Beaver Fever, Dead Rats, and A Kidney Or Two

Note: the faint of stomach may not want to proceed with reading this post, which makes copious mention of fecal parasites and includes a cameo appearance by a dead rat.

---

So, one of my cats (either Shadow or Brodie, as I can tell their poop from the girls', but not from each other's) just tested positive for giardia, otherwise known as "beaver fever" (I remember being warned not to drink from streams in the woods as a kid because of this very same entity). The vet sent the results today and I'm supposed to talk to her tomorrow about treatment options, which will likely include medicating all the cats here just to be on the safe side.

Mind you, nobody has any symptoms at present -- the positive test was due to the appearance of a very tiny number of cysts in the fecal sample -- but now I'm actually beginning to wonder if giardia could be the root cause of Brodie's twitchy stomach. Mainly it manifests these days in the form of "gets the runs and exudes gas that could knock out a rhino if any amount of corn is consumed", so it could just be a wholly separate thing, but who knows.

(Cats can harbor the parasite for years and my guys will be 3 next month. Giardia also apparently can be tricky to diagnose as it is not consistently shed in the poo; all the kitties here have had poo tests in the past and all were negative, but that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't something there.)

...but all that said, while kind of gross, I'm not figuring this to be worth panicking over. Again, nobody is currently symptomatic, and it's not like giardia is super rare in cats. If Brodie didn't pick it up as a kitten I'm guessing Shadow managed to roll in something out in the back yard. He likes to flop on the ground and cover himself in dirt and we do sometimes get neighbour cats visiting the garden who could be leaving, er, "presents".

OH and Shadow did actually catch a RAT recently during one of his (supervised) evening yard-frolics. Thankfully he didn't eat it -- I mean, I'm all for raw feeding, but NOT when the "food" might have been poisoned. It was kind of weird, as he didn't even "play" with it -- he just ran straight at it, did the neck-bitey thing, and then proceeded to bring it to me and drop it in front of the kitchen door. I guess he figured he'd done his job (and he did look SO pleased with himself!). Given the life cycle of giardia and the fact that I'm pretty sure it's not actually transmitted from rodents to cats this probably wasn't the root of the beaver-fever, but I was definitely VERY glad Shadow was up to date on both shots and flea/tick/worm-prevention meds when he displayed his hunting prowess.

Needless to say, though, I really want to get this treatment over with. I'll happily treat all the kitties if that's what it'll take, though I'm a bit concerned over what I've read thus far about giardia sometimes being really hard to effectively get rid of in kitties.

...and on another subject entirely, I'm also going to be discussing the matter of Nikki's kidneys with the vet. She's not officially in chronic renal failure at this point, though given her age (nearly 11) and breed (Siamese) it actually wouldn't be excessively surprising if she ended up with that diagnosis in a few years. I've done enough reading to know that this wouldn't be the end of the world, and since her numbers mostly look really good (her BUN/creatinine are perfect) I am not figuring much is due to be done in the short term other than step up efforts to keep her hydrated.

The vet's concern is due to a slightly low urinary specific gravity (which can indicate a diminished ability to concentrate urine) and a slightly elevated amylase reading. I'll of course take her recommendations into consideration, whatever they may be, but I am really hoping she doesn't try to insist on a low-protein diet right now. I know that used to be the go-to solution for feline kidney issues, but really it doesn't make sense to restrict protein in an obligate carnivore unless there is clear evidence that this will actually prolong health and life. And I'm pretty sure that unless a cat's kidneys are in extremely bad shape, protein restriction generally does more harm than good. (Though if anyone can point me at some good literature -- as in, NOT articles on some sort of "alternative new age happy health" site -- indicating either way, that'd be awesome).

---

Brodie the feline fig enthusiast

Brodie may be shy when it comes to meeting new humans, but he's definitely the boldest of all the resident felines when it comes to meeting new foods. And since kittenhood he's had this obsession with dried figs, of all things. For his meals he gets meat, of course, but it is very difficult to keep him from getting up in my business when I'm having a snack of any kind that contains figs! Thus, the above one-minute video, in which he can be seen enthusiastically gobbling up bits of my fig cookie (which is sort of a hippie version of a Fig Newton). 

