Saturday, March 31, 2007 , evening

Dingo Chicken Treats recalled

Eight in One, Inc., has announced a recall of Dingo Chick’n Jerky treats for dogs, cats, and ferrets.  The recall is because of salmonella fears, and not related to wheat gluten, thank goodness.  Here’s a link to the press release: Dingo treat recall

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/31 at 08:13 PM
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Friday, March 30, 2007 , evening

Dry pet food recall

God forbid any of you actually rely on me as your only source of pet food recall news, but just in case, I thought it would be good to mention the dry pet foods being recalled.  So far, there’s just one:  Hill’s Prescription Diet m/d Feline Dry Food.  You know there are going to be more, though.  I find the recall of the Prescription Diet food especially sad, because it was fed by owners who were trying to give their pets the very best, and who were paying extra for “premium” food, as well as getting regular veterinary care for their pets.  I feel badly for the vets who sold the stuff, too, but I really hope this is a wake-up call for them.  Maybe this is the time for some sort of independent, nonprofit pet food regulatory group to form, to see through the millions of dollars companies like Hill’s can throw into research, into vet and vet tech training, etc.  The group could handle reports of possible food contamination, maintain databases of ingredients, etc.  I’ll send them a donation if someone wants to start this.  I don’t know, but something needs to change.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/30 at 08:22 PM
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Not rat poison, but melamine - and it might be in your dry food, too

The latest reports from the FDA and veterinarians at Cornell University say that the recalled Menu Foods products were contaminated with melamine, a chemical used to make plastics.  It’s also used in fertilizer.  The FDA and Cornell were unable to replicate findings of aminopterin (a common ingredient in rat poison), which had been reported by a vet in New York.  Traces of melamine were found in the urine and kidneys of certain cats who died after eating the recalled food.  To make matters worse, the shipment of wheat gluten which was contaminated with melamine was also sent to a pet food plant which manufactures dry food.  The FDA hasn’t released any more details, and they’re still trying to find out if that dry food wheat gluten ever got into production.

Interestingly, melamine isn’t known to be toxic, but because it’s not meant to be ingested, I don’t think anyone’s ever tested it.  I hope this doesn’t lead to a round of lab cats and dogs being sacrified just so researchers can say, “Hey yeah, it does kill them.”

The details above came from an Associated Press story, which I found in the Toronto Star.

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Updated to add:  I’m still seeing reports which say that wheat gluten is only a product in wet food.  However, it’s clearly listed as an ingredient on this bag of Pedigree kibble.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/30 at 07:25 AM
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I believe I just found a t-shirt I must buy

I just got an email about new pajamas available at the MuttsComics.com online store.  The pajamas were cute, sure, but hidden at the bottom of the email was a picture of this gem:

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It’s a picture of a new t-shirt which will be released in April, and it says, “Saving the world one kitty at a time.” Yes!  I’m going to buy two dozen of them and wear one every day.  Thank you, Patrick McConnell, for again understanding how my mind works.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/30 at 03:50 AM
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Thursday, March 29, 2007 , the wee hours

Pet food cookbooks

I don’t have any final reviews yet, but I wanted to post that I’m currently working my way through the following books:

So far, the book I’m most pleased with is “Whole Pet Diet”, because it actually contains the recipe for Spot’s Stew that I desperately wanted to find.  I’m also fascinated by “Food Pets Die For”, and wish I’d read it years ago.  The book has been updated since it was originally released more than a decade ago, but it’s still full of information pet owners should know.  At first glance, all the books are more focused on cooked diets than raw, but the books just arrived so I might end up correcting myself in a few days.

In the raw food department, I purchased five pounds of chicken thighs and a pound of chicken livers, because I want to make at least one batch of this recipe.  I still don’t have the powdered supplements, like taurine, so it will be a while before I actually make it.  I’ve got my meat grinder and a brand new kitchen scale all ready, though.  I’ll keep you posted about it when I actually get to the point of making it (and I’ll take some pictures, too).

