Alternative Medicine for Cats

It’s a natural step, after you have discovered alternative health care for yourself to start looking at alternative medicine for cats. After all, if you prefer this approach, it’s likely your cat will benefit, too.

Alternative medicine for cats as well as for people is certainly on the increase. Why should this be? Well, some of the main benefits over mainstream health care are:

• there are no side effects
• it works with nature, rather than opposing it
• it is less expensive
• you can learn to use some at home, which empowers you
• your cat will be more receptive to taking the medicine

One of the best alternative medicines for cats, as well as for everyone, in my opinion is homeopathy. Homeopathy is very gentle, but also very deep. You can learn to use many of the common remedies at home. This can not only save you a fortune in veterinarian fees, it is also tremendously enlivening.

I tell you, there is nothing more exciting than your first success. I well remember mine. I was a homeopathic student and had bought a few common remedies and a few books. One day one of my cats stopped eating. I left it a few days, but after the fourth day, I took her to the veterinarian.

She was diagnosed with kidney disease and given a few months, at most to live. I refused the offered medicine. Once home I dived into my books. After assessing all her symptoms that I could, I chose a remedy.

She was happy to take it. But imagine my state of mind when, within 10 MINUTES, she walked into the kitchen asking for food.

Euphoric is an understatement!

This was a common remedy, available to all home prescribers.

The book I used is a common homeopathic book for cats.

A few more doses and she was completely recovered. She lived another three healthy years.

Nothing can describe that feeling. Nothing.

I know of no other alternative medicine for cats that gives you the depth of healing and the scope for home prescribing. And you can get to this level of success very quickly.

Whilst homeopathy is a wonderful modality of medicine, you can’t go past environmental factors for a good all round balanced health care system for your cat. Factors such as:

• diet
• stress at home
• lack of respect for her
• chemicals in your home or garden
• freedom to be where she wants to be

Alternative medicine therapists will take all these factors into consideration as they well know the value of each and every one of them. Mainstream veterinarians are not trained to look beyond the condition. They are trained to match a drug to the condition. This can be very limiting.

Open your mind to the fact that you may be causing your cats illness, by any of the above factors. But also by not taking care of yourself. Your illness may be causing your cats illness. Sort yourself out, preferably holistically, and you may be surprised to find your cat perks up, too.

What’s the Truth Behind Nutricious Cat Food?

Have you noticed there are now hundreds of ‘experts’ on virtually everything these days? That’s mostly thanks to the internet, which really is a wonderful resource of amazing information.

Sadly, it’s also an amazing place for misinformation.

Take nutricious cat food. Depending on how much commission the author is likely to receive will depend on how much they promote a particular brand.

Do you think that’s a bit cynical?

Well, you need to be today, more than ever before.

In today’s world, the dollar is king, with truth and health coming in a very poor second and third place. I don’t count myself as an expert. I feel my ‘expertise’ lies in working out the truth about health, regardless of any income I may receive from publishing this.

So how can you be sure I really am interested in the truth?

Nature has been around for quite a long time! Over millions of years, animals have evolved and fine tuned their diet and their behaviour to their current highly efficient selves.

Commercial cat food, on the other hand, has only been about for a maximum of 100 years, and more intensely for about 40 years.

Humans may well have had an impact on the look of domestic cats, but look how well domestic cats fair when they go feral. As long as they have all their physical attributes in tack (claws, teeth, etc), they can adjust just fine to finding their own food.

Which means that humans have had little real effect on them, as far as their diet and health goes.

Add that fact to the lack of laws governing the quality of pet food in most countries, and you can soon see that commercial cat food is likely to be as far removed from the nutricious cat food wild cats eat, as it can be.

Many people are told that domestic cats have longer and healthier lives than wild cats do. This is difficult to prove as few wild cats ages are known. But what most natural veterinarians do know for a fact is that as soon as cats are put on a nutricious cat food which closely resembles a wild cats diet, health problems melt away. From allergies to leukaemia, from kidney problems to infertility.