Sunday Evening PicturePost

I just realized I've been writing so much about feral cats and the ongoing local TNR project lately that it's been a while since I posted any new pictures of Cora, Brodie, Shadow, and Nikki on here. Time to remedy that!

(1) Nikki on one of the dining chairs (which I am sure the cats think exist just for them -- there's something about the height, the cushioned seats, and the fact that they allow a nice little nap-cave when the chairs are pushed in that seem to attract felinekind).



I am sure she thinks I'm a bit strange for aiming that weird silver thing at her (i.e., my camera) but she nonetheless occasionally grants a clear view of her eminently distinguished countenance.

(2) Cora in the kitchen, watching sunbeams and shadows. Something about her is definitely looking more grown-up these days.



(3) Shadow watching the back yard, out the kitchen window. Lots to see out there (birds and squirrels in particular) now that spring is officially here!



(4) Brodie after having stolen a fig from me! (Hence the little black bits on the floor in front of him). The lighting is a bit harsh here because I had to use the flash so that's kind of annoying but it was the best recent picture I had of him and I wanted to include one of each cat in this post.



But anyway, yeah, Brodie is very adventurous in his eating habits and seems to have a peculiar and particular fondness for figs. He once stole two fig cookies practically right out from under my nose, and I figured (heh) maybe he liked the butter in the cookie part or something, but no -- he also steals whole dried figs if he can get at them!

Needless to say I don't give them to him regularly (I don't even want to know what the litter box would look like if I did...) but his occasional thievery doesn't seem to be hurting him. Maybe it's a texture thing?

TNR Report #2: Dominique and Mimi

Thanks to everyone who offered well-wishing for Wednesday's trapping session...it ended up going just as smoothly as the first session, even though it started raining just as I was getting ready to set the traps. Woot!

Getting the first kitty this time felt kind of like cheating because it was Dominique (who decided a while back of her own accord to start hanging around with the local primates and even occasionally gracing us with purrs and head-butts). I think she picked up on the fact that something was going on, though, because usually she runs right up to me when she sees me and this time she sort of hung back and eyed me warily.

Still, she walked right into the trap as I sat next to it, just like her mom, Blue, had on Monday. Of course I don't know this for sure, not being privy to her (or any cat's) innermost mental processes, but it looked to me like she KNEW she'd get stuck if she walked into the trap but ultimately decided the sardines were worth it!

(Whole Foods, while colloquially called "Whole Paycheck" in these parts for reasons obvious to any non-millionaire who visits the store, actually carries a surprisingly inexpensive line of canned cat foods. The "Sardines in Jelly" variety is probably going to be my go-to trapping bait of choice from now on, because ye gads, the kitties go utterly batty for it. After trapping I put the rest of the can out on a paper plate for the other colony cats to finish off and I swear it was like sharks at a feeding frenzy!)

Kitty #2 (who has since been named Mimi) was by necessity trapped in the more traditional "bait trap, set trap, walk away, and watch from a distance" manner. She (and we only found out she was a "she" when we brought her to the clinic) was a very shy but thoroughly scrappy little girl kitten. She's solid black and a bit smaller than Dominique -- probably three or four months old. I'd been seeing her occasionally for about a month, and always alone, which is pretty weird. Usually feral kittens initially show up with their mothers to eat, but I have no idea who Mimi's mom is, or if she has any siblings. She looks very healthy and not emaciated or anything so it's doubtful she was orphaned; more likely she's just got a very wary and secretive mom, and possibly littermates even more shy than she is. But in any case, she doesn't need to worry about becoming a "teenage mother" now.

Anyway, both Mimi and Dominique came through their spay surgeries just fine, and have now rejoined their companions and family outside. Stay tuned for further updates of next week's sessions -- we're repeating the same routine next week -- and (hopefully) pictures!

