Kaminari

Lyra, I have my cats on Premium Edge food, which I get at Pet Food Discounters. When we got the "kitten" (she's 2yrs old and we still call her the kitten) she was peeing all over the house. We took her to the vet and found out she had crystals in her urine which was unusual for a young cat. The vet gave us food to try that was supposed to be better for urinary health, but both of the cats hated it. So I searched around and found this cat food. It actually had cranberries in it for urinary tract health. Its all natural, has salmon, veggies, etc. The cats love it, no more puking, no more hairballs. There is stuff out there if you look hard.  By the way, my last cat lived to the ripe old age of 23! She was strictly an indoor cat, and I believe that is part of the reason for longevity.

Thanks for the tip, treehugger.    23 is very long for a cat, wow!   You reminded me that Nutro pet food, mentioned earlier in this thread, also has dried cranberry powder in it.  It has all those weird little supplements you don't normally find in most cat foods, including probiotics, so that's good that other cat foods are aware and have some of those things as well.

Well, just to clarify, I haven't fed her fresh salmon in awhile.    That was back when I was experimenting with homemade cat food, trying to find a recipe that worked.  Nowadays when she gets salmon it's in Nutro, or that new brand, Pet Promise that I mentioned in last nights post...

I the movie “The mummy" and some other the cat/cats also
helps against the negs.

From Chasing Phantoms
"She ran over to the bed, jumped up, then walked
up my stomach and chest, meowing at me in an urgent way the
whole time as she walked, and literally……just stood there on top
of me."

Ok, she deserve the “sushi" 

She walked over your solar plexus...
Very interesting, when I was young and
left my body always felt some strange sensation
in the solar plexus, the silver cord comes from there I think.

!  You know, I didn't even think about it like that.  She was standing on my solar plexus (and up to my chest area).  hmm.  Interesting.   So, when you used to leave your body as a kid did you have any fun adventures?  Can you still leave your body?

From Chasing Phantoms
"She ran over to the bed, jumped up, then walked
up my stomach and chest, meowing at me in an urgent way the
whole time as she walked, and literally……just stood there on top
of me."

Ok, she deserve the “sushi" 

She walked over your solar plexus...
Very interesting, when I was young and
left my body always felt some strange sensation
in the solar plexus, the silver cord comes from there I think.

Funny, pet cats hate water but love fish.
Salmon for a cat, WoW!
First World Chic Cat!!

Here on the third world we can give sardines.

  Yeah, I've gotten the furrowed brows looks from Tom a couple of times when feeding my cat salmon.  Several times he's said "Your cat eats better than you do."  Hey, she deserves it.   I would have been lost in life without her these past 6 years, and she saved me from the Grays one time.  (long story, but it's in my book.)   She deserves salmon for saving me from the Grays!   

But think about it- ferral cats would be eating  raw bird meat, lizard, rodents, insects, etc.  Now, I'm not making mashed insect and lizard for my kitty     but what I'm feeding her is raw chicken, chicken livers, and steamed salmon.

Funny, pet cats hate water but love fish.
Salmon for a cat, WoW!
First World Chic Cat!!

Here on the third world we can give sardines.

Tonight I discovered that our local Whole Foods just started carrying Pet Promise food.  If you can't make homemade dog or cat food or don't have much luck with it, (I had to give it up ) then this seems to be the next best thing.   All natural meat from sustainable farms that humanely raise their animals, with no hormones or antibiotics.  NO rendered meat, no roadkill, no diseased downer animals.  No brains and spines and junk parts.  Their beef comes from Coleman beef, which is one of the major organic healthy beef brands here in the U.S. for human food.   Their chicken from Petaluma poultry.

I remember Thook mentioning Pet Promise in another thread: 

http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic. … 819#p34819

and several months back had looked it up online and considered purchasing some food from their website.  Now that my local WH is carrying it, I'm excited and bought a few cans tonight for my cat.  She devoured it.  The look on her face when she smelled the food in the can...so funny.  Eyes got huge, face got all full of expression, and she licked her lips.    Too cute.  Anyway, just wanted to bring this brand of food to people's attention and remind people to please read the articles that I posted at the beginning of this thread in my first posts regarding the horrors of the pet food industry.  Anybody with pets owes it to their pets to become educated about what's really in their food.  And don't be fooled because it's "Iams" brand or "Science Diet."  They're just as bad, if not worse, and Iams engages in horrific experimentation on lab dogs and cats.  It's detailed in the articles I linked to.   Please read and become informed if you're not already.  Again, you owe it to your pets to make sure they're fed properly and are getting the best food possible.   

http://www.petpromiseinc.com/

Just wondered if you are still doing this Lyra?  How is your cat...still liking the natural diet?

