04.24.07
What We Will Do…
Those people who cook food for their cats must be nuts. Or are they?
Cleo has decided that she is not going to eat commercially prepared cat food any more. Well, more like her [cute, furry] tummy [wubba wubba] has decided that it won’t tolerate the crap that the manufacturers put into the food. Cats don’t eat corn/wheat/rice/”poultry by-product meal”/corn meal gluten/etc. in the wild, but they do in our houses. And that’s just the stuff I can pronounce.
Cleo has never been fond of wet food, and it hasn’t ever really agreed with her. She would happily eat it after having her yearly teeth cleaning (and then promptly hurl all over the carpet), but for the most part has been eating IAMS kibble for the last 10 years. She decided about 3 months before the IAMS recall, that she just wasn’t having that any more. For a while after that she was eating the IAMS wet food and mostly keeping it down, but she finally went off that (also before the scare) as well. In the space of about 4 months, Cleo lost two pounds, which for an eight pound cat, is a LOT! That scared me, and we went to the vet.
After hundreds of dollars and several tests, the vet thinks she may have the cat version of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.* After that diagnosis, Cleo went on some fancy-pants food made by Dick Van Patten that she liked for about five minutes. She wouldn’t even touch the kibble type (which I just found out was recalled recently). I can’t directly connect Cleo’s apathy to eating commercial cat food to the tainted products, but she’s a damned smart cat to stay away from the stuff.
I was at a loss for what to do, until E** and I decided to try feeding her boiled chicken. She loves it! She’s back to eating twice a day, and it seems like she can’t get enough. It takes some effort to get her food ready, but thanks to two pound trays of chicken thighs from Grand Mart (about two dollars), and a little bit of water, we can feed Cleo for at least a week for the same price we used to pay for a can of cat food that lasted one day. I buy some fancy health-food type cat vitamins to supplement what she isn’t getting from the other food, but it’s still cheaper per serving than commercial food!
Since switching to boiled, shredded chicken, there is minimal hurling (mostly hairball-related now) and no nasty cat-food breath. (You cat people KNOW what I’m talking about!) The best part? (MasterCard might say it’s priceless…) My cat seems happier than she’s been in a long time. [sigh of relief]
I guess I really am turning into the Cat Lady.
*Knowing for sure means more tests, and knowing won’t appreciably improve her life. I’ve therefore decided to pass on the tests and we will live happily together until she decides it’s time to walk across Bifröst.
**Props to E for being the best cat chef in our house!