Caturday in Vetville

This past Saturday marked the first trip to the vet in about a year for any of the youngstercats here. Coraline and Shadow went in for their vaccine boosters (rabies, etc.) and a general physical exam; Brodie will have his turn this upcoming Saturday (the "little guys" are no longer little enough to allow simultaneous triple-kittywrangling, so we had to make two appointments!).

In any case, I am pleased to report that Cora and Shadow are apparently in glowingly good health. Not that I'd expected otherwise, but I was definitely relieved to hear that Shadow's heart sounds normal, as both he and Brodie had low-level murmurs when they were babies. The murmurs resolved by the time the boys went in for neutering at the age of five months, and thus were not a sign of any worrisome illness, but it's still something I like to make sure gets checked now and then.

On another physical note, initially the vet suggested Shadow was "on the high side" weight-wise at 15 pounds, 2 ounces. She adjusted her appraisal, though, after I showed her how LONG he is. Shadow might look stocky when he's all scrunched up (he goes into this tight-crouch position when he's nervous) but when he stretches out it's really apparent that he's pretty much all lean muscle everywhere. He relaxed a little when I picked him up and thus I was able to unfurl him a bit; at that point the vet remarked that he actually did look like a 15-pound cat (as in, a cat who SHOULD weigh around 15 pounds given his length and frame). I agree, especially considering he's 38 inches long (including nearly 14 inches of tail) at a year and a half old and had a solid build even when he was otherwise tiny.

Cora, meanwhile, weighed in at 9 pounds, which (though absolutely unproblematic and healthy for her frame) surprised me a bit. Picking up Shadow is rather like picking up an elongated, silky brick, thus, in comparison Cora feels like air and fluff. She's also got rather kittenish proportions (or at least the effect of such proportions, given her fluffy cheeks and her big round eyes) to the extent that I continue to be surprised when I see her standing next to Nikki and clearly being longer and taller than her elder housemate. Of course Cora isn't liable at this point to get as big as her brothers but she's certainly turning into a grownup in her own right -- and judging from her demeanor lately, she knows it!

But anyway. One interesting aspect of this most recent visit was that the vet we saw was new -- well, new to me and the Wonderful Felines at least. She's been at the VCA clinic we go to since 2008, but I'd never seen her before. I really hope she sticks around, though, because so far I like her a lot. We started off seeing one vet when the kittens were babies and I really liked that one too, but she moved out of state in the middle of last year. So then we got assigned to a different doctor, and while she did a fine job caring for Nikki's battle wounds, she wasn't as much inclined to get down to the technical details of feline healthcare with me the way the previous vet was. Which made it a little harder for me to feel like I was actually communicating with her. But the new vet seems to have a similar analytical style to the first one and even apparently spent a number of years as a field biologist, which is just cool. I think she is going to be a fine doctor for my kitties.

I am also glad to have finally gotten the "so what are you feeding them?" discussion over with. This new vet didn't even flinch when I told her the younger cats regularly ate raw meat, and in fact seemed to be pretty well informed on the subject of feline nutrition. She just said to be careful about sourcing meat and was glad I wasn't feeding them pre-ground stuff (as ground meat has a lot more opportunity to pick up nasty bacteria before you even get it home, plus grinding allows oxidation which can destroy important nutrients like taurine).

Oh yeah. And the vet also remarked on how nice the kitties' teeth looked, which at least suggests chewing up gizzards, etc., is indeed conferring dental benefits. Yay! Of course Cora, Shadow, and Brodie are still quite young and many cats who are going to end up with dental disease don't show any signs of it until age three or so, but it's at least encouraging that they don't have any early-manifesting issues in that regard.

As for how the cats themselves reacted to their outing, it was very obvious that they were quite anxious in the vet's office -- as I mentioned previously, Shadow went into his fearful scrunched-up crouch posture and pretty much stayed that way throughout the whole visit, aside from when I picked him up to demonstrate his striking resemblance to Tacgnol. Cora also did a lot of scrunched-up wide-eyed staring but wasn't nearly as tense as her brother and did a fair bit more moving around during the whole affair, like she was clearly apprehensive but also curious.

