Wow - is it really a year since my last post? Golly - your teenagers must be hungry by now.
Feeding your pets can be a tricky business. It is important you get it right. Firstly there are two varieties. Hopefully when you left the hospital you kept the tag around their wrist. Somewhere on this tag is a small M or F. These stand for Munchy ravenously hungry insatiable beast that emptys entire fridges mysteriously in the dead of night, or Feather light bird that flits from plate to plate departing with only a lettuce leaf but simultanously can sniff out and devour large blocks of dark cacao from 200 yards.
If you have the first, you will need 2 appliances and 2 ordinary everyday grocery items.
Firstly, make sure you have an extra large deep freezer.
Stock this with an acceptable form of forzen food. In our case it was no-name brand meat pies, although dim-sims is an acceptable substitute.
Take a marker pen with you and mark a level at the top of the pile of junk food in the freezer.
Secondly you will need a microwave.
And lastly, make sure you have an extra large bottle of tomato sauce.
Now the key to successful feeding, is to invite your tenager to the table for meal times with the humans. Pretend he is part of the family and ignore the grunts and groans when he has to part from his technology and computer screen to come to the table. Don't worry about the fact that he pretends he is not hungry. When he withers like superman in front of kryptonite and melts off his chair at the sight of green on his plate, carry on normally.
Do not under any circumustances, mention anything about the bottle of sauce. This is a mistake for rookies. Do not talk about how it is supposed to be stored in the refridgerator. Do not express suprise about how every morning it mysteriously appears on the bench alongside a dirty plate. Because it has absolutley nothing to do with your teenager.
Just check the level in your freezer, and provided there is a gap between the mark and the top of the pies, your teenager is eating just fine.
If you have the second variety of teenager, you must adopt a modified approach. This is a little more tricky, it takes a little bit of extra effort and communication, but the effort is well worth it. There are a few sub-varieties of the F model and a myriad of variations between. Current models out there include the raw food and nuts omno loactarian dieter, the vegetarian, the vegan, the pescatarian, the vegetarian that believes chicken are vegetables, the demi-vegitarian and the flexitarian.
Basically, The F model may or may not eat anything. Once again the approach is to tear them away from either
a) reading about anguish stricken teenage girls staring mournfully at super powered vampires or werewolves
b) typing on exceptionally small screens meaningless phrases to other F models in far away places.
Once you have seperated them from distractions, also bring them to the table for a meal with the humans. Feed them a wide range of normal food and observe their behaviour over several weeks. Observe what it is they eat and what they don't eat. Record this carefully in a log. Once you have a list of acceptable items of food carefully compiled over several weeks you are ready to start shopping.
Beware though - you need to review your list on a weekly basis and update regularly. Spanish kalimata double pipped olives stuffed with green capsicum may be perfectly acceptable one week, only to be replaced by double smoked pink salmon with Argentinian artichokes the next.
If all else fails, cheese and chocolate seem to work so make sure you have a stockpile of these as emergency rations.
Good Luck and don't forget to smile at your teenagers
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