I’ve noticed lots of blogs and blog comments where pet owners have reacted to the Menu Foods recall in a “canned food is bad” way.  Canned food isn’t any worse than dry food (and I’m of the “dry food isn’t the best diet for cats” school of thought), and we should all remember that it was less than two years ago that dry dog and cat food were being recalled because of aflatoxin contamination.  As I posted on someone else’s blog last night, perhaps the problem isn’t “wet food vs. dry food”, perhaps it’s “human grade vs. everything else”.  Maybe we need to insist that our pets eat food which humans could also eat in a pinch.  Maybe we insist the same (generally) high standards applied to human food quality be applied to pet food quality, too.  After all, most of us think of pets as our children, or at least, as family members, so why should we feed them something that government hasn’t approved for human consumption?  I think this is a great time for pet owners to unite and say that we don’t want to feed our pets “brown crunchy bits in a bag” and “brown mushy goop in a can”.  Let’s feed our pets real, identifiable food.  Let’s be able to open that can of chicken and rice and see real chicken, not formed chicken pieces.  Let’s open a can of seafood medley and see real pieces of fish, not strange grey or red things which have been forced into a “flaked” shape.  There are foods available (like the aforementioned Spot’s Stew), which looks like food for people.  Every ingredient is real, and visible, and it just looks healthy.  Maybe if we insisted that our pet’s food be made of natural, recognizable ingredients, we wouldn’t have so many foods made with beet pulp, wheat gluten, soy casein, etc.  Of course, pet owners have the option to make their own pet food, but many people just don’t have the time, or knowledge.  Lots of people don’t even know how to feed their own children properly!  Let’s make it easy for them by filling the shelves with food which is truly healthy and nutritious and good for our pets, instead of what’s on the shelves now.  If all the pet food companies did it, the price could be kept down.  Let’s just figure out a way to stop feeding the pets their own version of soylent brown, and let’s stop accepting soylent brown pet food.  Let’s stop letting Hills and Iams and Purina, et al, assure us that their product is healthy, even if we can’t identify what’s in it when we look at it (and sometimes, even when we read the label).  There’s no time like the present. 

To end on a cheerful note, the two foster kittens are doing well, although the little boy is much smaller than his big sister.  They both seem healthy, and they’re very quiet (a nice change from Madison and her constant crying).  More photos to come soon!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/29 at 02:06 AM
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Monday, March 26, 2007 , the wee hours

Carlo and Bunny

That’s what we’ve named the new foster kittens; the boy is named Carlo and the girl is named Bunny.  We were working on the theme, “Names of rich European aristocrats who own their own yacht and a chalet in Switzerland.” Actually, we went through a lot of variations, and I wanted to call the boy “Quinn”, but it wasn’t Flippy’s first choice.  We agreed on Carlo, and then toyed with “Bianca” and “Isabella” as names for the girl, but suddenly Flippy started to call her “Bunny”, and it stuck.  The kitten does have large ears for her size, and she’s white, so she could pass for a bunny.  I hope you all approve, but even if you don’t, know that whomever adopts them will probably rename them.  Did I ever post that “Fannie Mae” was renamed “Sweetie”, and “Freddie Mac” was renamed “Rufus”, by the woman who adopted them?

Because the little girl looks like a little polar bear, I thought an Inuit name might be cute.  I looked on a list of Inuit words and found “Miki”, which means “small”, but it didn’t really grab me.  Then I found the name “Nukka”, which means “little sister”, and I felt it was perfect.  I asked Flippy was she thought of the name “Nukka”, and she liked it.  As one final test, I threw the word “Nukka” into a search engine to see if I could find other people talking about giving that name to their pets.  To my shock, I found out that “Nukka” is a word I shouldn’t never say, use, or write, ever again.  It’s been adapted into a slang expression by the hip-hop culture, and even though I’ve never heard of it, I don’t want the name to cause problems with people who have heard of it.  I’ll have to ask Flippy’s nephews if it’s commonly used.  Regardless, Nukka was out as a name choice.

