More on pet food: the API's page on what's in it
Posted by Duckalucky on Nov 25, 2006 · Member since Aug 2006 · 1127 posts
Interesting stuff!
http://www.api4animals.org/facts.php?p=359&more=1
I'm doing a lot of trolling for homemade cat food recipes at the moment, since my elderly, ailing cat's appetite really requires some cultivation (she will starve herself rather than eat unless it's very special, since she's feeling ill). I keep lucking into things like this article-- hope I'm not tormenting anyone by sharing them.
My kitty Pepe has mostly rallied from her crisis, but we feel good about preparing much of her food at home. Since it's putting much-needed weight on her, we will continue to do so, supplementing with better-balanced high-quality tinned food in order to get proper nutrition into her as well as the calories.
wow, great article! thank you!! i was not aware the commercial food was SO bad! very scary!! :-[
best of luck to you with Pepe.
Interesting stuff!
http://www.api4animals.org/facts.php?p=359&more=1
This is one of the main reasons I feed a natural diet.
Interesting resource. Thanks for the link!
MD
Thank you! Boring details of my cat's health follow-- skip this post if that's not for you! ;)
Pepe's getting pretty old-- she's in the middle of her 16th year-- and has had a rough health history for an indoor-only cat. She's been fighting breast cancer since 1998 (many, many mastectomies-- poor thing) and has had hyperthyroidism for years.
We left her with friends for the 15 months we spent in Peru, and her health changed while we were away. They took wonderful care of her, but we didn't know quite how to proceed when she returned to our home.
Since the medicine originally prescribed for the latter made her very ill, disoriented, and unhappy, and she was recovering from the most recent surgery, we decided almost a year ago to take her off it and to see if she rallied. She seemed to flourish as she healed. We've been making hard choices about her health: for instance, we decided that we would not have her operated upon any more (she has another tiny lump that has not been growing) because of the brutal impact of surgery on her sanity and quality of life, and that we would let her go rather than torture her. Also, we were adjusting her food: she seemed to have trouble with kibble (vomiting it immediately), so we changed to a canned food diet; she seemed to have trouble with particular brands of kibble before that; she prefers certain brands of canned food and I require it to adhere to certain standards of production. All this adjustment has been making her slowly improve in health, but she was simultaneously losing weight... She began slowly losing weight (as cats with untreated hyperthyroidism will do) and we barely noticed in time when the weight loss accellerated into crisis!
When we got her to the vet because we were worried about her sore mouth (she had an abcess) and weight loss (she was feeling awfully bony), she weighed less than six pounds. The vet put her on antibiotics for the abcess and did tests. Poor little creature. The vet thought we'd lose her overnight, but when she survived, he prescribed new medicine for the hyperthyroidism. We gave her subcutaneous fluids for the dehydration and cooked her some baked chicken (sorry to squick everyone!) and a homemade kitten formula supplement made of gelatine supplemented with evap milk and mayonnaise (yuck!). We fed and watered her with a baby-medicine eyedropper and hoped the medicine would help. The next day, she started to nibble. She's putting on weight and is vivacious and sassy again; Monday is when I am to call for a 2-week checkup to follow up on how the medicine is treating her.
We continue to cook for her, though we are supplementing with tinned food. As my mom says, "If she likes chicken, give it to her. If she wants to eat cookies, let her. If she wants to smoke cigars and drink Scotch, let her. She's old, she doesn't have long for this world, and she's earned it."
As much attention as we pay her, I am ashamed not to have noticed the approaching crisis til it was upon us... I am certainly no vet, but she's the light of my eyes, and I feel like I should have noticed something other than "she's getting skinny." Humbling. :-[
Duckalucky...love your mom's comment on the cigs and Scotch! Reminded me when my MIL had a mastectomy and they gave her beer with her meals in hospital. (Spanish beer is full of hops which are supposed to be v. good for building you up.) MIL was rather shocked and told her Dr that she hadn't drunk beer for about 40 years. His response? "Your loss...at your age, live a little!" She lived to be 92, and survived the surgery by 15 years.
Wow, very nice! I love it when doctors let their human side show. One of my best friends is an emergency room doctor-- he's very caring and funny, and I can imagine his patients leaving the ER doubled over with laughter.
I printed it out for my new vet (my old vet's son is taking over the practice) because he has been lecturing me on the 'dangers' of natural food. We'll see what his response is to this article and decide from there if the six fur-kids need to find a new doc.
Check on Yahoo Groups. There are several groups that support and teach how to safely feed naturally. My Main group is NaturalFerrets, obviously only for ferret companions who feed naturally, but there is also Prey4pets. There are others I'm sure, but those are the main 2 I keep tabs on. :)
Regards!
MD
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go FUZZ!
http://nippynihon.blogspot.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mahatma Gandhi:
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Yogaferret,
Thanks for the info. My friend has five ferrets and would probably love your group. I'll pass along the info.
No problem. Glad to help ^.^
You should be warned though, alot of vets don't have any info on feeding naturally. Like doctors, they only have reports of salmonella and the dangers of raw food to form their opinions. These dangers are real and do exist; However, I would appeal to animal companions to apply some common sense before making a decision against natural food based on that alone. Consider this:
Not only have I handled raw meat for 2 decades safely, but my mother and her mother and her mother before her. Humans have been handling raw meat/fish in far, far worse conditions then we live in today and have managed to not be wiped off the planet.
With all the scare tactics in the US about salmonella, no one has bothered to point out that MILLIONS of Japanese--not Asians, just Japanese-- eat or handle sushi every single day. Yet I have not once heard of even one single person contracting salmonella or other raw food related diseases. Oddly enough, what is more common, something the doctors often see, is throat injuries caused by fish bones. And those come from *cooked* fish. Ironic. ;>
Regards,
MD