Make a Cat Scratching Post for FREE

So, yesterday I made a scratching block for my cats, in under 20 minutes, just like the ones I've seen at pet stores for up to $25 (see below). For absolutely free. And it's double-sided!



















Materials:

• corrugated cardboard (from shipping inserts, old cardboard boxes, etc.) If you don't have any around, ask at your local corner store or grocery store if they have any extras lying around. That's what I did.
• duct tape
• scissors or a box cutter
• ruler
• pen or pencil
• glue (regular school glue works just fine)

Directions

1. Take apart your box so you are left with flat pieces of cardboard.
2. With your ruler and pencil, measure and mark 2" strips, the desired length of the scratcher. (Mine is roughly 18" long because that's how long my boxes were once I disassembled and flattened them.)
3. Cut out the strips. Don't worry about creases. They don't matter.
4. Keep cutting out strips until you have enough, when stacked on top of one another and smashed together, to make the desired width of your scratcher. Mine ended up being about 6" wide. Next time I might make it a bit wider.
5. Once all your strips are cut, it's time to glue them together. Put a generous line of Elmer's on your first strip, lay another on top and repeat for the rest of the strips, making sure they're lined up evenly and working quickly so your glue doesn't dry yet.
6. Duct tape each end together to hold them in place and then place a couple of bricks or something else heavy on top of the whole thing to compress it and help the glue set.
   
7. Wait 10-15 minutes, remove the bricks, duct tape 2 layers around the whole thing to secure it, and you're done.
   

Tips:

• As a treat, sprinkle some catnip on the scratcher every once in a while.
• I find my cats like the scratcher best either on carpet or a rug; otherwise it can slide while they're scratching--unless they're sitting on top of it like Ed likes to do.

Pet Food: Save Money (and your pet's health) by Preparing Your Own

For years our cats were accustomed to eating the rather expensive Nutro brand dry cat food. But after moving to a small town, we found it quite difficult to find dry food for our cats, period, let alone good food that doesn't contain animal meal, by-products, or tons of corn and other grain fillers that cats don't need in their diets.

Turns out the unavailability of cat food here has been a blessing in disguise.

First we gradually switched them from their regular dry food to canned tuna, but after some research found that an all-tuna diet, especially canned tuna prepared for human consumption, can be unhealthy for cats over time.¹ Since the dry food we have access to isn't good for them and feeding them tuna all the time isn't either, we were back to the drawing board. After some more research we decided to switch our cats to a raw diet—well, partly raw. We now feed them either small chunks of raw chicken or boiled fish (boiled because still more research showed that raw fish may be unhealthy for cats². The jury seems to be out on that claim, however, as many raw feeding advocates seem to think raw fish is just fine.³

The new diet has been a great decision for us and for the cats. They've been on their new diet for about three months now, and they're clearly thriving. Their coats are shinier, they have tons of energy, and Esmie's little dandruff problem has completely cleared up, all on its own. We now save on the exorbitant price of high-end (read: barely decent) cat food—our old dry cat food of choice costs around $14 for a 4-pound bag and contains a large amount of unnecessary grain filler.⁴ Best of all, the cats love their new meals so much more.

What We Buy, How We Buy
Our local fishmonger sells fish scraps for about $1.50 a kilo (68 cents a pound). Try asking for leftovers or scraps from your fish retailer or at the seafood section in your supermarket. They may not be as cheap as they are here in Costa Rica, but they'll be much cheaper than, for instance, fillets. Be aware, however, that very large fish such as tuna, salmon, tilefish, and king mackerel may contain high levels of mercury and other dangerous toxins since they are at the top of the fishy food chain.

Chicken gizzards and "cuts" also run cheap. Here, the gizzards (or "extras": liver, heart, and other organs) also go for about $1.5o a kilo (68 cents a pound), while the "cuts" (pieces of wings, legs, and thighs) are about $3 a kilo ($1.36 a pound). You should be able to find these for cheap at any butcher shop.

Preparation
Our cats seem to prefer the chicken livers and hearts, but it's often worth it to me spend the extra $1.50 to avoid juggling those slippery organs. As for preparation, I cut off all the meat from the bones, separate the pile of meat into small meal-sized piles, and then package and freeze the meals individually. Upon butchering, I discard the bones or give the cats a large bone each as a snack (and as a reward for controlling themselves while I handle all that delicious raw meat in front of them). Each day we thaw a meal for breakfast and one for dinner. We never freeze or cook the bones; we've learned these can both cause them to splinter easily, which could create a choking hazard.⁵

Savings
For our cats, each kilo of chicken or fish meat yields roughly 10 meals, about 1/2 cup per meal. So if we feed the cats fish or chicken gizzards, we spend about 15 cents per meal, and if we feed them chicken cuts, we spend about 30 cents per meal. We rotate the three types of meat on a fairly regular basis, so the average price per meal is about 20 cents.