Both Carlo and Bunny seem to be doing very well, and they’re very active and curious.  They both do a bit of that ticking/purring, and they like to crawl up my shirt and cuddle under my neck.  I’m still nervous about them at this age, especially after Miles went downhill so quickly back in January.  For some reason they don’t even want to sleep in the spot I put them (and I’ve got the same crate/heating pad setup I always use for kittens), and I can’t figure out if they’re too warm or if they’re just fidgety.  The crate seems to be a perfect temperature to me, and there are no hot spots, but I often go down to find them sleeping on the coldest, unheated part of the crate, sometimes without even a towel over or under them.  I worry they’ll catch a chill, but they seem determined to have their own way.

This is a time when I really wish I had either my Pet Intensive Care Unit or a Digital Brooder, because either would help me control heat and humidity perfectly.  I made some bonus money for working extra-hard last month, and thought about getting one, but neither company answered my pre-purchase emails!  Neither of them!  My emails didn’t bounce back to me, either, and they had subject titles like “Inquiry about acrylic AICU”.  I guess those companies don’t want me as a customer, so if anyone knows of similar units for sale elsewhere, please let me know.  It would be great to own a brooder-type unit given that we own so many parrots, too.  Money around here as the lifespan of a fruitfly, so while I’m out of it right now, I hope to have some again soon.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/26 at 02:55 AM
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Saturday, March 24, 2007 , evening

The yin and yang of two-day old kittens

day_two (9)

We have two new foster kittens today:

day_two (10)

They’ve both got little pink noses and little pink toes (Flippy calls those kind of toes, “bubblegum toes").  They were abandoned by their mother (a stray cat) in a warehouse, and I’ve got no doubt that they’ll have a better life than their siblings.  So far they’re eating well and are very quiet, and the only slightly troublesome thing about them is that they’ve got a bit of diarrhea.  They went on their first shopping trip today, to Petco, so I could buy a tin of powdered formula after picking them up from the vet’s office.  I think the grey and white one is a boy, and the white one is a girl, but it’s hard to be positive about these things until they get a bit older.

So, who wants to adopt them?

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/24 at 08:46 PM
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An example of what not to cook for your cat

I’ve been toying with the idea of making my own cat food since “the Incident”, and have been doing research online.  So far I’ve only been able to find recipes for raw food (as opposed to cooked), and they’re a bit intimidating because cats need very specific amounts of things like calcium, phosphorus, and taurine.  I think I could just grind up whole chickens, add some chicken hearts, chicken livers, and egg yolks, and I’d have food (more or less… I’m just hitting the main points).  However, each recipe/cat nutrition site seems to have its own quirks, and it’s confusing.  One site said to add egg yolks, which is obviously self-explanatory, but it didn’t explain what I found on another site: egg whites will prevent the adsorption of certain vitamins and must be avoided.  What if some egg white sticks to the egg yolks?  How much should I worry about that?  Another site said to use a couple of drops of garlic oil - isn’t garlic a no-no?  One site treated tomatoes like toxins, but I thought cats like tomatoes, and I thought the acidity could perhaps be healthy.  If tomatoes are bad, then what is in all those fancy new cat foods with names like “Seafood and Tomato Bisque”?

I guess it’s time for me to dig into my bookshelves to read Dr. Pitcairn’s book, Michelle Bernard’s book, etc.  It’s not like I don’t have resource material, it’s just that there’s no single right answer, and nutrition isn’t an area where I want to make a mistake.  Just because I eat crap doesn’t mean I want my pets to do it too!