So I ask myself who is trying to convince you how much healthier domestic cats are? Could it be those people who want to profit by selling you inferior cat food or questionable medication to address the ill health as a result of the bad diet?

It seems almost too simple, to address the cause to cure the problem.

I remember reading of a medical student who became so ill she was confined to her bed. She had ulcers down her throat. She had no energy.

She went from doctor to doctor, who prescribed antibiotics to antidepressants and everything in between. None of it helped, and much of it harmed.

Her point was that not one of them had asked what had changed in her life at the time her illness started.

Finally she worked it out for herself. She had changed from good home cooking to hot dogs on the run. She stopped the hot dogs and her illness disappeared.

Diet is immensely important. Don’t underestimate its effect on you or your cat. When you go looking for a nutricious cat food, check everything out that you can. Compare the food to a wild cats diet. If the food is canned, ask yourself, does a wild cat eat canned food?

If the packet of food has a long shelf life, how can this be possible? Are the preservatives used safe for cats, despite a lack of laws? Do wild cats eat preservatives?

If man disappeared tomorrow, cats would revert to a healthy wild life, eating freshly caught raw meat and bones. That’s the most nutricious cat food. How can you better it?

Is Raw Cat Food Safe?

There is some concern about whether raw cat food is safe. Some feel that raw meat may contain salmonella, toxoplasmosis or another equally troublesome bacteria or parasite. And that the only way to be certain that your cat does not get these potentially fatal diseases is to cook the meat.

At first glance, this line of argument does appear to have some merit. But look a bit deeper.

Wild cats eat nothing else but raw meat and bones. Domestic cats, along with all other cats, have evolved on a diet of raw meat. Their digestive system only knows how to cope with this.

Cats, along with bears, are the only true carnivore. Their teeth show this very clearly. They are spiky for catching prey and powerful to crunch up bones. Their digestive track is short as raw meat is easy and quick to digest.

Humanity is generally under the illusion that they have improved on nature. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Holistic vets, as a body, can tell you that when you feed raw cat food, chronic degenerative disease melts away. Diseases like feline leukaemia, heart problems, sterility and tumours.

As Richard Kearns DVM puts it “I believe all cases of spinal myelopathy are caused by poor nutrition, sometimes going back to the mother’s nutrition during pregnancy”.

Richard Pitcairn DVM brings things into perspective. “Foods are so complex, we still don’t understand them. For example, researchers discovered that cats need taurine, an amino acid only found in animal tissue, which is lost through cooking. Now it is added to cat foods and supplements. Rather than wait for more such discoveries, it is better to provide animals with the diet that most closely resembles their evolutionary history”.

When you consider that cats have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years, how could it be possible to have improved on their diet in the mere decades that commercial cat food has been available?

Lets look at salmonella. This is basically food poisoning by eating infected food. However, wild cats only eat the prey they have just killed. So the meat is super fresh, still warm in fact. Super fresh food does not carry infections. Infected food come from inadequate storage.

This is one reason why you will find cats are very fussy eaters. It’s because they know bad food when they see it. But because they still need to eat, domestic cats are left with little alternative but to eat the cat food they are given, if they are to survive.

The general guide here is to keep your cat’s raw meat super fresh. Don’t keep it in the refrigerator longer than between two to four days, depending on the temperature of the refrigerator, how many times it is opened, the ambient temperature, etc. Freeze the rest and thaw out each meal as necessary.

Toxoplasmosis is rarely a serious illness in healthy individuals. It can be a major cause of serious illness in those with a damaged immune system or those on medication which lessens the effectiveness of the immune system. This is true for both cats and humans.

Wild cats can only survive with a very strong immune system. So their diet of raw meat and bones seems to serve them well.

