Best Cat Health

As I duplicate this blog with my other one on cat health, I am no longer contributing to this blog. Please click on the title 'Best Cat Health' above for the active blog which details weekly  posts.

Home Made Cat Food is the Best - Six Good Reasons Why

Home made cat food has the potential of providing all your cat’s nutritional needs, unlike processed food, which provides few.

You want the best for your cat, so are likely to buy superior food. Actually, it would be impossible not to, as the low grade food that goes into making processed cat food is not available on the market. No consumer would buy it.

Only pet food manufacturers buy it as they have a greater interest in their bottom line than in the health of your cat.

So lets look at the different options available to you, which go to make up why you should provide home made cat food, as opposed to processed food.

1. the meat you buy is very fresh
2. the meat you buy is good quality
3. you can offer the food raw
4. you wouldn’t pad out the food with cheap, non-nutritional filler
5. you wouldn’t add preservatives, colours or appetite stimulants
6. you can opt to add healthy, natural, whole food supplements simply to ‘top up’ rather than to redress the poor quality

And don’t feel that raw, human grade food is expensive. It is more expensive to buy pound for pound (or kilo for kilo), but as they need far less in quantity, because the quality is so much better, it actually works out about the same or a bit cheaper.

Not only will your cat be healthier on a diet made with care and dedication, it will be cheaper too. No more expensive trips to the veterinarian. That alone can save you thousands, as well as heart break.

Home made cat food, when made with their evolutionary history in mind, will ensure a healthy and happy cat.

Cat Fleas - How to Resolve the Problem in One Easy Step

Cat fleas are unpleasant for your cat, who may endlessly scratch and lick. And unpleasant for you, when they start jumping onto you.

Commercial flea control is considered the only alternative. But is it? And how safe are they?

Before we go into this, I want to quote a veterinarian, Michael Lemmon.

“Popular flea collars contain powerful nerve gases. They can kill some fleas. They can also kill some pets and can do damage to children and adults handling the pet wearing the poisonous flea collar.”

Last week, a very distressed family brought a rabbit in for me to treat. They had treated him with Frontline. Now Frontline is not safe to use on rabbits. But how many people know this?

The rabbit was having seizures.

The first thing I did was to do an internet search on the ingredients. I discovered cyanide was an ingredient. Then I did a search on the ingredients of Advantage, another popular flea control preparation. This contains imidacloprid, which also affects the nerves.

So it seems that all commercial flea preparations contain nerve poisons, of various types and in varying quantities.

Is this what you want to apply to your cat? To be absorbed into her system? They may kill cat fleas, but what else do they do?

Imidacloprid also causes thyroid problems in rats. I’m sure that is a very real side effect in cats, too.

I was relating the rabbit story to a friend. She told me that after she had used a flea preparation of one of her dogs, the dog shook herself. Some of the flea preparation landed on a painted door. Moments later, the paint started to peel off.

So what is the alternative? Is there something else to control cats fleas? Preferably something natural.

You bet!

Isn’t it better to get to the cause of the problem, rather than just treat the effects? Treating the effects is generally unsuccessful, or at best, only marginally successful.

Your cat has fleas because of the diet you feed her. Commercial, processed cat food alters the chemistry in your cat. This attracts fleas. Feed your cat a diet that she evolved on and the chemistry comes back to normal. One that is unattractive to fleas.

I have fed my cats a raw meat and bones diet for the past thirteen years. I have never had to treat them for worms or fleas. And one sleeps in bed with me. Under the covers.

Sadly, the rabbit didn’t pull through.

Cats With Gingivitis and How to Resolve it Naturally

Cats with gingivitis are all too common. Gingivitis is the inflammation of the gums. One of the main reasons for this in cats, is the lack of raw bones in their diet. A cat who has daily bones, such as chicken necks or chicken wings, to crunch up, rarely has gingivitis.

Raw bones in a healthy cat’s diet serves at least four purposes:

1.  bones keep the teeth clean, preventing tartar building up
2.  bones massage the gums, keeping them healthy
3.  the crunching of bones keeps cats happy - it’s how they evolved
4.  ingesting bones are a natural, balanced mineral supply for building healthy bones

Sadly, many people don’t feed their cats a raw meat and bones diet, so mouth problems are rife. The normal treatment of antibiotics and teeth removal does nothing to enhance such a cat’s already badly damaged immune system.

Once the problem has started, it seems an endless round of continued and regular damaging treatment.

Is there an alternative? Is it too late to introduce a raw meat and bones diet?

There are always alternatives to everything. And it’s never too late to try anything.

Cats with gingivitis often respond very well to homeopathic treatment. The medicine Mercurius is almost a specific for this condition in both humans and other animals.

But, as with all homeopathic medicines, it’s best to have more than one strong symptom which matches the medicine, for a positive resolution. A homeopathic animal practitioner may be your best option, if you are new to homeopathy. But if you already know a bit about it, you might like to try Mercurius, as long as you can see some of the medicine’s strong keynotes in your cat’s gingivitis.

The strong keynotes of Mercurius are:

•  symptoms are worse for heat or cold (so food straight from the refrigerator is likely to be refused)
•  symptoms are worse at night
•  your cat may have excess saliva which feels slimy to the touch
•  your cat’s breath may smell foul, offensive
•  a history of repeated antibiotic treatment

Once your cats gingivitis is sorted out and pain is not experienced on eating, then you can start introducing a raw meat and bones diet. In the early stages, it’s best to cut up the necks or wings into bite size pieces. This makes it easier for an older cat, or one entrenched in old ways.

