Rebecca from Virginia wrote me this excellent letter about what she thinks is best for her pets and I really admire her passion!

Maile

I first purchased The Cat Bible because I didn’t really know a whole lot about cats. I learned quite a bit from reading it but I continue to learn as I use it as a reference. It only made sense for me to purchase The Dog Bible. It too, is seeing the same amount of use. I would love signed book plates to put in them. My dog’s name is Kaia. My cat’s name is Maile. I’m attaching pictures of both my girls. Maile is sitting by her favorite screened window (I check her screen every day). Kaia is just being cute. She is beagle/ Austrailian Cattle Dog. She has a very beautiful story. But really when it comes down to it… don’t they all?  Keep up the good work of educating others. I have a problem that Animal Planet in a story titled Five Ways Your Cat Can Live Longer suggests feeding dry food to the cat. Despite all that we know about cats being obligate carnivores and the dry food manufacturing process and carbs. Additionally, I’ve had first hand experience with AAHA. They recommended a vet to me that had been disciplined by the state vet board in 2008 and his license was put on probation of JAN of this year. He was on probation when I went to go see him. The only way I figured this out is that something didn’t feel right during the visit. So I went home and did the research and found out this information. I emailed AAHA and brought it to their attention. They forwarded my complaint to the vet. I have not heard anything else from AAHA. The vet is still up on their website as an AAHA accredited hospital (there is only one vet at that location). Whose interests do they have in mind?  Whose interests do they have in mind? Those are only two discrepancies that I know of. You know people see Animal Planet and they think it’s the know all of pet care. They don’t think of Iam’s dry pet food paying the AP light bill so they have to give bad advice. As a social worker, I knew I had to question the government but AAHA? I can’t even figure out where their pay out is. So it’s up to writers like you to put science and facts out there so as consumers we can make informed decisions and give us a starting point for discussions with our vets. If reviewing your books on Amazon will help you and will get the word out… then I’m on it. Thanks for writing such great books.

I got this charming email recently:

My name is Emma and I am in 6th grade. I am doing a Passion Project, and cats are my passion. I need to ask an expert some questions on cat behavior. I hope you have time to answer my questions. My cat is Angel and she is 17! Thank you very much for helping me.

Why does a cat like to curl up in a cardboard box when she has a nice fluffy bed?

Cats are quirky creatures who each have their own personal taste in what makes them happy. A cardboard box is a dark cozy place — it feels safe, like a nice hiding place, so might appeal more to a cat who enjoys her privacy and the feeling of security you get from being less out in the open.

Do cats get bored of the same brand of cat food? Do they ever get bored of homemade cat food?

Often just the opposite is true — cats are creatures of habit and usually do not like change or variety. Cats actually can get really stuck on one flavor and one brand of cat food. Rather than getting bored by the same taste and texture at every meal, they sort of get addicted to it and will refuse anything that is different — just because it is different! This is why I always recommend that people get a variety of flavors and ingredients in canned cat food.  Homemade cat food is a whole different story since you cannot safely make your cat’s food because it will lack taurine which is essential to a cat’s health, as well as not having the proper amount of fat (which is good for cats) and calcium. You can give snacks of real food and I don’t think any cat gets sick of surprise treats!

Why do some vets say we need to brush a cat’s teeth, when cats didn’t do that in the wild? Is there something they can eat that takes care of their teeth?

Please go to my website TheCatBible.com to read the blogs and Q&As about how dry cat food is bad for cats in many ways, but especially because it makes their teeth dirtier, not cleaner.  Dry cat food is sprayed with fats and flavor enhancers and can leave a residue on their teeth, just the way eating corn chips does on our teeth!  In the wild, crunching on the bones, feathers and fur of birds and mice keeps a cat’s teeth clean — at home you can use a small kitty toothbrush with cat-friendly toothpaste or a dental cleaning pad that you wrap around your finger and rub on your cat’s teeth and gums.

Is it OK if my cat eats catnip every day? We have some in our yard.

Eating catnip is a nice healthy touch for the digestive tract — like eating our salad every day — but you can buy little pots of wheat grass and other cat-friendly grasses that will grow on a windowsill and the cat can munch on when she feels like it. Not all cats respond to the “get happy, get crazy” effects of catnip, which is always dried before it is used in toys and treats. I don’t actually know if the fresh catnip has the same effect as when it is dried, but it certainly cannot do any harm

Good luck to you, Emma. I hope you get a gold star on your Passion Project and go on to include animals in whatever you wind up doing in life!  Hugs & kisses to Angel — 17 is a great age to be. I urge you to get her off any dry food immediately to keep her healthy for many more years. “Kitty crack” is my name for any dry food — and my website and book THE CAT BIBLE explain very clearly why this is true.