Compare that to the cost of our old Nutro brand kibble—about 60 cents per meal, according to their suggested serving size—and we're saving quite a bit of money: 40 (depending on the type of meat) per meal, which comes out to nearly $25 a month per cat. I don't know about you, but saving $50 a month with little hassle and added health benefits for them sounds pretty cool to me.



Questions or thoughts about feeding raw or savings money on pet food? Leave us a comment!


Notes

1. According to PetEducation.com, a website of veterinarians Drs. Foster and Smith, "large amounts [of canned tuna formulated for human consumption] can cause malnutrition, since it lacks proper levels of vitamins and minerals." http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=1&aid=1029
   An article on Australia's CatWorld.com also cites human-grade canned tuna as a cause of yellow fat disease or steatitis. http://www.cat-world.com.au/steatitis-yellow-fat-disease-in-cats
   
2. The same article from PetEducation.com lists raw fish as dangerous for cats because it "can result in a thiamine (a B vitamin) deficiency leading to loss of appetite, seizures, and in severe cases, death. More common if raw fish is fed regularly." See also the article "Eight strikes against fishy feeding" at the Cat Nutrition Blog.
   
3. See for instance RawFedCats.org's "Practical Guide." ProVet.co.uk also considers fish to be "a good raw ingredient to incorporate into cat foods," but concedes that it "has certain draw backs."
   
4. Nutro Natural Choice Complete Care Ingredient List
5. See http://www.rawmeatybones.com/faq.php#CookedBones and http://www.rawfed.com/myths/bones.html
   

Additional References and Resources

1. Excerpt from "Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food." Ann N. Martin. NewSage Press (1997). Website of Jeff Feinman, VMD.
2. "The true horrors of pet food revealed: Prepare to be shocked by what goes into dog food and cat food." Jessica Smith. NaturalNews.com
   
3. "What's Really for Dinner? The Truth About Commercial Pet Food" Tina Perry, Animal Protection Institute. Reprinted from The Animals' Agenda Nov/Dec 1996.
   
4. "What’s Really in Pet Food" Born Free USA united with Animal Protection Institute. May 2007. An incredibly informative, thorough, and well-cited article.
5. "Pet Food Regulation" Jean Hofve, DVM. The Whole Dog Journal and Little Big Cat.
   
6. RawFedCats.org
7. RawFedDogs.net
8. RawLearning.com
9. Yahoo Raw Feeding Group
   
10. Yahoo Raw Fed Cat Group
    

Airline Tickets: Do the Extra Research, Save Extra Cash

Image via Wikipedia

Wren and I just purchased two international airline tickets for two adults at the absolute cheapest price we could find. About $270 apiece roundtrip. You might already know how to find budget airline tickets online on the cheap, but we thought we did too. Read on.

When shopping online, the overall idea is to REFINE and then REDEFINE your flight search until you find the lowest price. The following are tips on how to refine your online search. And it’s a compilation of things we'd been overlooking until now.

• Open many browser windows. A simple idea, but this is the easiest way to compare prices. Nearly all airline sites and ticket aggregator sites use the same type of ticket search, so it’s easy to refine your search. If you start to get confused by so many browser tabs, print out each window and compare the hardcopies.
  
  
• Try Vayama, a site that was new to us, and where we found our best price and saved an additional $30 with a coupon. Vayama often offers such coupons for same-day booking. No booking fee.

• Search airline sites, booking agency sites (like Expedia or Orbitz), AND aggregator sites (like Kayak or Vayama). Many booking agencies charge fees, and most aggregator sites do not. Once you’ve found the lowest fare, go directly to that airline’s site and compare prices. Sometimes booking directly through the airline can save you a few dollars. Hint: if you use Kayak, you can have it search Vayama, Priceline, and a few other aggregators as well.

• Try making one transaction/purchase per passenger in your group. For example, if two people are traveling together, don’t assume that you have to purchase two tickets with one credit card transaction. Instead, compare that price with the cost of purchasing two tickets separately. We found that, for some reason, booking flights separately saved us $15 each. Note: This might not be worth it if the flight is near full, and if there’s any doubt that all persons in your group can get a seat on the flight!

• Try departing from a major hub. But take all costs into consideration. We found that we could save quite a lot by departing from O’Hare, instead of from our local hub. The savings—while considering the time and gas spent driving to Chicago, lodging, and even parking—were well worth it. This option is especially applicable to international flights.

• Is your schedule flexible? Then experiment with departing on different days of the week. It is not always the case, but we found that departing on a Wednesday saved us more than departing on a Friday.

