by Carissa Conti
© 2006-2008
[Updated April 6, 2008 – the section pertaining to switching to a raw foods diet at the end. Previously in another update I said I would explain how to go about it all, but then I just realized that I left out a lot of helpful information. So, now I have that in there…..]
Even though this is a website devoted to the concept of “living in two worlds” I want to address the topic of our animal companions, because it’s something very important to me. If I have a platform such as a website that’s actually being read by people, then it should be maximized. And what better way than for helping animals who can’t speak up for themselves?
Many people have pets, dogs and cats probably being the most common. And trips to the vet seem to be commonplace for many of these dogs and cats, due to bizarre ailments and issues that continually crop up. But how many pets are experiencing sickness and disease that is probably completely preventable? How much of our animal companions’ disease is something that we’re inadvertently causing through our own ignorance of what goes into pet food?
Back in 2004 I came across an article on Rense.com regarding people who are putting their pets on Prozac, and other psych drugs, due to depression:
In this article there’s a brief mention of the rise in pets getting diabetes, arthritis, cancer, etc. My thought when I read that was “Well yeah, of course they are! Considering what most people feed their animals it’s no wonder!” When you do the research, you’ll find that most mainstream pet food brands contain just absolutely abysmal ingredients. Rendered animals – bones, beaks, spines, and brains; grease, rotting meat, meat that comes from sickly “downer” animals that had been chained in pens, unable to move around and with open sores, lying in their own feces. Just nasty, horrible ingredients. The bottom line should be, if we wouldn’t eat it, then why should our pets??
This article also got my wheels spinning because several years ago a veterinarian in SoCal offered up the option of putting my cat on Prozac because she was always scritch scratching at herself and chewing little bald spots into her fur. My cat didn’t have fleas or parasites, so the vet figured this was all psychologically related and could be cured by medicating my cat. Needless to say, I declined. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. I spent the next year trying to get to the bottom of what was wrong with my cat. Brought her to another vet in California and one in Florida after I moved, both of whom recommended stuff that served to disguise and mask the problem rather than getting to the root of the issue – allergy shots, psych meds, pills, etc., which would make the vets mucho $$$$$, because of course I would have to keep going back to the vet to get more. Not one of them ever suggested anything about my kitty’s diet. Not one. And the problem turned out to be….the food that I was feeding her.
I had been online researching health stuff for myself when I came across a website called www.thedoctorwithin.com, which mentions, among tons of other things, how skin allergies in humans are caused by bad diet. The body is literally trying to expel toxins via the body’s biggest organ…the skin. And in the process, itching, rashes, acne, and all around skin disruption occurs. I put two and two together ding! ding! ding! and realized, well, if that applies to humans…then why not animals? Maybe my cat’s problem is her diet?? What would happen if I changed her food?
At that time I had my kitty on Iams brand, thinking that was supposed to be the “good” stuff, not realizing of course that pretty much every pet food uses the most horrible crap ingredients you could ever imagine, including euthanized animals and even roadkill. Yes, roadkill. And once I came across that little bit of information, there was no turning back. I vowed to get my cat on a better diet. The following two articles by Ann Martin are pretty heavy duty exposes, not for the faint of heart. But if you have a pet and you claim to care about it, then please try to read this. You need to learn what you are feeding your pet and what is going on within the pet food industry.
The Pet Food Industry and Its Questionable Practices
In the articles linked to above, you’ll learn not only about the abysmal ingredients found in nearly all mainstream pet food brands, but also what goes on at meat processing plants, and the horrific experimentation being done on laboratory cats and dogs by such companies as Iams…in order to feed your cat or dog. Again, I can’t stress enough how important it is to learn and understand what’s going on so you can make more informed choices for your pets who are completely helpless, and have no say at all in what they’re being fed.
