I got this letter from Brenda, an American living in Italy (as I myself did for many years on and off throughout my life). She got the “kitty crack” message through her friend who follows my advice. Brenda is ready to kick the habit and get her cats eating healthy food, but thinks that being away from American products is a liability. Ironically, the food in Europe is way healthier than what we have here! See my reply at the bottom.
Hi Tracie -
I was led to you by a friend of mine while I was telling her of all my cat issues
. I know you’re completely overwhelmed with questions, so I promise I did search your site for this question/answer, but didn’t find anything. I have 3 cats – 2 that are overweight and one that is fine. Zoe’s weight is fine, Momma (12 lbs) could lose a few pounds and Coby Jones (17) needs to lose about 6-7 pounds. For about a month now I’ve been toying around with the idea of making my own cat food at home – I’ve already been through catnutrition.org and catinfo.org, both great sites and both suggested on your site!
My cats have always been on dry food and it’s killing me that I didn’t know better until now! I’d like to transition them to wet food immediately – I moved to Italy about a year ago and have had no luck finding the premium brands on your list here and can’t afford to have these great foods shipped to me (maybe if i had one cat, but not with 3!!), so I’ve got to make do with what’s around in Italy.
But here’s the problem: Coby, the one whose weight I’m most worried about, has had a subpubic urethrostomy and bladder surgery, and as a result has periodic UTI infections and crystals. He hasn’t had an infection in over a year now (hooray!!), but I have noticed in the past that when I run out of the c/d and he eats another (crap) food for a couple of days, he starts to have problems – so I don’t run out of food anymore.
Since reading how awful dry food is, I’ve started feeding them Hill’s C/D canned food, but it’s too expensive for me to continue this way (besides the fact that C/D is more expensive than regular foods, I live in Italy and everything is way more expensive here!).
I can now see if I can find some of the “good supermarket foods” around and feed that to at least the other 2 cats (Zoe & Momma). But now I’m wondering if Coby even needs to be on C/D at all? If I switch him to raw food, will I still have to worry about UTI and crystals? I do think raw food would be the cheapest way to go, but I’d love an alternative.
I’d have to buy a grinder to make raw food and haven’t found one here yet – so until that happens, I’ll be feeding canned. Are the foods on your website list of “Good Supermarket Foods” Ok for him also? I know they’re obviously better than dry food, but wonder if they’ll be OK for him and his urethra issues? If not, then I’ll have to continue him on C/D canned food and feed the other 2 cats some supermarket foods to try to cut some costs.
P.S. I have XM radio, and I thought XM and Sirius joined… so does that mean I have access to your show on XM radio?
Brenda, Cara Mia, you think that being in Italy poses a problem to feeding your cats well but just the opposite is true! Mangia! You are in great good luck because you are in a country that puts rabbit into cans for pets – and rabbit is the absolutely best meat source for cats. So forget all about the pet food confusion in the U.S. and go right for the supermarket shelf anywhere in Bella Italia, where I have lived with dogs and cats off and on my entire life. You cannot do better than offer rabbit to a kitty – even better than trying to grind your own rabbit or chicken (WAY too costly in Italy) because besides the raw meat being so expensive there, and the need for a commercial grade grinder that would grind the bones with the meat, you’d also need to add taurine to make it a balanced food for a cat. As for Coby’s urinary crystals and problems, these are very often caused by dry food in the first place – and more dry food just leads to more digestive and urinary problems. He should do wonderfully on a nice moist food from a can. Consider yourself lucky – YOU should be shipping Italian canned cat food to US! — not the other way around. The reason that pet food there is so much less toxic overall is because the human food industry has never become the antibiotic and hormone-laden chemically-raised table food that we have here. The Europeans — Italians in particular — have been rigorous about avoiding food colorings or chemicals of any kind in raising their food — and since pet food is generally supplied by the remains of the human food processing business, it means that the pets benefit from clean food, too.
As for Sirius and XM, yes they did merge but you need to pay another few dollars a month to add “the best of Sirius” to your XM subscription — and since the Martha Stewart channel and CAT CHAT® are definitely amongst the best of Sirius, you can be listening to me live just by forking over a few bucks.
Tracie
