At the risk of wearing out my welcome (and with the promise that this will be my last email), it occurs to me to ask you a question that Jane has been asking me.

In the first 24 hours after we brought Patsy home from the shelter, we were alarmed that she wasn't drinking water at all. so we took her to the vet and found that she was dehydrated (and had various other typical problems ... fleas, worms, infection, etc.). At the time, the vet suggested we use human baby food to get her daily antibiotic dose down her, and that worked like a charm. She LOVED the pureed chicken baby food, and continues to love it.

So now, as I've been reading your chapter on nutrition, and the other good online sources on nutrition, and sharing all this with Jane, and making the argument to get rid of dry food, Jane is asking me: "Why can't we just keep feeding her baby food with, say, some added taurine and calcium?" 

It's true that the baby food is pure chicken, pureed, but I'm concerned that, even after adding taurine and calcium, it may not be suffient nutrition.

So, I'm more inclined to use it (along with some residual dry food) as an interim adjunct to help Patsy get established with some high-quality canned food (we still need to decide which is best).

I've looked around a bit online for a discussion of this but haven't found anything.

I'm just wondering if you have an opinion about this.

But feel free to ignore this question if I have exceeded the nuisance threshhold (I imagine you get LOTS of email).

Either way, thanks again for your good work.
Don

Dear Don & Patsy,

Do not feel bad about inundating me with questions -– although it’s tremendously thoughtful of you to think of me buried under the avalanche that arrives (rarely does it occur to people that I might want to have a life beyond CAT CHAT® and DOG TALK®!) , it seems to be my fate to have become the Go-To-Gal on cats and dogs, and so I embrace the trust you are putting in me and am genuinely happy to oblige.

As for the baby food, while I know it is not a proper complete food for a cat, to find out more I turned to Lynette of Feline Outreach in Chicago (you may have heard her on CAT CHAT recently) who has helped me so much with nutrition and other issues in The Cat Bible.  She confirms that all-meat baby food is very definitely not a complete diet for a cat.  Even adding Platinum Performance and a calcium supplement (such as Animal Essential seas calcium) might not be enough. (Please read more about Platinum on my website -– it is an amazing joint supplement that gives dramatic relief -– and is also an immune system booster and used for animals with cancer or other serious illnesses). I highly recommend it for horses, dogs, cats, and now I take the human version and have not needed to take one Advil since I went on it!

Lynette explains that many amino acids, such as taurine and lysine, are easily destroyed by the cooking process.  While Platinum Performance added to raw meat and ground bone may supply adequate nutrition, it may not make up for all the nutrients destroyed by the cooking process in creating baby food.  (As a side note, Lynette suggests that feeding baby food would be much more expensive than feeding a good quality canned food or a raw diet from Feline’s Pride). 

When using baby food to entice an inappetant cat (meaning one who just ain’t eating), it's best to find one is all-meat -- lamb is often suggested -- and does not contain corn starch or onion powder. Onion powder can cause nausea. Corn starch adds carbohydrates. Dr. Hodgkins often recommends all-meat baby food mixed with plain yogurt as a temporary measure for cat who isn’t eating. Additional supplementation should be used if fed more than three days.)

Don’t be concerned about which brand of canned food is best – there are loads of good ones, mentioned in The Cat Bible but also downloadable as a one-page pdf. file in the nutrition section of TheCatBible.com.

Your comment about using “residual dry food” REALLY REALLY bothers me – apparently the urgency of removing all Kitty Crack from your home did not come across. Dry food is terrible for cats – from every possible perspective. Just because you bought it doesn’t mean you want to keep polluting your cats with it?? Please give it to a local rescue, feral cat group or whomever has limited resources.

Okay, that’s it for now, but please repay my time in one way only: ditch the dry food, and pass the word on to anyone you know who loves cats. Ask the people at Feline Outreach about  the heartache of people whose cats have sickened and died from dry food that caused diabetes, kidney disease, etc,.

Take care of yourselves and the felines,
Tracie