"Here, have some samples"

Remember: The first taste is always free. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about class A drugs or upmarket pet food, someone, somewhere wants to get you (or your pets) hooked. Our pusher looked nice enough. Sure, he'd given us a lecture on feeding the girls right; he'd warned us against giving them those lesser (read: cheaper) cat foods, as they contained low levels of meat and lots of lovely salt and sugar. Hills was the best stuff, the right stuff. More than 60% meat, low in salt and sugar, lots of vitamins for a shiny coat. If you were a cat, he seemed to imply, you'd want to be eating Hills, too. If we didn't, our girls would be at risk of tooth decay, diabetes, and heart disease -- and we didn't want that, did we?

"Here, have some samples."

So, we gave them the free samples -- they were free, and we're tight-fisted! What harm could it do? Up until that point, they'd been happy with Felix and Waitrose own brand, but they adored Hills! Wolfed it down, leaving shiny clean dishes behind. Nothing to throw out -- great! They were happy, so I was happy. But then they refused to finish up the Waitrose own brand (I gave the rest to Fat Bob); only Shin would eat the Felix, because she's greedy. And then I discovered how much Hills cost. Twice the price of any "bad" cat food and not available in supermarkets! No, you have to go to "specialist" pet stores, like Pets R Pricey. Start them on Hills and you'll find yourself cruising around small industrial parks at 7 p.m., desperately trying to find their next fix. And when you discover a special offer -- such as today, hurrah! -- you start stockpiling boxes. We now have 7 boxes (all that Pets R Pricey had on the shelves), each containing 12 pouches -- that's 84 pouches! Enough to see us through till, oooh, mid-December. After that, it's back to scouring the InterWebs for more special deals while watching our bank balance drop like stocks on Wall Street and cursing the day that we ever accepted those samples.

Hills: Pet owners' ruin.

ETA:

They just don't care about the credit crunch ...