So after that I switched my kitty’s diet for awhile to a healthy brand, called Pet Guard. The problem temporarily stopped, but then resumed as bad as before. Now the backs of her legs and most of her stomach were practically bald from her obsessive chewing. [Side note – Pet Guard is actually supposed to be a healthier brand of food for pets, on par with the other healthy brands I mention later on; it’s just that for whatever reason, it caused my cat to still itch all the time, not sure why. But again, this isn’t to try to insinuate something negative about Pet Guard.] I tried making her homemade food, giving her organic chicken and turkey, as well as fish, with vitamin supplements, but my first attempt at making homemade cat food wasn’t well received – I cooked the meat, and so it wasn’t appetizing to her, she only liked the salmon. Then I tried Science Diet, and bought the food for “allergies and sensitive skin.” But I quickly discovered via more online research that all they do is spray the food with a coating of grease. The grease/oil is supposed to “cure” the itchy skin. So in the trash it went.
Finally, I found and tried a brand of food called Nutro. (and no, this isn’t going to turn into an infomercial for Nutro. ;) It has a neutral ending, due to the recent Menu foods pet food recall debacle, which I’ll get to in a second.) It was weird how I came across Nutro. In fact, here’s where the story does tie back into the concept of “living in two worlds,” making it quite fitting for this site. ;) I was at our local Pet Supermarket in Fort Lauderdale to buy something other than cat food, can’t remember what now, and was standing there in the middle of the store gazing off in a daze, thinking about my cat’s very bad skin/fur situation and feeling a bit lost and upset about it all. I knew all the brands of cat food that Pet Supermarket carried, and there was nothing left for me to try, so I wasn’t even going to bother to look. But something “nudged” me….go look!
I argued back…But I already know there’s nothing! I’ve been here before.
It nudged me again…Look! Go look…go on, go go go go….
It was like I was being pushed towards the cat food aisle by an invisible force. ;) With furrowed brows I went and looked, and sure enough, they had a brand spanking new brand called Nutro that they’d just started carrying since the last time I was there. Completely all natural food with no yucky meat product ingredients. Inside I was like “!!!!!” Snapped up a bag of dry along with some wet food. And within two weeks of being on Nutro, the scritch scratching and chewing had completely stopped and most of my kitty’s fur had grown back and was thick and shiny again. Yay!
Back during the time when I first purchased Nutro, there used to be a statement on their website mentioning that how they do NOT put euthanized animals in their products. So, this euthanized animals business is pretty much common knowledge amongst the pet food industry. It’s the general pubic that’s unaware of it all. Also Nutro is one of the few pet foods that I’ve heard of that puts probiotics in the food, and has other beneficial ingredients. You can order it online, or purchase from any decent pet specialty store.
However…..I recently noticed that the statement regarding no euthanized animals seems to be gone from their site. Not sure what’s going on there, if it means that they can no longer make this claim…..? Or if they don’t want to step on any toes in the pet food industry and cause problems by indirectly exposing what their competitors are doing…..? ?? I’d love to know, since Nutro is supposed to be high quality food. Not only that, but I also recently learned that they contract out the making of some of their products, namely their pouch foods, to “Menu Foods” – who makes pet food for almost 40 other companies. That didn’t go over very well with me. Menu Foods issued a recall this week (March 18th) on many of its dog and cat food brands…including some of the Nutro pouch foods Dogs and cats have died nationwide due to this fiasco and it’s been covered in the major media outlets, so I’m sure most reading this will be familar with the story. It’s scary stuff, and it’s shed light on the pet food quality issue for the average American who wasn’t aware of it all before this happened.
An email I sent to Nutro inquiring about the euthanized animals issue and overall healthfulness of their other products was never answered. My cat didn’t do well on their pouch foods admittedly, so I stopped feeding her that particular Nutro product back in 2005. And Nutro pouch foods were one of the biggies being recalled, and it scares me to no end to imagine that I could have somehow still been feeding her it. As always though there was helpful intervention. Something told me back in 2005, “NO” with regards to using that particular product anymore, and intuitively it felt like a door being slammed and locked on the idea of ever going back to it. Now I understand why. If that hadn’t happened I would have continued to use it, and my cat might be dead right now, who knows.
