Website jungles

During my time at the vet’s lately – see previous post about Humphrey – I’ve had time to look at what’s available for pets to eat these days.

Juniors, seniors, kidney problems, neutered cats, kittens, convalescents… the list goes on.  One of the vet nurses was on the phone to a colleague who was ordering food for her cats.  “Well you’ve got one neutered, one not neutered, two kittens so…”  The solution seemed to be extremely expensive.  Now from a marketing point of view it sounded the ideal set up; lots of niches to divide their market into. 

But from the consumer’s point of view?

I think it’s a nightmare.  How long does it take you to decide anything these days.  For example shampoo.  When I was growing up there was shampoo for dry hair, greasy hair and medicated.  That was it.  Once you’d decided what kind of hair you had, no problem.  Whichever brand you chose it was easy to walk in the shop and whip a bottle off the shelf.  In and out in seconds.

Now I like choice, options and hate being stampeded into a decision.  But there comes a point where even I have too many choices.  When I reach that point I’m less likely to make a decision at all.  And I find many websites confuse me unbelievably.  Read this, subscribe to that, look at the other and on and on till my poor brain hurts.

I’ve started now avoiding sites that give me brain ache.  I want someone to tell me simply what they can do for me and show me where to find it.  We’re used to 1,2,3.  14, 15, 16 is too much for us to compute.

And what did the cats used to eat?  Well my grandmother’s cats were fed on scraps of fish, meat, and indescribable things left over at the butchers called ‘lights’.  Don’t ask.