Nino Aloro DVM confirms this to be the case. “Diet seems to be at the base of about 90% of the cases of cystitis that I see. When my clients observe the proper diet after initial treatment, there are rarely any of the normal relapses. If they put the pet back on commercial pet food, then the cystitis comes back.”

Only buy the freshest meat and be as sensible about the handling and storage of your cat’s raw meat as you are about your own. If your cat doesn’t like the food, suspect a problem. This could be meat starting to decompose or a chlorine wash on the meat, a process some butchers use to extend the life of the meat.

Caring for a Sick Cat

Having your cat sick is as upsetting as having any other loved part of the family sick. You worry that she is not herself. You don’t like to see anyone down. You worry she may not make it through.

And that’s not all. It may also be time consuming. If you’re out at work all day, how do you cope with the caring for a sick cat? You may be worried that she may want to go out or come in, or may be too hot or too cold. Or that she wants some fresh food. And you’re not there to nurse her.

Worse still is the expense. Veterinarians bills don’t come cheap, neither does the medication they provide.

You may not even be able to afford the treatment, with other bills looming.

But you feel too guilty not to at least try.

If you just stop and think for a minute, you may discover things that happen to you are always for a reason. Your cat becoming sick may just be the incentive that you need to go searching for something that may well change your whole life.

So not having the time or the money that you need when caring for a sick cat, may be a blessing in disguise.

If you are feeding your cat a commercial cat food, this could be the cause of your cat becoming ill in the first place.

Depending on the brand, the country and the period, most commercial cat food ingredients go something like this:

• low grade meat by-products normally from a rendering plant
• a filler that may be wood chips, paper, sugar, nut shells, melamine
• indigestible isolated and synthetic nutrients
• toxic preservatives that are not allowed in human food

You may want to research each of these individually, but the overall food doesn’t look too healthy, does it? Just one ingredient doesn’t look healthy, but all four together...

If it is the food which is causing the illness, why don’t you change it and see what happens? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Consider the top priority in caring for a sick cat is to change the diet to one which closely resembles that of their wild cousins.

Typically some commercial pet foods create vomiting and diarrhoea, with or without blood. But it really doesn’t matter what the symptoms are, because once the diet is a healthy one, you cat’s immune system has a chance to improve. Which means that she is better able to deal with whatever the illness is.

When a sick cat is left at the veterinarian’s clinic, she is more likely to stress. However good the clinic or vet is, it’s no place for healing to occur. The noise, the other, usually frightened animals, the sense of abandonment, the strange people often doing painful procedures, the confinement, but overall the energy is not conducive to restore health.

Caring for a sick cat is best done at home. Home is normal. Just make sure there is little disturbance (from noisy or boisterous children or other animals, or less concerned partners).

And make sure she can go where she wants to. Freedom is important to cats.

Make sure the ambient temperature is to her liking. Make sure she has close access to clean water, preferably not tap water.

And don’t force her to eat. This is an often made mistake, when you’re worried.

Digestion takes a lot of energy. If that energy is needed to help cure the problem, by making your cat eat, you are hindering her progress. A well fed cat can easily go a few days without eating.

But by offering her some real food, she may well say a resounding yes and gobble it up, showing you very clearly that real food is the way to go.

To recap some important points when caring for a sick cat:

• change her diet to real food immediately
• keep her at home
• don’t try to force feed her
• try to imagine what you would like in her position - quiet, warmth, caring person to nurse you?

Caring for a sick cat is much easier than caring for a sick human. For one, they don’t make so many demands! But don’t force things on her either. Listen to her and try to work out what she seems to want.

And remember, the food may be the cause. Most holistic veterinarians are finding this is the case.

And if the worst happens and she doesn’t make it, what better place to go than from the arms of her beloved person?

What is the Most Nutritious Cat Food?

Not that long ago, everyone relied on an ‘expert’ for guidance. Teachers were thought to have the best interests of the future generation at heart. Doctors were considered the best people to entrust with your health. Likewise with veterinarians for animal health.

This may have been good for the time.