I’ve also since discovered another brand called Pet Promise, which seems, from the ingredients, to be very decent quality. Pet Promise says that they’re all about encouraging sustainable farming from rural U.S. farmers, while simultaneously feeding our pets high quality food. No hormones or antibiotics, no rendered meats or junk ingredients:
Our local Whole Foods Market just started carrying Pet Promise, which is very cool. My cat likes it, and in light of the Menu Foods recall and unanswered email, I’ve since stopped using Nutro. Things have become too ambiguous there.
Still though, Nutro did have its place – At one message board I used to participate in back in 2002-03, I talked about the pet food subject, and the webmaster decided to buy some Nutro dog food for her four year old dog due to my recommendation. She was absolutely shocked by her dog’s 180 turnaround in personality. Before, her dog had always misbehaved, and was hyper and skittish. But after the switch to Nutro, her dog was calm and happy and pleasant within about two weeks. She had no idea her dog could even be that way. She’d just always assumed that it was the dog’s natural personality to be so hyper and badly behaved. Nope…it was all a by-product of the mainstream pet food it had been fed.
I believe the sharp rise in pets with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, severe allergies, organ failure, obesity, etc. is directly correlated to the foods people feed them. Vaccinations also probably play a significant role as well, but that’s a side topic in itself. I put my cat on a better diet and she immediately improved. Not only her skin and fur, but her energy level and moods as well. On Nutro she was happier and more energetic. During the brief time I had her on the Science Diet grease coated junk, her energy did a nosedive and she was lethargic and grumpy. It would be the equivalent of us eating a big greasy fast food meal. How good do we feel afterwards? How much energy do we have? But think about it……This is supposed to be “SCIENCE DIET.” This is supposed to be “top of the line” food. I mean, it has the name “SCIENCE” in the title, come on! ;) They try to market it as if it’s some scientifically formulated super food, but trust me, it’s not. I had to throw an $18 bag of the crap in the trash.
Sickness has become an industry…for EVERYBODY. Adults, children…even our pets now. And rather than getting to the root of the problem….the diet….vets and “The Powers That Be” are pushing meds and psych drugs on us which only serve to mask the problem and which makes the pharmaceutical corporations money. It’s absolutely ludicrous. With a healthy diet, any critter can be physically healthy and mentally sound. It’s all about the diet. When I look back at the vets who suggested Prozac and $25 monthly allergy shots for my cat it actually makes me angry, and not too many things rile me up like that anymore. It gets me because I know that these vets know better – I mean, who in their right mind would prescribe psych meds for itchy skin problems?? – but yet they’re so completely willing to put ethics aside and go against what they would do for their own pets in order to make their clinics more money. Vets are supposed to care about the health and well being of animals….so why are so many of them actually engaging in practices that debilitate and/or result in the premature deaths of animals?? And to think that had I been a stupid person, then all these years my cat would have been doped up on psych drugs or relying on artifical histamine suppression, while the poor quality pet food issue goes unnoticed. I can’t even imagine. And yet people are doing this to their pets, every day, out of sheer ignorance.
So if you have a pet and this is all news to you, then I ask that you please read the above links and consider this information.
Add On:
Raw Foods Diet – Updated 4/6/08
A truly all natural raw foods diet seems to be the ultimate way to go for feeding pets. In the wild they don’t eat cooked meat and canned food. Back in 2005 I tried a foray into homemade cat food making, using the recipe I found online from others who do it, to where I actually had the meat grinder to grind up raw, organic chicken and turkey parts, adding in cooked salmon, egg yolks, vitamin supplements, fiber and water. My kitty loved the taste of it all, and always flips for raw poultry and especially chicken livers….but something wasn’t working, because after a period of time her fur thinned drastically and her black coloring took on a red hue. When I did the research online, about black cats turning red, I learned that her body had some sort of vitamin/mineral deficiency that was draining on her body’s chemical process used to generate her fur; her body began pulling from the chemicals in the fur pigmentation in order to keep up with the hair loss. All of which means I had to give up on the home made cat food for the time being for the sake of not having a bald cat. Back on Nutro (and now Pet Promise….) she went. I felt disheartened though as a raw homemade diet was my ultimate goal, and I’m not someone who likes to give up.