Neither cat seemed to enjoy being in a carrier, especially when the car was in motion. Matt and I tag-teamed to get them into the carriers in the first place at home so that didn't end up being a major ordeal for us, but Cora and Shadow seemed absolutely beside themselves. :/ They both howled a fair bit, especially Shadow, for whom the carrier seems to represent All That Is Vile And Evil In Existence.

I had attempted to acclimate all the cats to the carriers by setting them up in the spare bedroom weeks ago, and putting treats in them, spritzing blankets with Feliway and laying those inside, etc. The first day I had the larger carrier (we have two: a big plastic one and a medium-sized soft mesh one) out of the garage, Shadow refused to even enter the spare bedroom. He spent most of the day hiding in the office closet! By the next day he was okay with the carrier's mere presence, though, and that seems to have stuck even post-vet-visit. I think he's figured out that the carrier itself can't just scoop him up like some sort of cavernous cat-swallowing monster, at least.

Cora was also clearly unhappy with the carrier situation, but made far fewer operatic Tauntaun noises than her brother. She was also in the smaller (soft-sided) carrier, though, which to me looks a lot comfier than the plastic one. Plus the soft carrier has a zipper opening on the top, which I was able to unzip a little during the car ride (enough to fit my hand inside and give Cora ear-scritches, which definitely calmed her down a lot). I would have put Shadow in that one given his generally greater carrier-angst, but he really needs the next size up, which hopefully I manage to acquire at some point. With four cats we really ought to have four carriers, but I didn't want to get that many before I got an idea of how big the boys were going to grow.

In any case, I could tell Cora and Shadow were very happy to finally get home on Saturday! Since they'd basically been babies last time they went anywhere in the car, I was thinking the whole time during this past visit that part of their obvious anxiety might have been due to not realizing that they'd actually get to come back to familiar territory. But of course they did get to come home, and after a day of sleepiness (from the shots) they both bounced right back to their usual level of activity. This Saturday will of course be Brodie's turn...then we shall be quite done with vet visits for a while, which I don't expect any complaints about from any felines here!

Brodie Eating Update

Good news! Brodie has been eating normally in the kitchen for the past few days, with only minimal staring at the front door. Some of this is probably due to post-Halloween anxiety wearing off, but I have also determined a few other factors coming into play and hence been able to adjust some variables.

One is that the youngstercats are probably pretty close to being full adult size at this point. This is somewhat related to what Matt was saying about the cats (and specifically Brodie) eating when they are hungry. Of course it is still important for cats to eat a proper amount of food (for their age, size, activity level, etc.) daily and cause for concern if a given cat refuses to eat at all for more than 24-36 hours. But for them to want food at less frequent intervals as they get older is pretty normal.

I've actually discovered recently, by way of offering dinner 1-2 hours later than I had been previously, that Brodie knows how to ask for food. His technique is to come up to me (especially if I am standing in the kitchen), gently brush my legs with his tail, and then jump up onto the mini cat-tree thing by the kitchen window and meow. Apparently there is a point at which he gets peckish enough to be more interested in his plate than in whatever is going /on outside the front door.

Shadow and Cora would have been fine keeping the old, earlier dinnertime (both of them have always been a tad more active than Brodie) but they've been good sports about switching, and the transition has been smoothed by my offering them some of their daily treat allotment before the meal proper. This way I get the logistical tidiness of being able to feed all 3 cats at once and nobody is in a position to be wondering why their sibling is getting food when they're not, etc.

Of course if I absolutely had to I am sure I could work out a way to feed folks at different times, and I am sure the cats would adjust fine to that given the opportunity, but I appreciate being able to just have a scheduled mealtime as that condenses the monitor-and-cleanup stuff into one small interval.