–Tracie Hotchner

I got this message from Billie and Mark, which they addressed to “Dr. Hotchner.” While I am humbled to be trusted by my listeners, I recommend that anyone with a troubling medical situation turn to the Official Second Opinion Vet of my radio shows, Dr. Donna Spector (link to her website is www.SpectorDVM.com).

Our 10-year-old male cat was diagnosed with diabetes last Monday. Since then we have been treating him with two units of Prozinc (protamine zinc) insulin. Last night Jack had difficulty walking and became extremely lethargic, from the literature that we have read we thought that he was hypoglycemia. So we started treating him with honey at around 2:00 AM when it appeared that he was worsening we took him to the emergency room. His glucose was 557, twelve hours later his glucose level 550. They are administering insulin via an intravenous drip.

He will spend tonight at the emergency facility and we will take him to our vet in the morning. If you were his Doctor, would you expect any improvement? I know that this is a difficult question not having seen Jack, but I would value your opinion.

I replied:

First of all, I am not a doctor, just a pet expert!

I am honored that you have sought my advice, but you need to turn not just to a veterinarian, but to one who is a board-certified veterinary internist — someone who has a big perspective and can work long distance with you and your own vet. Dr Donna Spector (CC’ed here) is the Official Second Opinion vet of both my radio shows and I recommend you contact her immediately to help you understand exactly what is going on with Jack and to make sure you know how to deal with it. It is so valuable to have a “veterinary detective” — which is how I think of internists! — who is aware of all the latest research and can support your own vet’s decisions or give you other ideas, too.

In your situation I would get in touch with her right away.

I can also urge you to go to my website www.TheCatBible.com to learn the dangers of feeding dry food, which is the only known cause of type II diabetes in cats. “Kitty crack” is a harmful and addictive product for obligate carnivores, who need canned meat only. My website has a printable list of Cat Chat approved flavors and brands.

Dr Elizabeth Hodgkins is the official Vet of Cat C hat and her book YOUR CAT is a valuable resource you should have on your shelf, too!

Good luck
Tracie

I have been having such a swell time periodically interviewing Nancy Kerns on DOG TALK® — she’s the editor of the greatly admired publication THE WHOLE DOG JOURNAL which takes no advertising and therefore is beholden to no one in the advice and recommendations they make about dog feeding and training. I relied on the WDJ for much of the direction I went in on the trail of nutrition facts and advice when researching THE DOG BIBLE and I continue to read it every month with great interest.

One of the most popular features of the magazine is the annual “Dry Dog Food” issue which includes descriptions of the ingredients and places of manufacture of all the premium dog foods that WDJ approves of (by a standard they explain).  It has bothered me for a long time that my own personal favorite dry dog food — the one I choose to feed my dogs as part of their meals — is not on WDJ’s list. The kibble I use as part of their meals (along with other and ever-changing additional elements of protein and vegetable) is Halo’s Spot’s Stew. I feed the Halo chicken, salmon and now the new lamb recipe, all in rotation.

Because I have become friendly with Nancy over this period of interviewing her, I had some topics I wanted to run by her off the air. In the course of doing so, I decided to raise my preoccupation that some of the finest dry dog foods are not included on her list — namely Halo, Purely for Pets, and other companies that have literally raised the bar for how dry dog food is made and been leaders in positively influencing how other companies make their products. Nancy Kerns explained (as she does in the WDJ) that if a company cannot make public where their foods are manufactured, she cannot include them as that is a prerequisite for inclusion. The companies themselves have explained to me that they have to protect their sources for ingredients and manufacture from other premium brands (as well as lesser-quality more commercial brands) that might try to take advantage of that information. So I understood that it is basically a stalemate and they won’t find themselves in that WDJ listing, despite being what I consider “stars” in the dry food firmament.