So flash forward to 2007, where I came across a brand called Feline Future Cat Food Company based out of British Columbia, Canada, with one U.S. location in Corvallis, Oregon, who makes what’s supposed to be an all natural supplement products called Instincts TC. You add this supplement powder stuff which contains vitamins, minerals, amino acids, egg yolk powder, fish oil and fiber, among other things, to raw meat, liver and water, and presto! Instant healthful raw foods diet. They’ve been around for a few years and have had many positive testimonials, so again, in light of the Menu Foods recall I was motivated to try out the raw foods endeavor again and so ordered a small size pouch. So far my cat has enjoyed being back on a 50/50 raw food diet (still using Pet Promise as well) and has no problems with the Instincts TC supplement and snarfs it right up, and hasn’t had any ill effects that I can see. (On a side note, the food isn’t in a completely raw state either when I give it to her – the process of warming it up actually lightly cooks it, changing the color of the meat. Which is an important point to note….always slightly warm up your cat’s food when it’s coming out of the fridge, as it should mimic what they’d be getting in the wild – a freshly killed warm animal. You don’t serve refrigerator cold food to any animal.) But it’s not just the raw meat she enjoys, she likes the taste of the powder itself. It’s tasty stuff to cats, as evidenced by her licking the powder off the outside of the package. :D Because that was something I was worried about, you know, what if the vitamin powder stuff tastes icky? But no worries there.
Now, if you’re going to go about making your own homemade cat food, then you’ll need to purchase a couple of supplies to make it easy: First, a little scale to weigh the meat you’re preparing. I found a nice little scale for about ten dollars at one of those Bed Bath and Beyond places, but whatever store works for you that has a kitchen supply section in it. Then, little mason jars with the vacuum sealed lids. You can find them at places such as Wal*Mart, although I’m not a big advocate of shopping there. But for people in middle America, that’s one quick and easy place to find them. Or if you know a Mom n’ Pop store in your area that sells them, even better. Last resort is the internet, which is where i got mine before I realized that they had them at our local Wal*Mart. You’ll also need a paring knife for cutting the meat into pieces. Paring knives, or knives without serrated edges, slice through raw meat easily. Serrated edges just pull at it and you’ll never get anywhere. Then a large bowl – we have a stainless steel one which works great – and a spatula.
Now it’s time to determine which meats you’re going to use in your food. Meat such as pork cannot be served raw to animals. So, that’s out of the question. Your best bet would be chicken, turkey and chicken livers to start. Bird meat is very compatible with cats. And there are places apparently online where you can buy dead mice, from what I gather. I don’t know if the meat is already skinned and prepared, you’d have to look into that, but technically it would be something even better than the turkey, since rodent meat is a HUGE thing that cats have been eating for thousands of years, along with birds. If I got my hands on skinned and prepared mice, I’d substitute that in lieu of the turkey. And you can apparently use lamb and venison too, although admittedly if I were going to, then I’d cook it beforehand, just to be on the safe side since big ol’ honkin lambs and deer are not exactly a natural prey to little bitty domesticated cats in the wild. It doesn’t seem to me to be at the top of the list of natural, compatible food for them.
Vegetables……the big debate in homemade cat food. Some say that cats don’t eat them in the wild, so, why would you put them in there? Your cat is not a human baby who needs peas and carrots in their food, after all. Others say, Oh, but they’d get their veggies indirectly through the stomach contents of the grain and veggie eating animals that they kill, such as mice! However, I found a website online where the woman explained that her cats don’t eat the stomachs of the mice they kill. They leave that part behind. And she had photographic evidence to prove it. ! A picture of a little mouse stomach, fully intact and left behind. So, yeah, that made me think twice. The other point that made me reconsider was when I learned that cats can’t convert Beta Carotene into Vitamin A, the way humans can. So……..kind of makes it really pointless to be puttin’ carrots in there, don’t it? Yeah, so, in my food using Feline Future Instincts TC powder, I don’t put veggies in there.