The other thing I've come to note is that Brodie seems to appreciate it if I guard the front door on his behalf. As in, he spends a lot less time looking up while eating and startles less frequently if I sit somewhere between him and the door. My house has a rather long, tunnel-like layout in which the front door leads straight into the living room, which in turn is open to the kitchen (and the kitchen opens to the back yard). So I can sit in front of the dining table or on the couch and from there be able to see the cats eating and monitor the front door as well. Works out pretty nicely! Though I have to wonder if this task (dinnertime door-guarding) is something Nikki would be interested in taking over...Brodie likes and respects her a lot, and she is Security Cat, after all.

So, yeah, for now, looks like we are back to peaceful and logistically easy suppertimes for all the kitties here. I've been told I "tend to over-analyze" things and perhaps some of this kind of writing will strike some people as evidence of an overfocus on minutiae, but the way I see it, there's no such thing as an irrelevant detail when it comes to cats! Plus I figure Brodie can't be the only sensitive dudecat out there, and thus perhaps someone dealing with a similar thing could benefit from reading what's worked in our household.

Brodie, The Sensitive Cat

What do I mean by "sensitive" when using such a term to refer to a cat like Brodie? Well, mainly I mean that Brodie is keenly perceptive, hyper-alert to household goings-on, liable to seem "shy" (due to hiding when strangers come around), and very attached to routines.

(In the photo below, Brodie peers through the rungs of one of the dining chairs he likes to sit on.)



He is drawn to details (as a baby he very quickly noticed the string his dangly toys were suspended from and often found them more interesting than the object at the end) and has an extremely long memory...I've often seen him digging under the sofa cushions for toys lost there weeks previously.

He is also (as I've mentioned before) exceedingly polite and highly sociable with other cats. When Shadow first arrived home (three weeks after Brodie and Cora) it was as if the two brothers had never been separated...it took Cora much longer to adjust to yet another boy in the house. And when Nikki arrived this past January, Brodie was the first to greet her, an act which mainly consisted of him following her at a courteous distance and occasionally attempting to sniff her tail.

(Photo below shows Nikki and Brodie kittyloafing together on the sofa, sharing space across a small but respectful gap)



For such a young cat Brodie definitely seems to exhibit an uncannily high degree of subtlety and restraint. His presence in the household seems to provide a sort of harmonizing influence...I always get the sense that if he were absent (perish the thought) for any length of time, things would quickly descend into inter-cat chaos due to the other three resident felines having somewhat "flashier" personalities. Brodie, in other words, is the cat who sits between two other cats who aren't getting along, and suddenly all is calm.

So, certainly Brodie's sensitivity serves him (and the intercat dynamic at work here) quite well in a variety of circumstances. However, he also has his particular challenges, and one of those has had me doing a fair bit of head-scratching recently. Basically, he's had an upsurge in dinnertime anxiety over the past week or so. His appetite seems fine, and I can't see anything wrong with his teeth or mouth (and in general he's not acting "painy"), but he's become very fixated on the front door of the house.

For the past few days he's been going up to his food dish (I feed all three younger cats at the same time, but in separate dishes spaced a few feet apart in the kitchen), sniffing and perhaps licking once or twice at the contents, but then just standing there over his dish staring at the front door with his ears pricked up in "high alert" mode. And if he so much as hears any noise outside -- a bird rustling in the bushes, or a dog walking by -- he will run off and hide in another room.

Meanwhile, Shadow and Cora will have finished their food, and of course one of them (usually Shadow) will see Brodie's abandoned plate as open for the taking. This means I can't just leave it out for Brodie to come back to in his own time...Shadow would eat all day if I gave him the opportunity.

I've also had no real success trying to feed Brodie in a separate room with the door shut...I tried this thinking it might give him a greater sense of security if he couldn't see the front door, but all that did was confuse him because he's used to eating in the kitchen (plus he seemed alarmed at having been taken alone into another room in the first place).