• Use cheap airlines? Not always. “Discount” airlines like Spirit and JetBlue often post astronomically low fares. But we found that, after taxes and fees, or after the price of membership, the total price of a discount airline flight can actually be more than the price of a similar major airline flight.

• Keep an eye on flight lengths and layover lengths. We could have saved $50 by choosing another airline, but the overnight layover wasn’t even close to worth it.
  

• Check the airline’s baggage policies before purchasing your tickets. Many airlines, such as Continental and U.S. Airways, are now charging for all checked bags, often $15 for the first checked bag, $25 for the second, and $100 for every bag after that. A few airlines, like American, however, still allow one or two free checked bags for some flights (in American’s case, you can check two bags for free on certain international flights). Estimate the number of bags you’ll need to bring, and factor their costs into the flight prices when comparing. The same goes for traveling with pets or other special needs. Find out the airline’s policy before you purchase tickets and factor in any additional costs.

Good luck and happy travels!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Practical Traveler: Grab Airfare Deals Now, or Wait? (travel.nytimes.com)
• Crazy rules you need to know before you travel (cnn.com)
• More than a yearlong wait for a refund (cnn.com)
• Tales of Woe - Airline Service (flightwisdom.com)

Cheap Tricks and Home Remedies

Just a quick post with some cool but unexpected home remedies and cheap tricks to improve your state of mind (and body):

1. Chew gum while you're trying to memorize things; it increases blood flow to the brain and can improve recall up to 40%.
   
   
2. If you spend a lot of time in front of the computer, help save your eyes some strain by doing this exercise every few hours. Look away from the monitor and slowly roll your eyes up and down and then side to side, three times each.
   
   
3. Caffeine is a natural antidepressant and can improve concentration. Get in in it's most potent and natural form: coffee. Just remember, all in moderation. Too much caffeine can have harmful effects on your nerves and body.
   
   
4. Peppermint, green apple, and banana scents have been found to curb appetite. Try taking a few whiffs of one of these essential oils when you crave unhealthy food.
   
   
5. Need to relax? Take deep breaths into your abdomen: place one hand on your stomach and inhale for six counts. Hold for three counts, then exhale slowly. Repeat this six to eight times. This move slows your heart rate and reduces stress hormone levels.
   
   
6. Did you know that owning at least one cat can lower your risk of a fatal heart attact by 40%? It's true. Get over to your nearest shelter ASAP and pick out a new best bud. You'll help your health and save a life! Remember: never buy from pet stores, don't even think about declawing, and always spay or neuter your pet.

Got any home remedies or know a good cheap trick we missed? Leave it in a comment below!



The above tips were taken from the March 2009 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

Moving? Save time and money with these great tips.

Image by Jenny Factory via Flickr

As many of you know, MDT and I just finished graduate school and moved from New England to the Midwest to spend the summer visiting family and traveling before we do the expat thing (me for the second time). We don't have a ton of stuff, but it was enough that we had to rent a moving truck to get it all to St. Louis (plus us and the two cats). Now, I've rented plenty of U-Hauls before, but this is the first time I used one to move long distance. Did you know that they wanted upwards of $800?? For a 10-foot truck?! The reason why it's so much, they say, is that federal law states that you can legally drive only so many hours a day (something ridiculous like 4). So if you need to rent a truck to go 1,163 miles, the rental company figures the miles per hour and makes the rental out for 6 days. Even if it only takes 2 days to do the actual drive—like it did for us—you're stuck paying for 6 days of rental time. We didn't have much choice, so we bit the bullet. But we were able to save a good deal of money, and without further ado, I'll get on with the sharing.

Packing and Prep
Whatever you do, don't buy packing supplies from moving companies—they're a total ripoff. If you need boxes, check with your local convenience or liquor store; they almost always have tons of boxes they'd love to get rid of. Packing tape is harder to come by, so if you must buy it, buy it from a dollar store. Places like Staples and Office Max like to charge outrageous prices for silly things like clear packing tape.

Trucks and Travel
Obviously if you hire movers, you'll be paying an arm and a leg, so go with self-moving rental trucks if possible. If you have lots of stuff or heavy furniture, enlist a couple of friends to help. For discounts on truck rentals, search coupon code sites. We found a 20% off code for Budget Trucks that saved us over $100 on our rental. Change of Address packets from the post office also often have coupons for movers and truck rentals. Pick up a packet long before your move. Also, midweek truck rentals are usually cheaper. We saved nearly$100 by picking up our truck on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.

Better yet, if you've got a friend or relative with a truck that's big enough, maybe they'll help out. Or if you're moving long distance but don't have a ton of stuff, check out rideshare options. Ridester and eRideShare.com will let you hook up with other travelers going your way. Gas is expensive, so splitting it is always a big money-saver.