But then Nancy divulged an incredible bit of information: her aging, cranky, peculiar and very, very picky cat Shadow cannot live without her Halo dry food! I told Nancy that I recommend no dry cat food of any kind for cats because they are obligate carnivores and should be on a meat-only diet. I tried to give her my “No kitty crack!” lecture but Nancy said this cat would starve to death if she didn’t have access to her bowl of dry food — she’s that determined. Nancy explained that she does also feed some canned food to Shadow, but that if the cat walks by her bowl and does not see some Halo kibble in there, she screams bloody murder!  Sometimes she doesn’t need to eat any, she just needs the reassurance that she can see it in there!  How’s that for irony?!  Shadow the picky eater chose Halo as her favorite and “necessary” cat food and puts her little paw down demanding that it always be visible in her bowl or she has a hissy fit! (In a future blog I’ll write about how the Spirit Essence called Aging Gracefully actually toned down some of Shadow’s mania.)

I assured Nancy that for those rare people (like herself) who must put down some dry food for their cats, Halo’s kibble is the one I recommend because I can trust the quality of the ingredients that went into it: no by products, no meal, no artificial anything.  Ironically, this is equally true of Halo’s dry dog food — which may not be on that list of Whole Dog Journal approved dry foods but certainly deserves to be. Just ask Shadow!

As for The Whole Dog Journal, you will be doing yourself and your pooch a huge favor (or for a gift for a dog-centered friend) by subscribing to this publication the name of which makes me think of the phrase “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Go to www.whole-dog-journal.com and get hooked up now before you forget!

–Tracie Hotchner

Catster.com often posts Daily Tips from me and whenever there is one about food, things heat up! (http://blogs.catster.com/cat_tip_of_the_day/2011/02/28/how-much-food-does-a-cat-really-need/#comments) I just LOVE when the feeding topic gets everybody energized! There are a few different issues raised here so first I urged everyone to go to my website TheCatBible.com and read some of the lengthy blogs and Q&A’s on the topic of cats being true obligate carnivores who should eat ONLY a meat-based diet with no more than 10% carbohydrate content. They also should NOT be grazing and eating continuously– their short digestive tracts and the fact that they are hunters whose bodies are built for feast and then rest is essential to feeding them correctly. The dry food industry has us all brain washed into thinking otherwise.

Once you create a “kitty crack” addict — they will have non-stop cravings for unhealthy carbs (dry food, any dry food) and need to be re-educated about having 2 satisfying wet meals a day. For TERRI who is a truck driver this can be a challenge — someone to come in and give a second wet meal would be great, but my website also has answers for this particular situation. For MIKE and other feral cat feeders, dry is usually the most economical and practical way to go. Those cats would starve otherwise. For CAROL and ROBIN who are feeding a huge family of cats, wet feeding requires large cans of food, paper plates (if you don’t want to wash 12 saucers!) and teaching patience at feeding time. Again, I suggested checking out the huge amount of free advice on my website, or calling into CAT CHAT® any Wednesday night so I can personally help solve individual situations. For BETH, I certainly accepted her apologies for having strong feelings against my advice, but it’s so important to me that everyone come to understand that cats cannot get fat on wet food fed in two meals a day. They will actually lose weight. It’s the constant snacking on highly processed carbs that their bodies are not designed to digest that causes obesity, diabetes, kidney problems and a host of others. TONI: It’s such a shame your cat was able to become an ex-kitty-crack user and then you got him back on it. BERNADETTE you are right about how well Maggie has trained you to give her Halo Liv-a-Littles! But that is really healthy for her because Liv-a-Littles are pure dehydrated chicken, beef or salmon and just the quality protein that a cats body really needs! The truth is that if she only eats protein snacks and wet foods, and no dry at all, she will eventually settle into the 8-10 lb. range and be very healthy. Many compulsive eating cats have gotten that way from carbohydrate addiction and once they get an all-protein diet, with only 2 meals a day, they eventually chill out. Remember that you can always use a fishing pole toy instead of giving a treat!

–Tracie Hotchner

I got this question from Julie:

I have been trying to call with this question, but never seem to get through. I know you are against kitty crack, but what about Blue Buffalo dry food? We tried doing the wet food, but it was difficult to continue when we went on vacation because no one wanted to come by every day to open cat food. I cruised the pet food aisle at Petsmart, and the Blue Wilderness (duck or chicken) seems to have the highest amount of protein. Is this still bad for our 3 cats (Missy Elliott, Martha Stewart and Katie Couric)?

Thanks for your help!