Matt (the SO) thinks I'm worrying too much about this and that Brodie will eat when he's hungry enough. This could very well be true but at the same time Brodie is a large cat and I know that puts him at higher risk of hepatic lipidosis if he goes more than 24 hours without eating, or a week (give or take a few days) eating much less than he should for his size.

All that said, I actually do have a theory as to why the sudden obsession with the front door: Halloween. I tried to feed all the kitties before any trick-or-treaters showed up, and Cora and Shadow ate...but Brodie seemed to be able to tell something was "up", and refused. I had just put some decorations on the front windows and I think those made him nervous just because they looked different than what he was used to. Then we had a lot of trick-or-treaters, which meant people were coming repeatedly to the front door, ringing the bell, talking loudly, etc.

I left several closets open so Brodie could cave up in them if he wanted to, but I can imagine all that activity at the front of the house must have been like his worst nightmare. :/ And it makes sense that he'd still be worried it might happen again a week later. Hopefully this "thing" resolves soon, at any rate...in the meantime I will just make sure and offer him several kinds of food (in different rooms, so maybe he'll get used to eating places other than the kitchen) so that he's likely to eat enough each day.

Raw Feeding Update #2

(Warning: This post contains pictures of raw meat. Squeamish folks take note.)

I just realized it's been a while since I posted a raw feeding update, and now seemed like as good a time as any to write one.

I will start by noting that via my research over the past few months, it has become even more apparent to me that some raw feeders tend to be very...ideological about the whole thing. Lots of these individuals consider commercial food to be, in general, a bad thing. Personally, though, I'm not really a fan of ideological approaches to diet, whether for cats or humans. It seems like the more one venerates ideology, the more one diverges from the scientific and/or pragmatic. And I don't see any point to any kind of dietary regimen unless you're doing it for practical, reality-based reasons.

That said, I definitely think that my and my cats' particular circumstances quite nicely lend themselves to a number of practical, reality-based reasons for feeding raw to whichever cats will actually eat it. I don't claim that what's right for me and my cats is right for every human or every cat, and none of this is meant to be "moralizing". So hopefully it doesn't come across that way; in general I aim to be informative and expository when I write about this stuff, not political and certainly not ideological.

In my last update (way back in August!), I noted that the youngsters were eating about 80% raw / 20% commercial. I've since further reduced the amount of canned and dry commercial food Cora, Brodie, and Shadow are getting, which means they're probably close to 90% raw-fed. Nikki is still on commercial stuff but frankly given her pickiness I'm just glad she hasn't been refusing her wet food lately.

The youngsters still get a little bit of canned commercial food -- maybe 1 ounce each daily, if that. They enjoy it as what amounts to a gravy-like condiment with their raw food. They also get some dry food (EVO or Orijen) as "treats" -- I might toss a few pieces across the floor for them to chase, or into the air, or tie some into a tissue "pinata" hanging from their cat tree, etc. They all love these activities so I figure it's not a big deal, so long as I don't accidentally feed them too much (but that's pretty easy to avoid by measuring out a small quantity of crunchies in the morning for the day's treat allotment).

As for what their raw meals are comprised of, probably the largest percentage of what they eat is chicken, simply because they all love it and it's relatively economical and easy for me to get. Most of the organs (liver, kidney, etc.) they eat are from chicken as well. However, I wouldn't want to feed them JUST chicken, seeing as in the wild cats generally aren't going to get all their sustenance from a single protein source (plus, exposing them to a greater variety of proteins at a younger age can supposedly help prevent them from developing allergies).

Quail is another favorite around here and I am very happy to be able to get whole (aside from heads and feet) quail in six-pack format for a good price locally, seeing as even a smallish cat like Cora can eat pretty much every bone in a quail.

Once in a while I'll get turkey thighs but since the bones are huge it's not really practical to get it all the time. I tried getting turkey necks once but those were ridiculously hard to cut and too massive to serve whole, so I'll probably not get them again.

