Diabetic Cat Food - How You Can Reduce the Need for Insulin

It is now generally accepted that human diabetes is an immune disorder. There seems no reason to suppose that feline diabetes is any different. This particular immune disorder has the form of failure of the pancreas to produce insulin.

An immune system brakes down because of the burden put upon it, mostly a chemical burden. When you consider all the chemicals most pets are subject to, there is little wonder their immune systems go on strike. Drugs, vaccinations, pesticides in the garden, harsh cleaners in the house, but perhaps worse of all by virtue of it’s frequent ingestion, are the preservatives in their daily diet.

A typical cat food is processed and comes in a box, packet or can. The dried cat food must contain high levels of preservative to keep it at room temperature, indefinitely, despite what the packet may say. Believe me, there’s no other way to have such a long shelf life.

Cats are particularly sensitive to chemicals, so readily succumb to them. A stay in a cattery may well overload them, as most catteries fastidiously clean their pens with strong disinfectants or bleach, to ensure there’s no cross contamination.

There are several things you can do immediately, to help your cat overcome this serious disease, even if they have had it a while. You never know how much good you can do until you try.

1. The first thing that’s really important to address is their diet. Start giving your cat a good quality, raw, diabetic cat food. Human grade raw meat, from a butcher, will generally not contain any preservatives or colour as most countries have laws against that.
2. It’s better to feed a diabetic cat 3 or 4 small meals a day, rather than 1 or 2 larger meals.
3. Diabetic cat food differs slightly from a normal healthy cat food by the fat content. The food must be low fat (but not no fat), as the pancreas is responsible for the production of enzymes which help break down fat.
4. No healthy cat food should contain any sugar, in particular diabetic cat food. Many, perhaps most, commercial cat food manufacturers use sugar as a filler. It bulks out the meat and is cheap, with a world glut.
5. No cat food should not contain large amounts of carbohydrates, which are a manistay part of almost all processed cat foods, including those for diabetic cats.
6. The mineral chromium assists the body in utilising the insulin more efficiently, so the addition of half to one teaspoon of brewers yeast to the diabetic cat food will help your cat. Chromium is also in liver, beef and spirulina.
7. Including vitamin E in the diabetic cat food reduces the amount of insulin required. Vitamin E occurs naturally in raw meat fat and spirulina. Vitamin E is also in eggs and wheat germ oil, but diabetic cat food should be low in oil and fat, so while these are recommended, they should be in small quantities. You can also supplement it in the d alpha tocopheral (the natural form). Try to avoid the synthetic form, which is more commonly used. Synthetic vitamins are not as well utilised by the cat. Dose 30 IU per day until you see improvement.
8. And play with your cat, so she gets some exercise. Exercise tends to decrease the need for insulin.

A good diabetic cat food, like any good cat food, is as close to that of a wild cats food as possible. Cats have evolved to efficiently use raw food. They can’t use processed and cooked food in the same way, as they lack the nutrients destroyed by cooking.

Once you have your cat regularly eating good quality raw food, she may need less insulin. And if it isn’t too far advanced, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t recover completely. Recovery from serious disease is not uncommon when the cause is addressed. Ensuring your cat only eats a healthy, high quality, raw, diet, at the very least will reduce her need for insulin.

Should You Feed Organic Cat Food for Best Feline Health?

The health of domestic cats is on the decline. Their life span is much below that of their wild cousins and the cats of your parents era. I frequently hear people implying their cat is old by the time they have reached eight or nine years of age.

Not that long ago, it was common for cats to reach 18 or 19 years of age, with a few rare exceptions reaching nearly 30.

You may have your own reasons why this might be happening, and I’m probably going to voice most of them here!

By virtue of the regularity of eating, I consider the most important reason why cats aren’t as healthy as they once were is the diet they are fed.

As people are coming into this awareness, there is a mad scramble by the commercial cat food industry to attract you with pretty words and smiling actors on the labels. The pretty words include icons such as ‘scientifically proven’ or ‘recommended by top vets’, although that is now less alluring than ‘natural’ or ‘all natural’. (I’m not sure what a ‘top vet’ is either. Could it be one who does the most advertising for the industry?)