My reply to her was:

Please spend some time on my blog and the Q&A section so you can understand the importance of avoiding kitty crack as much as possible. If you travel and there is NO ONE who will come in twice a day to open a can and scoop the litter, then the only dry food I feel comfortable recommending is the HALO kibble because I know that the meat in it is really meat — not the mysterious and sometimes creepy ingredients some pet food companies use to raise the protein level in their foods without being what we generally think of as meat. HALO uses no by-products and no meat meal — that is a big difference with all the other dry foods. But first I would urge you to find someone who can stop in even once a day (eating one meal a day is fine for cats) for the kitties because it’s important to see that they are using the litter box in their normal fashion. If a cat gets a blockage it causes great pain and can be life threatening, and only by monitoring that they are eliminating in their own regular schedule can you have peace of mind.

–Tracie Hotchner

I got this appeal from Dee in North Carolina — the length shows how attentive she is to her pets’ symptoms and how aware she is of dangers and nutritional issues too — a really great owner!

One of our cats, a 2 year old neutered male named Pumpkin (picture attached), has not been eating well the past few days. He’s one of three cats (two boys and one girl, all siblings) who each eat a normal 5.5 oz can of wet cat food (Friskies) twice a day — totaling 6 cans/day– and the only one not eating the food. We have a variety of flavors so I thought it was a specific one and changed which one he was eating. Still not interested… Would try to take some bites but then walk away. His urine and fecal movements are okay and we do have water down for them, too. Out of frustration and desperation to get him to eat, I cooked up some ground beef and he’s had about 1 C worth over the past 24 hours. Also ate a vienna sausage (I use those to give my12 year old dog a daily pill — gave him one without a pill obviously), and some baked ham so I know he’s hungry. Turned up his nose to some turkey gravy (also opened up a can of this out of desperation), but I’ll try him on some chicken tomorrow — still frozen.

Fur feels kind of oily like it gets when they are sick but not overly oily — he’s normally a very soft (almost angora like his sister) and fluffy kitty. I had been adding in the oil of one fish oil capsule to the boys’ food as they were having a bad time with flea dermatitis (their sister doesn’t like the fish oil at all) so I’ve stopped that for the meantime. He’s really not changed behaviors, just a little sluggish at times. Just gave him some more hamburger and he’s happy — I’m just glad he’s eating! What else should I give him besides chicken? He’s the known butter thief in the family too — but I’ve had it locked up and he can’t get to it (room temperature butter for spreading on toast — locked it in the cabinet above the toaster).

I’ve also attached two pictures of plants I’ve recently brought into the house when these freezing temperatures descended upon us last week. Nearly killed my huge Aloe plant and HUGE Macho fern (forgot them on the front porch — we use the carport for going in and out), two bridal veil plants (dark green pots), and my jasmine plant which I had in the back yard in full sun. Not sure if he’s chewed any of those — though the aloe is suspect as it was weeping for a bit when it thawed out (and STUNK! I need to trim the bad leaves off now), and he did play a bit with the macho fern (likes to play hide and seek under it). I do know someone or all three of them have been munching on my artificial Christmas tree as I’ve seen urps with that stuff in it on the floor. Nothing like more cleaning of carpets…

We have recently changed (in Nov) all of their flea meds from Frontline to Advantage and I’ve seen such a DIFFERENCE in their skin. They’re not breaking out anymore! We’ve been vacuuming (which the vet’s tech — their daughter — said activates the hatching of the eggs with the vibrations) every other day and cleaning the carpets with HOT water every two weeks to keep on top of it. The cats are indoors only but we have the large dog (1/2 Boxer- 1/4 German Shepard 1/4 Labrador Retriever) and our daughter’s year old Australian Terrier who do go in and out. We do try to remember to spray the yard during the spring and summer but it’s been a very tough season here in the south for fleas.

I do wish we could afford the Weruva and Vectra for the cats and dogs but we also have a horse (5 year old American Quarter Horse, sorrel/chestnut, named Buster) so our pennies are stretched out very thin for animal upkeep, and my husband will be retiring from the Army this next year. I don’t work, do homeschool our youngest daughter, and we have a wedding for our eldest daughter next year to pay for in October. Her dog and horse will go with her too–so then I could possibly afford the Vectra. which I’d like to invest in as we live in a very sandy soil area (“sand hills” of North Carolina). I’ve also looked into the cost of making our own cat food and have found the supplements I’ll need online — just need to buy a meat grinder and find who has the best prices for the meat. That will be a gradual transition, too. Until then, bonuses of homemade meat balls once in a while are given to all of them (they like them raw and I don’t add anything to them).

