3 May 07
Le Cru et le Cuit
How do you feed a cat? This was a question I asked, literally, when four five-week-old feral kittens ended up in our bathroom, badly in need of feeding. I had never owned a cat. Since I work with a lot of vets, all of whom have pets, I got a lot of advice quickly. This brand is middle of the road, fine, better than this one but not as expensive as this one, top of the line. Mush up the kitten food with water, really make sure they’re getting plenty of fluids. No, you don’t need to supplement milk; at five weeks, they’re practically weaned.
I went to a talk last night at the Co-op about feeding your pets raw food. Diego’s been vomiting again, and this is worrying me since the hypoallergenic food he was prescribed by the vet was recalled just before we got back from Colorado due to the melamine pet food scandal. (I am really, really glad we always mixed it up with a lot of different dry foods, all of them wheat- and corn-free; if he was exposed, it was to tiny amounts.)
There was a lot of interest, predictably, in the wake of the melamine thing (one horrifying thought is that all the tainted food is now going to be combined with hog feed, here or abroad, and there’s no way to stop it or even trace it under current regulatory practices. This poison is headed for the human food chain, folks…). Postscript: actually, it already has: see this story
This is a vegetarian household. Cats are carnivores. Kibble’s easy, but what the hell is in it? (A hint: if it says “beets” it means “sugar.”) And why on earth is Hills filling its expensive white-coat-sanctioned food (think Clinique of the pet world) with corn, something as humans we should be eating a lot less of, but is basically indigestible for carnivores? Got it in one: it’s cheap. (Just like buying wheat or rice gluten from China is cheap. This has been a personalized crash course, for me, in the consequences of a global economy…)
I don’t know if we’re moving towards feeding the cats raw food or not. (To Numenius’ great dismay I did buy a bit with my friend Mary, beef heart with chicken; the cats turned their noses up at it this morning.) But I’m definitely interested in learning more about animal nutrition. One place I won’t look, probably, is any school of veterinary medicine whose funding for nutrition research comes primarily from the pet food company with the white coats. Sad, since I work for one of the most prominent such schools in the country…
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Just catching up. Saw a piece on one of the morning shows a while back ( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/03/earlyshow/contributors/debbyeturner/main2641638.shtml ). Seems that cats have very complex nutritional needs, which is hard to replicate in a home environment (lots of vitamins, minerals etc.) which means a ton of human food. There were comparative samples. Made me glad for the kibble-only variety we feed our 3. FYI-1, one (and therefore all) is on a variety for urinary tract issues, which makes for more water production – and it has corn as its first ingredient. Yes, the vet recommended their in-house brand, but when one cat went on strike over the taste, she gave me a few alternatives. Now, they get a mix of the vet stuff and Purina Pro. FYI-2, we have one who throws up all the time (13+ yrs) possibly exacerbated by rapid eating, one who hardly ever does, and his sibling who manages every 3 days. The latter two have very long fur, but must process it differently. Other than human annoyance, the regurgitation doesn’t seem to affect them particularly.
I’ve been wondering about this too, as I’ve recently decided to provide food for a nursing stray in our neighborhood. I ended up buying a small bag of some kind of Purina kibble, but it was really hard trying to figure out what food was “best” – even worse than trying to find human food with recognizable ingredients!
The raw food certainly wouldn’t hurt the cats, but I think, even then, you might have to supplement it. I mean, wild cats usually eat some of the bones, the skin, etc., not just the meat. As for getting domesticated cats to eat unfamiliar unprocessed food, it might help to mix it with their regular food at first, in increasing portions, and to warm it slightly – a lot of cats are touchy about the temperature of their food.
Certainly, it’s a lot easier to feed an omnivore, like a dog.
I always was one of those read-the-4-point-type-people about food labels.
Since that pet food recall, I’ve been glad I had a bias towards meat and not filler (wheat, corn etc.) for our cats. But now, I’ve wondering if those labels will be any help — it’s easier to change a label than change the contents of a mix.
So I’ve been supplementing your vet-friends’ recommended dry food with tuna in water, the kind that people eat. At least I think I know what’s in it…
Have fun with the kittens! Our experience was, when they’re happy, they’ll be zooming around like wild lil’ things!
I am afraid that Vets will not give you good advice on what to feed the cats since they will wrongly let you believe that feeding Hills dry pet food is good when veterinary research shows that food like this is causing cancer, kidney failure, heart disease and many other illnesses. The Vets make a big profit from selling pet food and the pet food companies fund the veterinary schools and are incredibly even allowed to teach nutrition to the veterinary students and so Vets graduate not having been taught that pet food is on a routine basis causing serious and even fatal illness in cats and dogs. If you go to www.catinfo.org the Vet there tells you what to feed cats and warns of the illness that feeding dry food can cause and recommends that raw food be fed to cats as does Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins DVM at www.yourdiabeticcat.com who is a Vet who only treats cats.