I'll start by telling you that I adopted four cats earlier this morning, though at the time, I couldn't understand why. I never wanted cats at all until yesterday, and now look at me. Anyway, in the parking lot of the animal shelter, I assigned each cat a name, and then we all headed over to the grocery store to buy them something to eat. I was in the dairy aisle, reaching for a carton of milk when it hit me like a ton of non-clumping cat litter. 

We rushed home, the cats and I, and we pulled up that "waste milk?" commercial I've watched and talked about so often this week. We slowed it down to take it in carefully, frame by frame, and there it was. At around 5 seconds in, this image appeared -- and then it was gone:

"Okay here's what's happening!" I blurted to Blancmange, Guernsey, Aulait and Colostrum, "You guys drink milk. This is an ad trying to get people to adopt cats so that they'll buy more milk. It's a classic example of subliminal advertising."

I'm leery about advertisers incorporating subliminal directives into their commercials and promotions, because I'm easily triggered by these kinds of messages. While in high school, I got in big trouble for lying nude on the bleachers after "not seeing" this crafty, sexy lady in a photograph on a vending machine.

"Stop grooming yourselves and listen!" I implored the cats (it turns out that cats groom themselves for one-third of the time they are awake). "The Milk People are trying to increase sales by going beneath the threshold of our awareness to demonstrate other uses for their products. Let's see what else they've snuck into this thing." And sure enough, around the 10th second, this image popped up:

At the :15 mark:

At twenty seconds:

And finally, at twenty-five seconds:

Okay, this last hidden frame that shows Robert Redford washing Meryl Streep's hair is off the mark. He was actually using water, not milk. But no woman who's viewed this scene from "Out of Africa" ever really got over it. And who buys the most milk? Women. So, touché Milk Guys. Touché.

I'm using my blog today to blow the whistle on our nation's milk processors. Stop the tricks and stick to promoting milk's protein count honestly! Now I must go. Helga has drawn a bath for five.