There were a couple of things I told Dee when she called into CAT CHAT® that night (she doesn’t have SiriusXM satellite radio but I told her anyone can call the toll free number 866-675-6675 between 8-9 PM EST any Wednesday night!) First, I think something is definitely up with Pumpkin — his greasy fur and change in appetite is a big tip off so I think a vet visit is need for a physical exam and blood work. Secondly, while I understand financial constraints, the science behind Frontline is 17 years old so it is markedly less effective than Vectra, which has been formulated and newly developed with the newest technology and research. Also, Frontline is now sold over the counter and on websites and there is no quality control and no way of knowing you are getting a genuine product (there are a lot of websites selling fake product), even if it is less effective than Vectra! (many people find it stops working after about 2 weeks so they put on another application which is really unsafe and unhealthy since it is a 30-day product, even if it does not work effectively for that long). The really awesome Christmas Stocking Stuffer news is that Dee is going to get some complimentary Vectra for her kitties from Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins (the Official vet of CAT CHAT® who is now the head of Vectra’s Veterinary Services — congratulations Elizabeth!) One reason why is that Dee knows about Vectra from me, would want to choose it over any other brand, and has budgetary concerns right now — we know she’ll one day be able to be a loyal and satisfied Vectra customer for her dog and kitty cats!

Lastly, if she wants to make food at home it needs to be chicken-based and the grinder she gets must be capable of grinding whole chickens, bones and all, with added organ meat. Beyond that, she is going to need to supplement with Platinum Performance for a fully balanced meal (taurine, etc.) and overall health benefits (Dr. Elizabeth and many vets I know suggest all their dogs and cats are on Platinum daily, as are my dogs and mini-donkey and my husband and I!) so there are monetary considerations in all this, too!

Here were Dr. Elizabeth’s comments on Pumpkin:

The Friskies is not a bad alternative to dry food if the owner can’t upgrade to whole chicken or similar. The Platinum only costs 5 cents/day/cat so that really shouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately, I doubt that cold weather is affecting this cat’s appetite. Hot weather can, but generally cats will eat more during cold weather. She doesn’t say how old this kitty is but I suspect there is something medical going on and if it persists, she will have to take him to be examined as it may be serious and it will be cheaper and easier to deal with the earlier she acts. The change in the fur is also troublesome so I think unless he snaps out of this soon, a vet visit is in order.

Here is a comment about Pumpkin from Dr Donna Spector, DOG TALK® and CAT CHAT® Official Second Opinion Vet (www.SPECTORDVM.com):

While the decreased appetite does happen to some cats… I wouldn’t necessarily want to just chalk it up to that. I took a look at the picture and he is looking a little greasy/unkempt. Being a young cat… they can get into a lot of things… sometimes GI foreign bodies look like this, pancreatitis, dietary indiscretion, etc. These are the questions I would ask of a client: with the holidays… do they have tinsel up or other decorations that he might have nibbled on? Does he have access to the tree / tree water? I once had a 3 year old cat who ate so many pine needles from the Christmas tree he was impacted from the stomach up to his mid-espophagus. No vomiting… just didn’t want to eat. So this isn’t necessarily something like that… but this can be a digestively stressful time of year… any parties? People who fed fatty treats? New treats recently?

I don’t think trying a different brand of food is a bad idea and in the short term (one or two weeks) she can home cook for him… especially if he is sick (like with a pancreatitis, etc) the very best thing would be lean meats she cooks at home. Sounds like he liked the burger she gave him and he actually ate a decent amount. But I think she needs to get the vet sooner rather than later.

Thank you to my wonderful veterinary colleagues who are so swift and generous with their time and knowledge! And wishing good health to Pumpkin, of course.

UPDATE: Pumpkin Pulled Out of It!

I was so happy to get this message back from Dee in North Carolina — who was ready to take Pumpkin to the vet, but was very glad not to have to!

Last night Pumpkin came and slept with us, something he’s not done in a very long time. This morning he ate an entire can of food (gave half with the others at breakfast and then the other half about an hour later), and again this evening he just ate a full dinner without any problem. His fur is feeling and looking almost normal again. Whatever it was it has passed (of course I was praying for him, too . I’ll still continue to monitor him and will call in tonight as promised.