One thing I did come across this evening while searching was an opportunistic website offering cat food recipes “in light of the Menu Foods recall”.  I don’t begrudge anyone earning a living, but it seemed wrong to try to profit off what’s happened.  The “e-book” of recipes cost $11 Cdn, and it came with full reseller rights, so here you go.  I bought the files, I own the reseller rights, and I’m giving them away to anyone who’d like to read them.  At first glance I see LOTS of problems - recipes with garlic, dairy, recipes with no instructions to add taurine (they finally mention taurine at recipe #19), one recipe that’s primary cottage cheese and Bisquick, recipes which are fried… I think it’s all pretty horrible.  Regardless, I paid my $10.27 USD so you don’t have to, and please don’t!  Here are the download links if you’re intrigued, but again, I don’t recommend these recipes at all:

I’m still on the look-out for good quality homemade recipes, preferably cooked because my cats are really fussy eaters and I don’t think raw will go over very well.  Today Chelsea ate a bit of “Natural Balance”, the first food she’s ever eaten which costs more than twenty cents a can.  She wasn’t so keen on it the second time I tried to give it to her, though.

By the way, if you want information on homemade raw diets for cats, the website Cat Nutrition is a great place to start.  The entire site is free, and there are no recipes containing bread crumbs or heavy cream.  I also recommend the site Feeding Your Cat, which I know I’ve linked to before.  The site author is a vet and has some excellent pet food reviews.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/24 at 08:14 PM
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Submit your animal shelter adoption tales

If you’ve got a heart-warming tale about a pet you adopted from a shelter (or rescued from, for example, your front porch), there are two writing opportunities waiting for you.

The first one is Hopeful Tails, a compilation of rescue and adoption stories from around the United States.  It’s being published by the ASPCA in conjunction with Borders and Howell Book House, and will be available this fall.  If you have a story about one of your pets you’d like to submit, you have until March 31st to do it (I know, that’s not a lot of time, but I just found out about this today).  The official website for the project is at BordersPetProject.com.

The second opportunity is my personal favourite.  Mutts’ artist Patrick O’Donnell is looking for stories and photos to feature in a new collection of his “Shelter Stories” comics.  The book will contain old comic strips from “Shelter Stories” series, plus new ones based on pet owners’ submissions.  The only requirement is that you have to have formally adopted your pet from a shelter, animal control agency, or rescue group.  The lucky winners will have their pet’s shelter story immortalized in an original comic strip drawn by Patrick.  Pets that don’t make it into the book may still be featured on an upcoming Mutts calendar.  If you want to know more, visit Shelter Stories: Call for Entries.  Although I don’t feel like I have any free time, I’m going to make some so I can submit our dog Phoenix’s story.  She was sick, full of infection, smelly, and thirty minutes away from her execution date.  The shelter workers tried to convince us not to adopt her… in fact, they were sort of rude about it.  The shelter’s vet told us horror stories about how sick she’d be all her life, about how she’d be blind and miserable, and she turned out to be the happiest little dog I’ve ever known.  Sure, she has a few health issues, but nothing life-threatening, and nothing which we can’t control.  Her biggest problem was food allergies, which we’ve been able to fix.  I’d love to see her journey immortalized in shelter stories and hope someone from that shelter sees it and remembers her.  She’s a great dog who deserved a hell of a lot better than she got from our animal control system.  In any case, the Mutts people have taken pity on my busy schedule, because their final submission date is May 1st.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/24 at 06:40 PM
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Friday, March 23, 2007 , early evening

The horror just keeps coming:  Problems now being reported with Iams dry food

Itchmo is reporting anecdotal evidence of dogs and cats becoming ill after eating Iams dry food.  As he points out, this may just be coincidence or some worried owners jumping to unproven conclusions, but it certainly bears mentioning and passing along.  I don’t think we can be too careful given what’s going on with the Menu Foods wet food products.

I really look forward to posting happier things here.  I have one bit of cheery news for you - I’ve got two foster kittens arriving tomorrow, and they’ll be one day old.  If nothing else, I promise lots of cute kitten photos in the upcoming weeks.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/23 at 07:41 PM
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