However, ‘nature’, ‘natural’ and ‘all natural’ are slipping into second place as ‘organic’ becomes the favourite word of the day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong contender for organic food, both for humans and for cats, but not all organic cat food really is organic.

For a start, the word ‘organic’ means nothing if it is not backed by a reputable certification. Everything that grows could be said to be organic. Many conventional producers have marked their produce as organic, when it had no certification.

Becoming a certified organic producer takes time - years. The soil is regularly checked. In that period, the producer can’t sell his produce as organic or use chemicals. It can be a tough time.

I have seen some dried organic cat food for sale. It was certified. But what’s the point in that? You’re feeding your cat organic cat food to avoid the chemicals that go into food production - the antibiotics in standard stock feed, the hormones given to stock to increase weight and production over a shorter period, the pesticides, herbicides, insecticides that are regularly used on the crops, the chemical fertilisers.

Stop and consider this. Can meat (in reality meat by-products as the good stuff goes for the higher priced human food) be kept indefinitely without the use of strong preservatives? How else can a packet of dried organic cat food have such a long shelf life?

Sure, the packet may not list preservatives in the list of ingredients. Why would they? You wouldn’t buy it.

The packet may even boast ‘no added preservative’. The wording needs to be clever to avoid litigation. ‘No added preservatives’ means they, the brand, didn’t add the preservatives. It doesn’t mean that preservatives weren’t added to the ‘meat’ before delivery.

So the million dollar question is, should you buy organic cat food? In my opinion, if it’s a commercial organic cat food, it is no better than non organic cat food.

All commercial cat food, whether organic or not, have one or more of the following preservatives in:

• ethoxyquin (which causes diarrhoea, vision disorders, blindness, organ failure, cancers, leukaemia on just exposure to the human factory workers)
• formalin is used to preserve dead bodies
• sodium nitrite, which gives a nice rosy colour to food and can produce powerful carcinogenic substances known as nitrosamines
• propyl gallate - is now suspected of causing liver damage
• propylene glycol used to maintain the right texture and moisture content is used as coolant antifreeze in engines
• up to 1000 times more salt than occurs naturally

Most of these are not allowed in human food, due to their high levels of toxicity. Do you think that could be why cats are not living as long as they once were Would you?

Can Healthy Cat Food Contain Preservatives?

In this day and age of the mighty dollar masquerading as king, it becomes more and more difficult to trust businesses who have a vested interest in gaining your sale. As cats can’t talk to us, or perhaps I should say, as we can’t hear what cats are telling us, we don’t have that all important input to know if we are providing our cats with a healthy cat food.

If you do a quick search on the internet, you’ll come across practically all pet food manufacturers proclaiming their brand is ‘all natural’, ‘healthy’, ‘holistic’, even ‘organic’, but in every single case they are selling dry food.

Just think about it for a minute. Dried food which contains any form of meat just won’t keep at room temperature. Try keeping your steak out of the refrigerator for a few days and see what happens.

So how do pet food manufacturers keep cat food indefinitely at room temperature?

The only possible way to do this is to add preservatives. Despite many claims saying there are no preservatives, logic tells you there has to be.

Cooking in itself may preserve meat a little longer than raw meat, but not for weeks, or even years.

So what, you may be thinking, I know there are preservatives in some of the foods I eat and I seem to be OK. Surely a few preservatives doesn’t mean I’m not feeding my cat a healthy cat food?

I personally don’t think any preservative is OK. It may appear to be harmless in the short term, but in the long term there will be consequences.

But apart from my personal opinion, there are some laws, perhaps rather basic or not well enforced, in almost every country around the world, that protects human food. So all preservatives used in human food has to be considered ‘reasonably safe’ by some standards.

Unfortunately, there are no such safe guards in pet food. Or the laws are even less effectively enforced than the human laws.

So the preservatives used in cat food can be the most toxic. Does cat food containing highly toxic preservatives sound like a healthy cat food to you?

Ever heard of formalin? Embalmers use it to preserve dead bodies.

Formalin, also known as formaldehyde, is widely used in pet food to preserve it.