Healthiest Dry Cat Food - Is There Such a Thing?

Trying to find the healthiest dry cat food is liable to lead you down a blind alley.

Admittedly dry cat food is very convenient to the person providing the food. Things don’t come much easier than opening up a packet. But as you are asking the question, I know you’re not necessarily looking for just ease.

You’re also looking for a healthy and nutritious food for your cat.

Can you get that from dry food?

Let’s examine one of the ingredients of a typical dry food.

All dry food has a long shelf life. Despite the label on the packet, this can only come about with some form of preservatives. And the pet food industry uses some pretty toxic preservatives, that would never be allowed in human food. Do carbolic acid, ethoxyquin and formaldehyde sound harmless to you?

That’s what many (possibly all) dry cat food contains.

The reason the packet can claim otherwise, is because the manufacture may not have put the preservative in themselves. It may have been the food supplier who put it in. So the manufacturer can legally claim “no added preservative”, because they didn’t add it themselves.

Whether or not they put it there is irrelevant to you in your search for the healthiest dry cat food. Toxic preservatives are toxic regardless of who added them.

Another claim is that vitamin E is used as a preservative.

That may be true. But the amount would most likely have to be in such high amounts as to be totally unnatural to your cat.

Any isolated vitamin or mineral is always in a synthetic form. Apart from the fact that your cat never evolved to eat synthetic nutrients, or in high quantities, nutrients need to be in combination with their co-dependent nutrients.

This is only possible if the source is a whole food.

Even the healthiest dry cat food is liable to cause your cat some serious health problems.

Feline Vaccinations Aren’t the Best Way of Disease Prevention

Feline vaccinations generally include either three diseases (F3) or five (F5).

Commonly, depending on the country and area, the F3 will include respiratory diseases (calici virus, herpes virus) and feline enteritis.

The F5 includes the first three plus feline leukemia, clamydia (a bacteria) and possibly feline AIDS.

Many people believe that feline vaccinations are necessary to keep their cat healthy. But, in my opinion, this is not the case.

Vaccines contain toxic ingredients. Such as mercury, aluminium, formaldehyde. How can it be considered healthy, by injecting heavy metals and other poisons, directly into the blood stream?

In truth, the best way to keep your cat healthy is to make sure her immune system is in tip top order. There are several ways you can do this, but essentially it boils down to almost one thing.

And that is to keep your cat toxin free.

Cats are very sensitive to chemicals. They react badly to them. So by keeping poisons out of their blood stream, by eliminating flea and worm preparations (nerve poisons) and by feeding them a quality raw food diet, you are contributing to a healthy immune system.

Anyone with a healthy immune system will be able to prevent disease. That’s its function.

I said almost one thing. One of the other ways is to ensure her diet is raw. Cooked food destroys enzymes and other essential nutrients.

And the final way to keep your cat’s immunity strong is to use homeopathy for any ailments. Homeopathy only works by boosting the immune system. Then the cat takes over and cures herself.

Not long ago, I did a local tour of the catteries. I wanted to know which ones accepted cats for boarding who had not been conventionally vaccinated.

One very friendly owner who accepted homeoprophylaxis (HP), which is the oral immunisation by homeopathic medicines, told me that she had never had a problem with the cats who had been immunised by HP. But she frequently had problems with the conventionally vaccinated cats. They commonly showed signs of the disease they were supposed to be protected against.

If you focus on keeping your cats immunity in excellent order, that will do all that is necessary in preventing disease.

Most Cat Ailments Are Caused By a Toxic Overload

Cat ailments are on the increase. Why should this be the case? After all many cat people do what they consider to be all the right things to do. They vaccinate their cat every year. They feed their cat the most expensive brand of processed cat food recommended by their vet. They use the recommended flea and worm control.

What more can they do?

Last week, a distressed family brought their rabbit to me. They had used the flea preparation Frontline. Frontline is not recommended for use on rabbits and the rabbit was now having seizures.

I did a quick search on the internet to see what ingredients Frontline had. I was shocked, but not surprised, to see that cyanide was one. And yet Frontline is considered to be low in toxicity. Even WHO approves it.

This begs a very big question to me. Can you trust others with the health of your cat? If you use Frontline, is it acceptable to you to be putting cyanide into her system?

So next, I searched for the ingredients of Advantage, another popular cat flea control preparation. Advantage contains imidacloprid, which is a neuro active insecticide. That means it affects the neurological system. The nerves. So seizures would not be an impossible side effect for this one, either.

Imidacloprid causes thyroid problems in rats. It’s not a million mile jump to conclude it could also cause thyroid problems in those animals who are treated with it.

And yet, it’s the easiest thing in the world to control fleas naturally. The reason for fleas is because of the pH of your cat’s skin. A processed diet is not healthy, is not in line with their evolutionary history. It alters the chemistry of your cat’s body. Fleas love the skin of a cat fed processed food.

A raw meat and bones diet, on the other hand, keeps the cat’s pH in perfect balance. Fleas are no longer attracted to the skin. And resolves a host of other cat ailments.

If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. You’ll need to try for about a month, perhaps two depending on the age and health of your cat.

Isn’t it better to find the cause of the problem and deal with that, rather than treating the effect?

Sadly the rabbit didn’t survive. But the family had a huge learning experience.