Sunshine Story – Of Costco and Cats - May 16, 2021
It’s a Sunday morning. I should be at church – but for reasons of covid, I am not.
So what AM I doing? Or rather, what was I doing up until now?
Working on a Master (Mistress?) Shopping List! I’m trying to shift our main grocery shopping over to the Costco Business Centre for a variety of reasons including:
Why a Master / Mistress Shopping List? Because when I walk through those doors, my forebrain stops working and whatever part of the brain that says, “Buy all the things!” kicks in. I don’t know how they do it, but the way things are done at Costco, I find myself putting into our shopping cart – or wanting to:
I could go on for a very long time, but suffice it to say that currently our fridge, freezer, kitchen cupboards, and pantry are completely filled with things we don’t really need. Or do need, but won’t need now for a very long time, because of Costco sizing.
I need to have a list and stick to it.
(But dagnabbit, how does one walk past items like 3 litres of olive oil, 5 pounds of garlic powder, 2.5 litres of marinara sauce, 1 12-pack of kimchi noodle soup, one and a half litres of Frank’s hot sauce, 3 pounds of whole grain cheerios – for the ratlets, 3 litres of pitted olives, and 3 2-lb bags of dried cranberries! Turns out, I don’t. Hence, the list!)
*****
I became a Costco shopper in Sudbury. It was on the other side of town – which for a Torontonian would feel like a block away. But me – because I hate driving – it was a big deal. What got me started there? The super cheap prices for their multi-cat clumping litter and for their Kirkland premium dry cat food.
You have to remember (or I need to tell you) I ran a cat shelter out of my home for many years – working with the Rainbow District Animal Shelter. During those years there were always more cats than homes, so I would bring the felines that were not getting adopted to our house. For fixing and then adoption. I had quite an elaborate set up and I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say, doing this wasn’t cheap. Where I could save money, I did.
Having that many cats eating that much food and using that much litter does end up with many garbage bags of what I’ll politely call “waste.” So every second week or so, hubs and I would do a “dump run.” The Sudbury dump was conveniently located near the Costco, so we could kill two birds with one stone. And – given the number of seagulls at that dump – if I’d thrown a rock, I’d likely have hit a few!
One day a savvy dump attendant noted the number of times we were coming to the dump, and the weight of the load. She said, “This is more than is normal for a household. Are you sure this isn’t commercial waste?” Dropping off household waste was free. Dropping off commercial garbage – there was a definite fee for this.
And then she noted the sign on our van “Small Things – Arts, Books, Crafts, & Delights” and it featured a picture of a Maneki-Neko – the Good Luck Cat. Small Things started out as an artsy store and then morphed into a cat adoption centre. Small Things was pretty well known in the city since we had regular stories in the community newspaper and I had a weekly cat-related humor column called … you guessed it … “Small Things.”
I fessed up. I said, “Yes, some of this garbage is from Small Things, but I bring it home. So, it’s truly from our home.”
She gave me the fish eye and let me know they would be monitoring our levels... But things worked out fine. Around that time we moved the shop from a location that didn’t have a dumpster to a place that did. So our trips to the dump were less frequent.
*****
I give my hubs a lot of credit. It takes a certain amount of «je m'en fiche» to drive around in a van that has a large picture of a beckoning kitty on it and has the words “Small Things” in GIGANTIC letters beside it.
When we gave son Tom our van, the first thing he did - after cleaning and deodorizing it - was remove the decals!
So what AM I doing? Or rather, what was I doing up until now?
Working on a Master (Mistress?) Shopping List! I’m trying to shift our main grocery shopping over to the Costco Business Centre for a variety of reasons including:
- Good enough prices
- Great quality products
- Staff are better paid and working conditions are better at Costco compared to many grocers, and certainly to W*lM*rt and *m*zon
- It’s close by
- They don’t have a self checkout line – at least not yet
- Jasper finds it mildly entertaining, though complains that this Costco doesn’t offer a gigantic hot dog. This is true…
Why a Master / Mistress Shopping List? Because when I walk through those doors, my forebrain stops working and whatever part of the brain that says, “Buy all the things!” kicks in. I don’t know how they do it, but the way things are done at Costco, I find myself putting into our shopping cart – or wanting to:
- a box of 48 veggie burgers. Our entire apartment sized freezer would be hard pressed to accommodate this purchase.
- a humongous box of tomatoes. OK. This one we did. We will be eating tomatoes with pretty much every meal until I figure out a strategy for extra tomatoes.
- The biggest bag of Lays potato chips you can image. OK, we put TWO of these in because – you never know – there could be a potato famine. I’m part Irish. I take my potatoes very seriously.
- a box of four large boxes of orange juice. Actually, we may be able to fit this into our fridge because Costco carries soya milk that doesn’t have to be refrigerated.
I could go on for a very long time, but suffice it to say that currently our fridge, freezer, kitchen cupboards, and pantry are completely filled with things we don’t really need. Or do need, but won’t need now for a very long time, because of Costco sizing.
I need to have a list and stick to it.
(But dagnabbit, how does one walk past items like 3 litres of olive oil, 5 pounds of garlic powder, 2.5 litres of marinara sauce, 1 12-pack of kimchi noodle soup, one and a half litres of Frank’s hot sauce, 3 pounds of whole grain cheerios – for the ratlets, 3 litres of pitted olives, and 3 2-lb bags of dried cranberries! Turns out, I don’t. Hence, the list!)
*****
I became a Costco shopper in Sudbury. It was on the other side of town – which for a Torontonian would feel like a block away. But me – because I hate driving – it was a big deal. What got me started there? The super cheap prices for their multi-cat clumping litter and for their Kirkland premium dry cat food.
You have to remember (or I need to tell you) I ran a cat shelter out of my home for many years – working with the Rainbow District Animal Shelter. During those years there were always more cats than homes, so I would bring the felines that were not getting adopted to our house. For fixing and then adoption. I had quite an elaborate set up and I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say, doing this wasn’t cheap. Where I could save money, I did.
Having that many cats eating that much food and using that much litter does end up with many garbage bags of what I’ll politely call “waste.” So every second week or so, hubs and I would do a “dump run.” The Sudbury dump was conveniently located near the Costco, so we could kill two birds with one stone. And – given the number of seagulls at that dump – if I’d thrown a rock, I’d likely have hit a few!
One day a savvy dump attendant noted the number of times we were coming to the dump, and the weight of the load. She said, “This is more than is normal for a household. Are you sure this isn’t commercial waste?” Dropping off household waste was free. Dropping off commercial garbage – there was a definite fee for this.
And then she noted the sign on our van “Small Things – Arts, Books, Crafts, & Delights” and it featured a picture of a Maneki-Neko – the Good Luck Cat. Small Things started out as an artsy store and then morphed into a cat adoption centre. Small Things was pretty well known in the city since we had regular stories in the community newspaper and I had a weekly cat-related humor column called … you guessed it … “Small Things.”
I fessed up. I said, “Yes, some of this garbage is from Small Things, but I bring it home. So, it’s truly from our home.”
She gave me the fish eye and let me know they would be monitoring our levels... But things worked out fine. Around that time we moved the shop from a location that didn’t have a dumpster to a place that did. So our trips to the dump were less frequent.
*****
I give my hubs a lot of credit. It takes a certain amount of «je m'en fiche» to drive around in a van that has a large picture of a beckoning kitty on it and has the words “Small Things” in GIGANTIC letters beside it.
When we gave son Tom our van, the first thing he did - after cleaning and deodorizing it - was remove the decals!