I am so thankful for this gift of Vectra! Honestly it is a true surprise as I was not expecting anything but a suggestion of what to feed Pumpkin, etc. I am truly thankful to both you and Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins for this unexpected but very welcome gift.

We have two vets we use. One is the vet clinic on the Army base (Fort Bragg) where my husband is stationed and retiring from and they only carry Frontline for the cats. I take the cats there for their annual shots, but we can’t do much beyond regular check ups and minor things there. I can pretty much say it will be a no go for the military to add Vectra to their clinics — they’re extremely tough to get things changed there.

I will look into the Platinum Performance supplement Dr. Elizabeth mentioned, and the fish oil was normal human fish oil by Sundown Naturals (1000 mg). Obviously I have listened to you about fish oil but thought this would be as good as Nordic Naturals and even more obviously now I have a LOT MORE to learn! My cats have been off “kitty crack” since March and I will look more into what would be best for them at the level that I can afford. If it’s staying with Friskies then so be it unless there is something better out there which is better and pretty comparable in price. I can say our cost for cat, dog, and horse food/litter/meds is pretty expensive each month, but I love them all as I do my children. They are my furry children! I’ll be calling in tonight, I promise. Thank you, again, for all of your generosity and helping me get them on the right track.

I replied:

Dear Dee — It was terrific that you called into CAT CHAT® tonight – wonderful to get to know you in person! I have three things to straighten out for you which I didn’t have time for on the air.

1)   The vet on the base is WAY “OFF BASE”! No cats should be getting annual shots of any kind — holistic vets and health-conscious vets of any kind have known for years that yearly vaccinations are unnecessary and possibly harmful. The AVMA (which is the organization all vets belong to) has a stated policy that vaccines should only be given every 3 years (although many of the more educated vets would say that is often overkill for many pets). So you can save some money and definitely some potential harm to your kitties right there!

2)   WERUVA, my favorite cat food, is definitely costly because of the very high quality ingredients it contains, but they also make BFF (Best Feline Friend), a less costly yet high quality cat food. Both these foods and even the Friskies your other kitties eat and many brands both value-priced and premium can be found at my newest sponsor www.PETLFOW.com! With a minimum $60 order you will pay NO SHIPPING even for litter (all the Dr Elsey Precious Cat litters are there and imagine how nice to not have to lug them home but let the UPS man bring them without charge!) Simply put dogtalk (one word) in the code box at checkout and you will not be lugging stuff home from the market anymore! Also, Petflow.com carries the kibble I feed my own dogs — HALO — which I’d love you to try because you can feed less of it because of the high quality of the real meat they use to achieve the protein level. The brand you have been using was recently part of a pet food recall and instead, I’d love to see your dogs getting the highest quality nutrition from a company that does no advertising and instead uses that money for charitable contributions through www.Freekibble.com (you should sign up for their daily quick quizzes — it’s seriously fun and HALO food is donated even if you get the answer wrong!).

3) Other fish oils are definitely NOT like Nordic Naturals — for you, or your pets. There is no comparison between the seriousness with which the Norwegians treat their oceans and responsibly choose the fish they will use for their omega-3 oil — it is a country with a centuries old tradition of making fish oil in a safe, sustainable and healthy way. The oil is filtered with the highest level of care and is third-party tested for purity — one of the worst things you can put in your body or your pet’s body is oil that is tainted with pollutants or has become rancid, both of which would do more harm than good. So please get Nordic Naturals — you can puncture one capsule and squeeze a few drops on the cat’s paw each day to lick off — for the dogs, each pet capsule is dosed for 20 lbs of dog, so feed accordingly. If you are going to make the really good decision to include the anti-inflammatory and overall health benefits of omega-3 fish oil in your diet and that of your pets, an important use of your resources is to make sure you have a really fresh, pure product or it’s better not to do it at all (but I do definitely recommend doing it!)

–Tracie Hotchner

Author Laura Jacobs (who came on my show www.AuthorsOnAnimals.com on NPR) with her book The Bird Catcher) has three Ocicats she would do anything for — but she didn’t know the “kitty crack” story. She did feed canned food but said her cancer-survivor Jasper was on a different diet:

Jasper is on a bland diet of Feline ID for life and it’s just one flavor, so we give him some chicken to keep him from getting too bored.  But I confess that at dinner we do give them a few small kernels of dry food/crunchies alongside the wet because we were told it was good for their teeth.  Is that not alright? Also, thank you for the info on health insurance — I’ll look into Pets Best.