You probably haven’t heard of ethoxyquin. That’s a preservative used in the rubber industry. It’s in the tyres of your car. So what on earth is it doing in your cat food?

Lets look at ethoxyquin’s history. When factory workers were exposed to it, they exhibited side effects similar to those of agent orange:

• constant diarrhoea
• vision disorders including blindness
• organ failure
• organ cancers
• leukaemia

Are you getting a bit concerned? Perhaps your cat is suffering from some kind of organ damage? Here are a few other common preservatives used in cat food to keep it at room temperature indefinitely;

• sodium nitrite, which gives a nice rosy colour to food and can produce powerful carcinogenic substances known as nitrosamines
• propyl gallate - is now suspected of causing liver damage
• propylene glycol used to maintain the right texture and moisture content is used as coolant antifreeze in engines
• up to 1000 times more salt than occurs naturally

No manufacturer can keep preservatives out of dry cat food if it has a long shelf life.

So, if you don’t feed your cat a commercial cat food, what can you feed her?

To my way of thinking, the only sure way of knowing you are providing a healthy cat food is to prepare it yourself.

Before you throw your hands up in horror, saying you don’t know how, you don’t have time, that’s where I come in.

I’ve done the research for a balanced, healthy cat food.

I’ve made all the mistakes and can show how not to fall into the traps I did.

By feeding your cat a healthy cat food, you’ll have fewer trips to your veterinarian and your cat will live longer.

Holistic Cat Food For the Healthiest Cat

Once you’ve started looking around for holistic treatment for your cat, it’s a natural sequel to think about holistic cat food.

There’s a saying that currently people have never been so well fed, but so under nourished. As this is a direct result of poor farming methods as well as bad dietary advice, it’s no less true for your cat as it is for you.

Changing over the diet of your cat to a more natural one, will not only benefit him, but your pocket too. Because your cat is healthier on this diet, you’ll have fewer visits to your preferred cat health professional.

But what exactly am I talking about?

Well, an holistic cat food is one which so closely resembles a wild cat’s diet, as to be in the same league as far as health is concerned.

You’ll probably be relieved to know, I’m not suggesting you go out and catch mice. What I’m asking you to do is to consider the diet of a wild cat and then be mindful in duplicating it as closely as you can, within the framework of readily available food and the constraints on your time.

Actually, I’ve already done that for you, so you don’t have to do all the hard work. I just want you to know the reasons behind feeding your cat an holistic diet to ensure better health and longevity.

It’s worth remembering that cats have evolved on a wild diet over millions of years, and are extremely healthy on it. Otherwise they would have died out.

So trying to duplicate nature’s bounty for your cat is the best way to ensure his good health and longevity.

Providing an holistic cat food isn’t difficult once you’ve opened up your mind to the idea of it. Isn’t that always the biggest hurdle? Once you’re open to the idea the rest, as they say, is easy. With a bit of guidance from someone who has made all the mistakes possible.

A quality, balanced holistic cat food:

• will provide your cat with all his nutritional requirements.
• will make your cat content and much less interested in hunting - hunting domestic cats usually means they are lacking nutrients in their current diet and they’re trying to redress that
• is free from chemical residue, such as preservatives and colour, which cats are so sensitive to
• contains no synthetic vitamins or minerals - which are difficult to absorb and utilise so tend to be excreted
• is raw and so contain all the enzymes and other nutrients lost in cooking

Holistic cat food contains only naturally occurring vitamins and minerals, in a balanced and whole food form. You know, you shouldn’t need to supplement your cat’s food. All the necessary nutrients should come from the food, and in the wild, they do.

But, because modern farming methods cut corners in quality to boost quantity (and so profit), the resulting foods are often poor in nutrients. So supplementing becomes necessary.

Most supplements on the market today are isolated nutrients. In nature, nutrients are always found with other nutrients that they co-depend on. For example, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium must be in the natural balanced ratio and need vitamin A and D to be properly utilised. Iron, copper and cobalt co-depend on each other. And so on.

In addition to the isolation, most modern supplements are synthetic. Synthetic nutrients aren’t easily absorbed or utilised by the body. And you can overdose on synthetic nutrients more easily than on natural ones, which the body knows how to deal with.