So when I make my cat’s food, first I get the required amount of Instincts TC powder and (bottled) water whisked up in the stainless steel bowl. (I don’t use tap water, which has a whole lotta no good going on. And on a normal daily basis my cat always drinks bottled water.) So that’s out of the way and ready for the meat to be added. Then I prep the chicken. I buy boneless, skinless chicken thighs, eliminates all the tedious work of deskinning and deboning, and it’s Bell and Evans brand from Whole Foods, which is free of growth hormones and antibiotics, supposed to be raised free range/cage free with natural grain food. Then I wash the pieces of chicken thoroughly in hot water, and cut them into small pieces. Cats like having pieces of meat to feel like they’re chewing into, as noted in several websites online. Since the Instincts TC recipe says to use two pounds of meat total, I’ll use about one package of the chicken thighs. It always is more than one pounds’ worth, but that’s okay. Admittedly I make more than what the recipe calls for anyway, and add in a little extra powder to compensate for that.
Then I add in the turkey. I use ground turkey thighs – already prepared, which makes things a LOT easier, since turkey is very sinewy and a pain to prep. Also from Whole Foods, free range, antibiotic and hormone free high quality. Then I take the spatula and mix up what’s in the bowl at this point, the chicken, turkey, and powder water mix.
Lastly I prepare the chicken livers which I also get at Whole Foods, Bell and Evans brand. I give them a good washing in hot water and then measure out the amount I need according to the recipe using my trusty scale. Then it’s on to cutting them up. Now, you can grind them up in a meat grinder if you like, I have one that I bought online two years ago, and have done that, but liver becomes liquidy and so a lot of it just sits there in the grinder, getting stuck in the holes and so you end up having to take it apart and dig it all out. Not fun. So at this point I do this thing where I take the sharp knife and “scrape” apart the chicken liver, manually doing what the grinder would do. Then I mix everything up one final time, get everything thoroughly distributed evenly in the bowl, and now it’s time to portion it out into the mason jars. You don’t want to fill the jars to top, because apparently the meat will expand a bit as it freezes, so leave some space at the top. Then put the lids on when you’re done, and put the extra jars in the freezer. I always leave one in the fridge to use during the next day or two. When I get down to 3/4 of the jar being empty I pull one out of the freezer and put in the fridge to defrost, so it’ll be ready by the time the other jar is empty.
And when it comes time to serve the food to my always excited cat, I always warm up the food first. As mentioned, you don’t serve cold food to a cat. It should mimic the temp of a freshly killed warm body like they’d get in the wild. So I take a fork or spoon and remove however much I’m going to serve my cat, put it in a baggie, and put that in a small bowl filled with warm water, letting the water warm up the food through the bag. It takes about two minutes, then it’s ready to go. Onto a plate and off she goes, snarfing it up.
So, speaking of how she snarfs up her food….on a side note, cats inhaling their food as if they haven’t even in a month and then puking it all back up is a common issue. Basically what I’ve concluded is that because they can just inhale the entire bowl or plate of food all at once, with zero effort involved, they inundate their stomachs with waaay more food than it’s equipped to handle. In the wild a cat would have to work for whatever food they eat, tearing past fur, skin and bones, so it takes a lot longer and works out to be a lot less meat at any given time, so therefore…….their stomachs can easily keep up. But as house pets they’re spoiled and get this big bowl or plate of food all at once, with no work involved. Their stomachs simply are not designed to take in that much food dumped in there all at once. And as any cat owner knows…………a cat has no ability for self regulation. It wouldn’t matter how many times they puke after wolfing their food down, they’ll just keep doing it. They’re all caught up in the moment, “UMMMMMM! FOOOOOD! THIS IS SO GOOOOOOOOOD! YUM YUM YUM!!!!!!!!! FOOOOOOOOOOD!” and can’t/won’t stop themselves, and will just eat and eat and eat and eat and eat as much as you put in front of them until their stomachs flip out and go into reverse. So, with that in mind……………try doing what I do, and either monitor the portion amount you dole out, or, stand over them and pull the plate/bowl away when they’ve eaten half, and give the rest back later on, about a half an hour later. It’s very simple, and it completely eliminates the problem. (unless they’re puking due to hair balls, which you can’t help.)