Auto Insurance
When you rent a vehicle, you can choose to take their insurance coverage, called a waiver, use your own (if you have it), or take your chances. I'm a risk-taker normally, but with auto insurance I wouldn't recommend gambling, especially if you're going to be driving a big truck you're not used to for numerous hours. Even if you're a fantastic driver, many other people on the road aren't. And if they smack into your rental truck and don't have insurance to cover it, you're responsible for damages.

A lot of credit cards come with auto insurance benefits when you rent a car but not a moving truck. Call your credit card company to make sure. If your card benefits won't cover you, check with your regular auto insurance company. Often, the price for them to cover you for a few days of driving another vehicle, even a moving truck, will be significantly less than buying the rental company's waiver. State Farm added an "uninsured vehicle" clause to my policy for 6 days; it cost me $7. Budget's waiver would have cost exponentially more.

Route Planning
If you're a AAA member, take advantage of their free maps, triptychs, and regional guide books. The guides list hotels and attractions for each area along your route and include useful information about the hotels listed inside, such as whether they allow pets, offer free wifi, etc. If not, FreeTrip.com will map your route, let you choose options such as avoiding tolls or taking the scenic route, and can list gas stations, rest stops, national parks, and lodging (by price) on the way.

Food and Snackage
It's easy to spend a ton on food while roadtripping. If you stop to eat at restaurants, you lose valuable time; if you make a quick stop for fast-food or gas station snacks, you save some time but usually spend too much and end up with trans-fats in your belly. My advice is to pack your own meals and snacks. It's not that hard. We brought a small Rubbermaid tub, filled it partway with ice, and threw in some sliced cheese and veggies, a tub of hummus, and a couple of reusable water bottles. Then we packed a canvas bag with apples, bananas, pita bread, and tortilla chips. That gave us enough food for our two days on the road: sandwiches and fruit for meals, chips and veggies with hummus for snacking. I even brought a little tin of powdered tea mix in case we tired of water. And since we bought all our food (with coupons, of course) at the grocery store before we left, we saved time and money on the road.

Staying Overnight
Of course you could sleep in the cab at a truck stop if you're really low on cash, but I wouldn't advise it. For one, most rental moving trucks don't have reclining seats, and for two it can be dangerous. Sleeping in a parked vehicle can be an invitation to car jacking, especially if you're alone. If you don't feel like sleeping in the car or roughing it in a tent, you still have several inexpensive options: hostels, motels, and budget hotels. Hostels are likely your cheapest option, but they're not as plentiful as motels or hotels. Hosteling International's US site lists Hosteling International member hostels by state; Hostels.com lists them by region; and Hostel World by city/town. Once you've found one you want to stay at, it's worth calling them directly; sometimes you can get a better price that way. The same goes for motels and hotels you find via third-party search.

If you have a credit card with rewards, check the benefits—I was able to book two free nights along our route for MDT and I (and the kittens) with points from my AmEx card. Other membership organizations, such as AARP or professional or labor unions, may offer hotel discounts also. Leave no stone unturned.

Moving with Pets
Speaking of kittens . . . if you're traveling with pets, don't forget to bring enough food (and litter if necessary) during the drive and the first few days after you arrive. We brought a few cans of food (normally we feed them mostly dry food, but we worried they'd be too nervous to eat and thought we'd encourage them with wet food), a jug of litter and a small litter pan to set up in the hotel rooms, and their regular food and water dishes. If you'll be on the road most of the day, it's best to stop feeding the night before so they won't have to use the bathroom on the road. They should have access to water all the time, even on the road. If their carriers don't have attached water bowls, just offer them water in their regular dish when you stop for gas, or whenever. Ours cats were never interested in water, but it's important for it to be available to them, especially in warm weather. Also, if your pets don't do well in cars, talk to your vet about calming methods. Our vet recommended a small dose of Benadryl for my cat, who tends to hyperventilate if he's in the car for more than a few minutes, and that worked quite well. Never give your pet any medicine or supplement without first consulting your vet.

Be sure to check with your hotel before you book a room; make sure the hotel accepts pets and see whether they charge fees for lodging them. On the other hand, I'm not advocating breaking any rules, but it's usually pretty easy to sneak small, quiet pets like cats into motels or budget hotels, especially if there are multiple entrances. If you choose to do that, however, make sure you never leave them alone in the room, always keep the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, don't let them scratch the furniture, and clean up after them thoroughly.

Happy Trails!
Good luck on your move or traveling adventure. Hopefully you'll be as lucky as we were and find a huge bag of coins in the door of your rental truck ($40 worth)! It covered all our tolls and more. LOL.

If you have any money-saving moving tips, please comment below!

Thanks to Go Frugal for including this post in the Festival of Frugality and to Suburban Dollar for including it in the Money Hacks Carnival.