Hi Marcus, thanks for asking!    Yes, still have her on the natural diet.  Her diet is now partially the natural raw / cooked foods in between the Nutro dry kibble food I recommended earlier in the thread.  Another thing I did was to modify the cat food recipe, after taking into consideration what the vet had to say about cats eating animals in the wild...stomach contents and all.....and thus getting their grains and greens indirectly that way.  I pondered it and what I decided to do was cook up a cup of multi-grain hot cereal that I had on hand, ("Bob's Red Mill 5 Grain Rolled Hot Cereal") and added in some of my vegetable greens powder as well.   I use boneless skinless chicken thighs which I cut up into small chunks - beforehand I wash them thoroughly in hot water, until the chicken begins turning slightly whitish, being partially cooked in the process; ground dark turkey meat; wild Alaskan salmon which I cook (salmon must be cooked) cooked egg yolks, and chicken livers, also thoroughly cleaned in very hot water;  and then all the supplements - raw glandular capsules, Vitamin B, lots of Taurine, small bit of Vitamin E,  L-Carnitine, etc.  The end result is a green tinted slop (due to the greens powder), but which my cat seems to really love.     But green sloppy appearances can be deceiving - because when you look closer at the food you can see little flakes of salmon, bits of egg yolk, chunks of chicken, all of which is cat heaven for a cat.   

What's funny is I just recently came across another homemade cat food suggestion online which included some form of vegetable greens powder and multi-grain cooked cereal.  !!!!!!   I couldn't believe it.  So I'm not the only one doing that.

If I were to make this the only food that she eats then I would have to look into adding bonemeal to the recipe as well, to cover the calcium issue.  I keep forgetting to find bonemeal, so now that I'm typing this I will make it my goal to find some this week.   

I also feel she'd be better off without the Nutro kibble, but I'm only doing that because I'm still paranoid about the constipation problem she once had.   But then again, that was before I added the 5-grain cereal to the recipe for fiber.  So who knows, maybe she'd be fine now.  I just haven't tried it yet! 

But yeah, after months of this, my cat seems to be healthy and doing fine.  Her coat is soft and shiny, she has no skin allergies whatsoever, she's energetic and alert, happy and relaxed and playful.  I mean, she's better than she's ever been before.   And most importantly............unless she snarfs her food down in big inhaling gulps (which she tends to do if she's really hungry) then she doesn't throw up anymore, at all.   Part of the reason I had no choice but to make her homemade food was that it had reached a "Barfing Crisis Point."   It seemed she could barely eat anything without puking it all back out again, most notably the Nutro soft pack food.   I don't know what's going on with that stuff, I don't know whether they changed the recipe or what, but she could no longer eat it, ever, without puking.  Now......rarely pukes, unless she snarfs.  So if we see her starting to snarf her food, we hover over her and make sure to pull it away and set it aside for a bit to give her time to digest the food she already inhaled.  Then we'll put it back a little later so she can finish it.

Yes, isn't it amazing the drastic difference pets go through when on commercial pet food versus homemade?  !  That's proof right there that something is majorly wrong with commercial pet foods.  Same as human fast food....look what it does to our health, energy level and mood after eating it.  !

I'm not sure....haven't really researched dog food in depth.   From what I understand, either one should be fine.   I've basically resorted to washing the meat and liver for my cat's food in very hot water until they change color, which is in effect partially cooking it;  later on it gets warmed up in a bag that sits in very hot water, so, cooked a little bit more.   So I'm thinking at this point, why not try at least partially cooked?   Fully cooked may be all right, but it also might kill the enzymes that are found in raw / partially cooked meat that the dogs need.   Again, see if you can do the research online, because I'm not entirely sure.

It sounds like a good idea...from what I've learned in my research, these animals would indeed be getting some form of grain or veggies in the wild via the prey they kill.   So the diet should be balanced in that regard.

Best of luck.......keep us posted on what happens! 

My dog got fed up with the raw food after a few weeks, and simply refused to eat it any more (tried all different types of meats and recipies).  So we had to put her back on commercial food - anyway her behavior has been totally hyperactive...so again we are putting her on natural food.

However this time, I am cooking it.  I have fully cooked the meat so it would be ready for human consumption and she loves this.  However I also hear that it would be okay to partially cook the meat - what woul you suggest?

Also - I cook up some veg, so that it is very soft and mash it up - this makes it easy for the dog to digest.  I then mix this in with her food.

Anyway - wondering how it is going for you...and if you have any advice on cooked or partially cooked homemade food for pets?

For anyone interested in animal vaccinations and safer alternatives using nosodes see http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/petvacc.htm

Yes....this is exactly what I was talking about at the beginning of the thread...the fact that so many pets nowadays have long term illness and disease.  It's due to their food, imo.  So that's good to hear of somebody who has direct proof that a switch in diet eliminates the illness.