Holistic cat food, on the other hand, is easily absorbed and utilised by your cat. The supplements are a whole food, and are nutrient dense. This means all that is needed is readily absorbed.

It is not time consuming to provide this diet, if you follow my easy feline dietary advice, It’s simply a question of being aware of certain pitfalls. It may take you and your cat a while to work things out, but it’s well worth it for the huge benefits which follow.

Homemade Cat Food - Quick, Nutritious, Healthy

As you have already decided, or are thinking seriously about, providing your cat with homemade cat food, I want to congratulate you!

This is the first huge step anyone can make in re-establishing the health of their cat.

But you do need to be aware of the pitfalls. You do need to ensure that you are providing Fido with all the essential nutrients for a healthy body. That’s not all. You need to ensure Fido’s mind is equally healthy.

Like it or not, your cat evolved by killing and eating small animals, up to about their own size. When making your own homemade cat food, you need to keep this firmly in mind.

By preventing them from killing their own dinner, you are removing something very important in Fido’s life, so you have to try to compensate for this, as much as you can.

Unless Fido is a working cat, keeping mice or rat numbers down, I’m sure you don’t really like to see him hunt.

How do you provide him with such a good and adequate diet that he really just can’t bothered to hunt?

First of all, you look to nature for the answers.

Since a wild cat tends only to eat what he has just killed, this immediately tells us four things:

• he likes his food fresh
• he likes his food raw
• he likes his food warm
• he likes bones with his meal

That’s a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it? Raw, but warm?

Surely you need to cook the food to kill off any worms or bacteria?

What about bones? Won’t they splinter and get caught up in his gut which will require expensive and distressing veterinary surgery to remove?

You know, there’s a lot of misleading information about the best food for cats, ‘out there’. Most of it comes from pet food manufacturers or those who sell or promote it, so have a vested interest in it.

In my opinion, you can’t improve on nature. So when making your own homemade cat food, try to stick as close to a natural diet as you can.

You can’t duplicate it, but you can come close.

While kittens will have no trouble adapting to eating a healthy homemade cat food, adults who have got used to the appetite stimulants in most processed food, can have a hard time adapting.

You will probably get a lot of accusing looks, turning his head away in disgust, walking away, turning his back on you, pawing the food as if to bury it, the works, during the transition period and you will feel a really nasty, uncaring cat person - rest assured Fido will make you feel that way! However, you do need to persevere for his sake.

He will come round. You just need to stick at it longer than he does... Trust me, he won’t starve himself!

Homemade cat food, is without a doubt, the healthiest food you can feed your cat, as long as you follow nature’s laws. You can restore good health in an ailing cat, you can keep your cat healthier, longer.

You have made the first giant step forward in considering a homemade cat food. The next step is in working out what the best one is.

I wish you every success!

Wellness Cat Food - Seven Reasons Your Cat Needs it Now

Unless you have become increasingly concerned about the health of your cat, in particular the quality of her food, you could be forgiven for wondering what on earth wellness cat food is.

Year by year we see more and more distressing media reports that pets are dying in their droves from one commercial pet food or another.

One brand may be using melamine as a filler in their cat food.

Another brand may be having trouble keeping their commercial premises free from salmonella.

There are as many problems with all commercial pet food as there are brand names.

Lets have a look at some of them:

• a filler is something all brands use to bulk out the meat (by-products) to increase their profit
• all brands use cheap meat (by-products), as the expensive cuts go for human consumption
• the quality of the meat (by-products) varies with different brands, but many contain hair, hooves, beaks, entrails (and contents), laboratory animals (who may be highly toxic from new drug tests), euthanased pets (including toxic flea collars, tags, etc), zoo animals and horses (still containing the lethal chemical), road kill, dead or diseased farm animals
• cheap meat (by-products) have a very high fat content, as there is little human market for fat
• the food is cooked for a prolonged time period at high temperatures - cooking kills off enzymes and vitamins and can chemically alter food
• to try to address this imbalance of nutrients, synthetic nutrients are added later, which are difficult to digest and have limited use as they are all in isolation
• to ensure the cat ‘food’ has a long shelf life (which is in everyone’s interest except your cat’s), preservatives MUST be added (the manufacturer may not have added them, but they will have been added somewhere along the line) and these are typically preservatives that would never be allowed in human food, due to their high toxicity

