Groceries Cat Food Letter

Mr. Steve Dillard or
Someone in Management
Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc.
P.O. Box 2932
Kansas City, Kansas 66106
June 27, 2007


Reference: Always Save Cat Food.


Dear Steve or Sirs or Madams;

I am writing in reference to your Always Save Cat Food, the stuff in the yellow bag. This particular bag I am writing about is of the 18lb size.

First, let me emphatically state that I am not looking for free coupons, assurances of high quality, corporate “gosh I am sorry letters,” and for goodness sakes, no phone calls. I am simply writing to let you know about my experiences with your product. I thought you should know.

What on earth do you people put into this stuff? We have four feral cats living on our place here north of Springfield. We feed these cats simply because we feel sorry for them and I have not the heart to shoot them. Also, by feeding them, they have turned so lazy that they refuse to hunt the birds around the place, which, for us, is a good thing as it is for the birds too. In addition to these cats (which, by the way, we feed on the back porch), we also feed several raccoons, a number of possums and several critters I have yet been able to identify.

I picked up a bag of your cat food the other day. It was $4.99 which seemed a decent price at the time. I came home, filled the dishes for the cats with the new food, taking

great care to mix it with the food we had previously been feeding them, and placed their dishes in the usual place. I waited. I waited several hours. Nothing. This is quite unusual, as normally, when the cats hear the pans being filled, there is a mad scramble.
Later that evening I sat on the porch with my Dr. Pepper, which is my usual practice each evening. First came Good Kitty, the boldest of his tribe. Good Kitty sniffed the food, looked at me reproachfully, sniffed again and the stalked away. Over the next hour all three of his mates came in their turn (did you know that cats actually have a pecking order much like chickens?). Each cat’s reaction was much the same. This behavior went on for four days. They NEVER did eat the food. This is not the worse though.

Buttercup, the wild coon who lives in our barn and comes and sets with me each evening after she eats, came just at dusk. Buttercup sniffed the food. Sniffed it again and then came over and tapped me on the leg with her paw. I ignored her. She went back to the food, sniffed it and then sniffed it again. This time she climbed up into the chair which sets beside mine, and I swear, glared at me for fifteen minutes. She got down, went to the bowls, took one small nibble, glared at me over her shoulder again, and then, and this is the truth, reached under the dish and dumped the whole thing and went stomping off to the barn. This same behavior has been displayed four nights in a row now. But wait, there is even worse!

At ten that night (you can set your clock by it) Mary and Mary II, the two possums came to the porch. Like the coon, they have established a trusting relationship with me, which I cherish, and I enjoy talking to them while they eat. Both Mary and Mary II took one sniff of the stuff, i.e. the cat food, and turned to glare at me, and for a possum, this is a neat trick, as they look like they are glaring all the time anyway. Mary II even hissed at the bowl, a behavior she has never displayed before. This has gone on for four nights now. Now I have no idea how much you know about possums, but I can assure you I know quite a lot. I can also assure you that there is not much on this earth that a possum will not eat. I mean we are talking ten day old road kill, rotten vegetables, cat scat, bugs, and even their own young, when in a tight spot. Something is amiss here folks!

As a side note – I also dropped a hand full of this stuff in the bird feeder (actually a board tailed to a tree in our yard, nothing fancy, mind you) for the Blue Jays who dearly love cat food. Four days later…you guessed it, the food is still there!

But, as with all things, there is an upside to all of this. Each year my wife Connie and I purchase a tin of dried coyote urine to sprinkle around the vegetable garden. This is a very effective way of stopping the various critters from stripping the place. This urine costs $16.50 a tin. Rather a stiff price, as I am sure you will agree. This year though, we plan to save some money! We plan to sprinkle a bag or two of the Always Save Cat Food around. I am convinced it will be just as effective, if not more so, than the Coyote urine in keeping the pests away. We pray it will not kill the cabbages and green beans as we dearly love them.



Yesterday, while at the store, I bought a bag of another brand of cat food. Again, a brand the animals have never been feed. Last night I filled three bowls. The three bowls of the new food were gone before 10:00 o’clock, at which time I refilled them. This morning all the bowls were clean again. Peace has been restored. The animals are grateful. Even the Jays were not as quarrelsome as usual this morning. I can now, again, enjoy my chats with the coon and the possums and not be racked with guilt.

It is no big deal, just thought you should know.