Oh..the confusion, tell me about it!      Same thing here as well.   The vet I took my cat to was a nice woman, didn't push stuff on me just to make $$, but she wasn't happy at the idea of me feeding my cat raw food, AT all.  STRONGLY discouraged it.  I got the lecture about parasites, got the lecture about salmonella, the whole deal.   Thing is................my cat's been eating raw chicken and turkey for several months now with no problems whatsoever.   She is not sick.   Her stools are normal, now that I've integrated more fiber into her food to compensate for the high water content.   She's fine.    She has energy, she's alert and active.   She's 5 1/2, but acts like she's 1 or 2.   So I'm thinking....doesn't that speak for itself???     I just KNOW that if I listen to the vets and put her back on a full time store bought, high cooked, no enzyme diet she WILL get sick, guaranteed.   I mean, THAT'S how you get a cat sick.

My other "leap of logic" regarding this, and I could be wrong, who knows, is.....cats in the wild are big time bird eaters.    Raw birds.   So.....raw chicken = bird.   raw turkey = bird......you know what I mean?       Maybe that's a bad train of logic, buuuuuuut........   haha

Thanks.........one bit of advise from the vet that I did take into account, which I've incorporated into my cat's diet, is the fact that cats DO get carbohydrates and greens...indirectly, via the prey they kill.  Their prey are eating greens and grains, and since cat's eat the entire kill, including the contents of their stomach, then they get their greens / grains that way.   

I thought that was a good point, and so made sure to include that in her diet.   I also decided, just to be on the safe side, to cook the egg that's in her food, and to eliminate the bone and maybe add a bone meal supplement instead.   So, some major modifications since I first started with this whole deal.   

Anyway, thanks for posting your experience Seventh Sojourn, I appreciate hearing other people's stories about what they're doing, and what works.   

When I bought my younger dog I signed a contract agreeing to feed her this way.  I'd had my older male on Iams mixed with some cooked hamburger and supplements for his two years.  He had bad breath, a limp upon exertion due to a weak achilles tendon, and stage 1 arthritis from a congenital case of elbow dysplasia. 

Because of the younger dog's required diet, I decided to feed the older dog likewise, and within one month both his bad breath and his limp disappeared.  He is now 5 1/2 and shows no deterioration in his elbows.  His elbows are better now than they were at 1 year when he was on "dog" food.

Dogs and cats can eat raw bones, even chicken bones.  They absolutely cannot eat cooked bones because they splinter.

I also have a wonderful cat.  He is 13 years old.  I find it more challenging to feed him a raw food diet just because he's restricted to smaller things.  He gets the little ends off chicken wings (forcing my husband and I to eat more chicken wings, oh darn), and he gets smelt and small fish sliced into little steaks.  He also gets a variety of higher quality cat food, such as Newman's, Pet Guard, Wysong's, or Natures Recipe.  Sometimes I have to smear "cat" food onto his raw food to get him to eat it, but he crunches it up real well!

The animals' stools would seem to be more constipated because of this, but upon further examination it does not seem to be the case (keep in mind that sudden dietary changes will cause digestive abnormalities -- one must allow the situation to normalize).  The dogs poop smaller amounts (less fiber) and in a couple of days it just dries up and blows away.  We have less of a poop problem with two dogs on this diet than we had with one dog on "dog" food.  As far as the cat, I don't really micromanage his business, but I don't notice any negative changes in behavior or comfort level.

My vet is a good man.  He genuinely cares about the animals.  The local police bring all the strays to him.  He makes house calls and if an animal is terminal (like my other cat who died) he charges a low flat rate, and any follow up is no charge.  But he is brainwashed by the pet food companies (who I understand fund almost all veterinary research) and he is appalled by the way I feed the animals.  He warns me of constipation, parasites, etc, etc, but every year I bring my animals back for a checkup and they serve as a living testimony.

If anyone would like to read more, do a web search for "b.a.r.f. diet", or "biologically appropriate raw foods diet".   I don't follow this exactly, but it is the closest, commonest thing.

I hope you are finding your answer for your cat, Lyra.  I believe all animals have special circumstances, and sometimes it's not real straightforward.

I'm not a cat owner but am finding your adventure to be very interesting.  Any non-mainstream health-related information is worth a read to me, even if it is about cats.   Who knows when or how it might prove useful?

And what an adventure it's been!   First my cat was plugged up, then she had to have a butt exam at the vet, and you can imagine how well THAT went over with her, then she she was going again but missing the catbox and landing on the floor, and now I see that she could have gotten parasites from certain raw meats which various websites swear are safe.   !    It's always an adventure on this end!!!!!!!!!!!!!     Poor cat.  It'll all work out though, I know it.