But it made some people very powerful. And, inevitably, this power corrupted.

So, in time, good welfare was the last thing on some of these professionals minds. Good income was, and is, more important.

The advent of the internet is slowly changing all that.

But it can still be a maze, working out what is the most nutritious cat food you can feed your cat to make sure she has a healthy, trouble free and long life.

Pretty packets and cans can (and do) easily influence many people.

Impressive words such as ‘balanced nutrition’, ‘fortified with x for a longer life’ can easily lure people in if you are still stuck in the idea that ‘experts’ know more than you do.

After all, they’ve got a degree to prove they know more, haven’t they?

Degree or no degree, you can slash your way through the maze more effectively if you consider just two points.

1. Cats have been fed various forms of commercial cat food for a mere trifle compared with their evolution, perhaps 100 years. But in those years, cats have been more needed as mousers or ratters than pets. So it’s probably a lot less.
2. A cat is a true carnivore, a true hunter. They will never be content without raw meat. Whatever you think of this idea, this is how cats evolved. This is their true nature.

It is essential that you take this concept into consideration in your ponderings of what is the most nutritious cat food.

You’ll be happy to know that to feed a cat according to his nature, it is not necessary to go out hunting mice and rats (although prey size is relevant).

Keeping this concept firmly in your mind, you can now see that you are easily able to cut through all the chanting salesmen, trying to gain access to your dollars.

Now you can avoid all the harmful fillers from China, all the toxic chemicals you’re afraid may be in a packet of ‘nutritious’ cat food. Now you don’t need to rely on anyone else. Or worry about how ethical a producer may be.

Whenever you want to reaffirm what is the most nutritious cat food, you just go back to this concept.

Cats need raw meat (and bones) to live a trouble free and long life. That’s how they evolved.

Cats need a diet of 95% raw meat and bones.

Not 30% low grade cooked meat by-products, 65% cheap filler and 5% toxic preservatives and synthetic ‘nutrients’ that can’t be digested.

So now, when someone asks you what is the most nutritious cat food, you can answer easily and with great confidence, whether or not you finished high school, let alone have a degree.

It’s common sense.

What’s the Truth Behind Nutricious Cat Food?

Have you noticed there are now hundreds of ‘experts’ on virtually everything these days? That’s mostly thanks to the internet, which really is a wonderful resource of amazing information.

Sadly, it’s also an amazing place for misinformation.

Take nutricious cat food. Depending on how much commission the author is likely to receive will depend on how much they promote a particular brand.

Do you think that’s a bit cynical?

Well, you need to be today, more than ever before.

In today’s world, the dollar is king, with truth and health coming in a very poor second and third place. I don’t count myself as an expert. I feel my ‘expertise’ lies in working out the truth about health, regardless of any income I may receive from publishing this.

So how can you be sure I really am interested in the truth?

Nature has been around for quite a long time! Over millions of years, animals have evolved and fine tuned their diet and their behaviour to their current highly efficient selves.

Commercial cat food, on the other hand, has only been about for a maximum of 100 years, and more intensely for about 40 years.

Humans may well have had an impact on the look of domestic cats, but look how well domestic cats fair when they go feral. As long as they have all their physical attributes in tack (claws, teeth, etc), they can adjust just fine to finding their own food.

Which means that humans have had little real effect on them, as far as their diet and health goes.

Add that fact to the lack of laws governing the quality of pet food in most countries, and you can soon see that commercial cat food is likely to be as far removed from the nutricious cat food wild cats eat, as it can be.

Many people are told that domestic cats have longer and healthier lives than wild cats do. This is difficult to prove as few wild cats ages are known. But what most natural veterinarians do know for a fact is that as soon as cats are put on a nutricious cat food which closely resembles a wild cats diet, health problems melt away. From allergies to leukaemia, from kidney problems to infertility.