When it comes to the idea of making your pet’s food, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to bother putting that much time into their pets. To that I say………If you can’t do it right, then you shouldn’t have a pet in the first place. It’s one thing if you don’t even know that it is possible to make your pet’s food, and don’t know how to go about it all. But once you’ve heard about it then there’s really no excuse. Since our pets are basically living as captured slaves, the least we can do is provide them with a decent diet and put in some effort. (I’ll also take the time to add that cats should never be declawed either. Cats are not inanimate decorative ornament “things” for your personal amusement, whose bodies need to be altered to suit your personal needs and precious furniture. It’s a living being, which means people don’t have the right to have their claws hacked off down to the knuckles, permanently disfiguring and disabling them, all to suit a person’s whims. So if you can’t abide by the idea of a cat scratching up your stuff……..then don’t get one in the first place, period.) Yes, the rampant animal abuse going on in our society really grates on my nerves.
So anyway, back to the subject of food, on Instincts TC my cat seems to be doing great. I think the problem when I was doing the raw foods thing before was that I was still missing some of the vital nutrients. I had plenty of Taurine and B-vitamins, omega-3’s and protein, but the calcium, magnesium, manganese and potassium was probably lacking, stuff that Instincts TC has. Also, my experiences so far with ordering from Feline Future have been very positive. They answer email questions promptly with personalized customer service and they process the order the very next business day after receiving it, and ship very quickly using Priority Mail, which arrives within three days of mailing.
On a side note, the only thing I question about Instincts TC is their beef liver powder supplement for cats. It’s known that cats don’t do well on beef liver; chicken liver works best. The first time my cat tried beef liver she puked her brains out and gave me a good scare. I did the research online and discovered that this is a common reaction in cats – beef liver is too rich for them, so bird liver is the way to go. But maybe in powdered form is different and easier to handle, I don’t know. But I still wouldn’t advise it. It seems really odd to me.
ADD ON: Sorry, but I just need to vent. I came across this letter today (8/10/08) in “Dear Abby” and want to put this out there:
“DEAR ABBY: I work for a major lending company and have cleaned out foreclosed homes. Too many times, I find animals who have died from exposure or literally starved to death.
My message to homeowners is: PLEASE make arrangements for your pets if you can’t take them with you. Once a loan company notifies you of foreclosure, it can be many weeks before someone enters that home. Give your pet a fighting chance!”
— DISCOURAGED IN ILLINOIS
Okay……excuse my language and bad attitude, but…..WHAT THE FUCK?! Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!!!!!!!! This isn’t the first time I’ve come across mention of this sort of thing in the media in these times, unfortunately, and so I know it’s apparently happening a lot more than we’d like to think. What’s scary about this is that you may not always be able to tell who’s the sort of person that would wind up doing something like this. We have a lot of heartless, empathy-less sociopaths running rampant in this society who on the outside look like normal people, leading “background character” normal lives. The sorts that put on a persona when dealing with the outside world but who have nothing going on inside. It’s all mirrors, all reflecting back what they know you want/expect to see, saying what they know the real humans want to hear. I once rented a room for three weeks in Lake Forest, California from a crazy lady who was the exact sort who would abandon a pet, without a second thought, so I know how they can look, act, talk, and appear to the rest of the world. These people are everywhere, walking among us. And they own pets, because there’s no regulations whatsoever with regards to that.
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Pets aren’t the only ones being exploited by the pharmaceutical corporations….humans of course are the primary target. So be sure to check out my related piece, Sickness…it’s all in the head – Rethinking what we’ve been taught about health and medicine