So I replied:

I have to give you the serious “kitty crack” talk! You can either call into CAT CHAT® or go on www.traciehotchner.com/cc/ or thecatbible.com and put “kitty crack” in the google search bar on my site and find out the need to get into kitty rehab and go 100% clean.  A little “crack cocaine” is still a harmful addictive drug for people — so is kitty crack for cats. And to make matters worse, dry food also contributes to dental disease, not the opposite. The prescription diet foods use such low quality ingredients and with such a high carbohydrate percentage that is it criminal, in my opinion, to use them for ill pets.

Laura replied:

I checked out your the posts on your website.  The reason Jasper was put on a bland diet is because he had a bout of pancreatitis two years ago.  But I’m happy to try to change him over to Weruva if you think that’s the right thing. He just can’t have anything fatty.  FYI the supplements he gets are 3G fish oil, Lysine, DMG (an immune booster), and co-enzyme Q-10.  Also, a few drops of Vitamin E at dinner.  Veronica and Henry get Wellness wet.  How do you feel about that?  I bought a small can of Weruva today and checked out the percentages.  The fat percentage is 1.2 compared to Feline ID’s 4.0.  So Weruva has LOWER fat than the ID.  I’m thinking I should start transitioning all three cats onto Weruva.  We can easily not feed the cats hard food.

Dr Elizabeth’s comments on all this were:

This diet is unnecessary. I/d is full of rice. Not the worst Rx diet but none of them are worth a dang. She can feed Wellness or any other quality canned that he likes and can also feed raw or cooked meat to supplement. Platinum Performance supplement added besides as well. Poor guy has suffered enough! She doesn’t want a lower fat diet, as you and I discussed at Petco last year (note: Elizabeth & I did a video in a Petco store in California about cat food). She can give extra fat in the form of meat that has fat if she feeds a low fat canned food.  Even if this kitty did have pancreatitis, that is not caused by or exacerbated by dietary fat. For supplements, ALL she needs is PP. She should pick up a copy of my book YOUR CAT for more depth of explanation. This is just another example of the ignorance of veterinarians treating cats like small dogs.

I had the wonderful author Laura Jacobs (The Bird Watcher) on my show Authors on Animals (www.AuthorsonAnimals.com) recently and gave her the whole “kitty crack” lecture — she thought her cancer survivor Jasper (she has three Ocicats) needed to be on a prescription diet, but Dr. Elizabeth & I talked her down off that ledge.

Laura wrote back with happiness:

Thank you so much for all your great advice — especially at dinnertime. I started the kids on Weruva and they LOVE it.  I’m so thrilled for Jasper that he now gets to eat what the others are having.

I got this most touching letter recently about a really empathetic cat:

I have a 3 year old ragdoll cat, Molly, but we’d just adopted her about 9 months ago. We have a very good bond, I feel, but didn’t realize how much until I see the way she reacts when I cry or am upset about something.

She meows and tries to crawl on my arm and/or start licking me. She doesn’t ordinarily get that close to me at any other time (except in the a.m. when she jumps on my bed to wake me up to feed her, she gets very affectionate; otherwise, she doesn’t even like to be held.)  But how does she know I’m upset and that crying means I’m usually sad? What is she trying to do? I’ve had cats my entire life and never had a cat that reacted as she does.

Lillian F.
P.S. Love your show on Martha Radio; have your The Cat Bible and never feed her any dry food Thanks!!!

I replied:

Yes of course she knows you are upset!! Isn’t hat sweet? And one of the reasons we have kitties as our companions — because they care & are non-judgmental and make us feel better when we are blue. I hope whatever has caused you sadness has passed by now — and you are feeling more cheery.

Thank you for giving up “kitty crack” & feeding wet food only! Maybe she’s extra loving in gratitude!

Send me your mailing address so I can inscribe a bookplate to Molly to stick in the front of your Cat Bible (and thanks for getting it!) And I’ll also send a coupon for up to $20 of Cat Attract litter from Precious Cat, too, for buying the book.

P.S. In the month of November, any purchases of PRECIOUS CAT litter will be donated 100% to research for a human cancer cure for Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation — so please buy some in November when your free container runs out!

–Tracie Hotchner