Horrifying as the above may be, you don’t need to go searching to find a brand of wellness cat food that doesn’t have any of the above. I’m sure some are emerging from the murk, but even these you may find difficult to be 100% sure they are consistent. We all have bad days, when we can’t get the ingredients we want. What happens then? Are their ethics compromised in order not to let their customers down? What happens if the business is sold? Will the new owner or manager have the same high standards?

To have consistently high value wellness cat food, it’s best to start from scratch yourself.

I hear you cry “I don’t know how”, “how do I ensure it’s balanced?”, “it sounds too complicated”, “I don’t have the time”, “it sounds expensive”, my cat won’t eat anything except one brand”.

Wellness cat food means going back to nature. It means working out what wild cats eat (who are naturally healthy and disease free). It means taking a bit of time to work through your perceptions about what you think the best wellness cat food is. Don’t forget you’ve been programmed (another word could be brainwashed) by those who benefit by spreading this mis-information.

Natural Cat Food - Do it Yourself Easily and Quickly

In the last decades of the 20th century, people were generally hoodwinked into believing that processed and prepared food was better for your health and that of your pets.

Happily, people are now realising that this isn’t the case. More and more people are looking for a healthy diet for themselves and their pets.

When you search for a healthy diet for your cat, you really can’t go past natural cat food. Nature does know best, despite the clamouring of the pet food manufacturers. Of course they clamour - it’s big business.

But it doesn’t mean that the clamouring is based on fact.

So how do you set about finding a natural cat food? You probably have certain criteria, such as:

• it must be easy as you’re busy
• it must be nutritionally complete
• it must satisfy your cat mentally as well as physically
• it must be realistically priced

As the demand increases, businesses will spring up everywhere that offer natural pet food. Some will indeed do their utmost to fulfil this honestly, but sadly, there will always be others who will cut corners on quality and truly natural cat food.

Who do you trust?

The only person you can really trust, when it comes down to it, is you!

But I don’t have the expertise, I hear you say.

No, you may not now. But you can learn. And learn quite fast. All you need to do is to follow natural laws.

Lets look at a wild cats diet first, as that’s the most natural cat food there is.

A cat will kill and immediately eat small animals up to about their own size. This can tell you five important facts:

• the food is very fresh
• the food is raw
• the food is warm
• the food contains bones
• the food is mostly muscle meat and bones, but there are small amounts of offal

I can hear questions forming in your mind - can you really feed cats raw meat? Doesn’t that contain harmful bacteria or parasites? Won’t the bones splinter and pierce the intestinal tract?

You know, nature doesn’t get things wrong. It’s had a long time to perfect things. If the raw meat and bones in natural cat food created health problems, cats would have died out long ago. But we all know, that given the right conditions, wild or feral cat populations can grow very large.

So yes, raw meat is the healthiest and best natural cat food you can give your cat.

And no, raw bones won’t create problems. It’s cooked bones which can splinter and create all sorts of health issues. But cooked bones aren’t natural, so it’s logical that they have the potential to create mayhem.

And no, bacteria and worms are not a problem for cats.

So nature has got it right. Raw food is best!

Of course, it’s not that simple - nothing ever is, is it? You need to know the right balance, what to supplement and why, how many meals a day, what sort and size of bones are suitable, how to feed growing kittens and pregnant queens, how much offal and what kind, because you can get it wrong and then your cat can suffer the consequences.

And the big question on how to convert an adult cat to raw food - this can be quite a challenge. It’s not dissimilar to the concept of raising your kids on fast food, then telling them it’s all raw fruit and veggies from now on. You’re likely to have a riot on your hands!

However, once you get the hang of doing it yourself, it’s a doddle. And the best thing about it, is that the health of your cat will steadily improve to the best it’s ever been. And the spin off from that is much lower health professional fees.

Don’t you just love a win-win situation?