So I ask myself who is trying to convince you how much healthier domestic cats are? Could it be those people who want to profit by selling you inferior cat food or questionable medication to address the ill health as a result of the bad diet?

It seems almost too simple, to address the cause to cure the problem.

I remember reading of a medical student who became so ill she was confined to her bed. She had ulcers down her throat. She had no energy.

She went from doctor to doctor, who prescribed antibiotics to antidepressants and everything in between. None of it helped, and much of it harmed.

Her point was that not one of them had asked what had changed in her life at the time her illness started.

Finally she worked it out for herself. She had changed from good home cooking to hot dogs on the run. She stopped the hot dogs and her illness disappeared.

Diet is immensely important. Don’t underestimate its effect on you or your cat. When you go looking for a nutricious cat food, check everything out that you can. Compare the food to a wild cats diet. If the food is canned, ask yourself, does a wild cat eat canned food?

If the packet of food has a long shelf life, how can this be possible? Are the preservatives used safe for cats, despite a lack of laws? Do wild cats eat preservatives?

If man disappeared tomorrow, cats would revert to a healthy wild life, eating freshly caught raw meat and bones. That’s the most nutricious cat food. How can you better it?

What is a Nutritious Cat Food?

When you walk down the isles of the cat food section in any supermarket, you could be forgiven for thinking that all the big brand names were offering you the most nutritious cat food for a healthy cat.

Can you believe the advertising, the pretty pictures and sage words by ‘veterinarians’?

Not on your life!

Turn the packet or tin over and you’ll see what constitutes ‘quality’ ingredients - meat by-products.

Meat by-products are the net result of a rendering plant. Rendering plants take the waste from slaughter houses - typically heads, hooves, intestines (including the contents...). Many also get their ‘raw material’ from veterinary clinics (euthanised dogs and cats), road kills, euthanised or dead zoo animals, horses and the like.

This not only means the quality of meat is very low, but that you are turning your cat into a cannibal.

The chemical that is used to euthanise animals cannot be broken down in the cooking process, which means your cat is living on a diet of a fatal chemical.

Most of the top brands of cat food then bulk out this ‘meat’ with a filler. This makes the end product much more profitable for them, but much less nutritious for your cat, if you thought it was in the first place.

Fillers tend to be whatever is currently cheap in the world market. Sugar can be used. So can melamine. I’m sure you’ve heard of all the deaths of cats from cat food manufacturers importing melamine from China.

Don’t imagine that it has gone away. It’s just been buried a bit deeper.

Because the manufacturers want to keep this ‘nutritious cat food’ on the shelf indefinitely (good for marketing), preservatives are then added. Two of the worst ones are ethoxyquin (which can give factory workers symptoms similar to agent orange poisoning) and formaldehyde (which is great for preserving or embalming dead bodies).

Animal fat is a bit of a problem, as humans tend not to eat much of it. So a lot goes into pet food. Look at what your butchers sells as pet food. One butcher told me that it’s a common practice to add beetroot juice to fat and sell it as pet food. If that’s done openly, imagine what goes on behind closed doors.

Don’t risk the health of your cat by believing those with a vested interest that their product is nutritious cat food.

There are undoubtedly some ethical and conscientious manufacturers of cat food, who really do make real, nutritious cat food, which is healthy. But these are often small and threaten the bigger companies who then buy them up, but retain the label.

For my money, the best way to ensure your cat is consistently getting a nutritious cat food is to do it yourself. Buy the raw ingredients and make up the meals yourself.

It really isn’t difficult. It just takes a bit of time while you get your head around the notion. Then it’s just a question of repeating the same thing every week.

It’s not even time consuming. Once you have learnt to do it once, you just keep repeating the same thing, while differing one or two ingredients to give your cat a variety.

The most nutritious cat food which will ensure your cat has the healthiest and longest life possible, is when you care enough to purchase each ingredient for its nutrient content and freshness.

After all, putting a packet of meat in your trolley is no more difficult than putting in a packet of commercial cat food.