Dear Chey (vol. 1)

I’m quite thrilled. I have my first Dear Chey letter and it’s from Luxor!

Since you’re very intelligent and have done a lot of research, what do you think of those raw food diets, like they sell at our pet health food store here?

Well Luxor, that’s a tough question. Of course, as a polititian, I am loathe to give a straight answer as to my opinion. Of course, I also believe that if you want to eat something, you ought to do it. I’ll be writing on the best ways to snag human food soon, I’m sure. I’m quite good at it. We will also add that because the vet is probably recommending Science Diet C/D (or S/D depending upon the stones), that you stay on that for an extended period or until you can consult a holistic veterinarian.
After running around the house for several hours, the woman and I came up with how we wanted to answer that. Last year, I went into a naturopathic vet and we all discussed the best diet for me. The woman also had questions about the raw food diets. The naturopathic vet we saw liked them (cautiously) but after talking with her further, she told us that Georgia was probably too old to adapt to the raw food diets.

At their vet clinic, they sold packages of Instincts TC, which is a product you mix in with your raw ground meat. It’s organic and human quality so you are getting the best quality food. The vet recommended that cats be fed that 6 days a week and then fasted at least one day a week as apparently even the best hunters have off days. She recommended mixing it with only plain organic ground meat from your local meat counter. However, she did not recommend such a diet for Georgia as she was getting on in years. The raw food diets are very high in protein and if a cat hasn’t eaten it all their lives, it could be hard on their kidneys past a certain age.

As a result we continued on our own feeding plan, which has evolved into the don’t any one thing because no diet is perfect thought line. We get a bit over every type of high quality cat food the Woman can find. She mostly fed Wysong Feline Diet Geriatrx and Newman’s Own Organics Senior Cat Dry when she was protecting Georgia’s kidneys because both have a senior formula. Now that she doesn’t have to worry about that, we’ll probably go back to Solid Gold Katz-n-Flocken , because it’s so highly recommended. The quality control is the best at this company (at least currently–things change in the pet food industry and quickly!).

I prefer canned food to dry and I get whatever the local food cooperative sells which is primarily Newman’s Own Cat Food , Pet Guard and Precise.

Our food goals are:

1. Organic

2. Human quality

3. Minimal preservatives

4. Minimal common allergens, which include wheat, corn and soy as fillers. The woman has a particular problem with soy. Cats are true carnivores, which means we need animal protein. Soy is a plant based protein. For the life of her she cannot figure out why anyone would think cats needed soy. Also, even for human consumption, some nutrition experts dislike eating a lot of soy, most particularly the Weston A. Price Foundation. It’s also a common allergen.

Obviously we can’t always eat to those standards, but we do our best. I hope that helped, Lux!