Lately I've also worked in beef, which everyone also seems to be a fan of -- I figured they should be eating at least one land animal that wasn't a bird. And while I don't feed a lot of seafood, I figure a bit of fish is probably a good source of Omega-3 fatty acids and such, and hence I've included smelt in the past few batches of food I've made. Smelt is a small fish meaning it's less likely to have high levels of pollutants and supposedly it's quite nutritious as well.

As for how I prepare a "batch" of food...usually I dedicate a few afternoon hours once every 2 - 4 weeks to this. The recipe I usually refer to for basic proportions is this one from catnutrition.org but I don't stick absolutely strictly to it. E.g., I ALWAYS add taurine even though I also always add heart meat, and I never grind meat or bones (all the youngsters will happily consume whole bones, so long as they're of an appropriate size).

I start by breaking 2-4 raw chicken eggs into a bowl and mixing this with some vitamin B, vitamin E, and taurine supplement. Then I chop the liver and smelt to a fine mince and mix this with the eggs and supplements. Note that the liver and smelt are the ONLY things I chop finely. Whole smelt are apparently scary -- none of the cats will eat them unless I turn them into unrecognizable mush, so I do, figuring at least that way they get their dose of fishy nutrients. As for the liver, I discovered during my first forays into this endeavor that too much liver in any one meal tends to lead to poopsplosions, and the chopping enables me to better distribute the stuff.

Also, a tip for anyone inclined to try this: liver is MUCH easier to chop when partially frozen. I find it almost impossible to chop when thawed because it's so squishy...the knife just seems to compress and push it around all over the cutting board, which is about as logistically obnoxious as it is disgusting. And it IS disgusting. Thawed liver also smells really wrong and horrible to me -- I know the cats like it but good grief. Part-frozen liver isn't nearly as pungent.

Once the egg-supplement-fish-liver glop is well mixed, I stick that in the fridge. I then get all the "main" meat, wash it (to remove at least some of the surface bacteria) and then cut it up into approximately mouse-sized chunks, bone and all (if applicable -- the beef I get is boneless, but the chicken generally isn't). For the chopping I use a meat cleaver (a fairly cheap one -- I got it for about $8 -- but so far it seems to be working fine) and occasionally kitchen shears if I'm dealing with a ridiculous amount of chicken skin.

The chunked meat all gets put into a huge stainless steel mixing bowl and mixed with the eggy glop. The result is an utterly horrific-looking medley of chunked-up animal parts. The mixed-meat medley is then partitioned into freezable plastic containers and/or zipper-closure freezer bags and put promptly into the freezer.

To serve, I simply take out a container of frozen food, thaw overnight (or all day) in the refrigerator, and present to the kitties at breakfast and dinnertime (they get two main meals a day with some treats in between). At that point it's really no more logistically difficult than giving them canned food, which was a nice discovery!

Below is a picture of the finished product, thawed and ready to serve. Looks pretty vile to me, but the kitties love it! Oh, and the really nasty-looking yellowish stuff is mostly liver, egg yolks, and fish guts:



...and here are the youngsters demonstrating their enthusiasm for this horrid-looking concoction:



As for how much raw food I feed the cats...I've never weighed the portions I give them, I just try and feed them as much as they'll enthusiastically eat in a sitting, and figure if anyone looks like they're gaining or losing an unhealthy amount of weight I can adjust accordingly.

So far Brodie has stayed stable at 14 pounds for the past few months (a good thing -- he was rather waistless for a while there, whereas now he's grown into his mass somewhat), while both Cora and Shadow have gained slightly. They're also all really solid and muscular...especially Shadow, who when I hold him feels like he's filled with bricks!

In terms of general health, as far as I can tell everyone is still doing great. Soft, sleek, shiny coats and bright eyes are the norm around here.

On the gastrointestinal front, initially I was kind of terrified about salmonella (and I am still really anal-retentive-obsessive about cleaning prep surfaces and tools and wearing gloves myself) or other contamination, but so far I've seen no evidence whatsoever that that's happening. Neither Matt nor I nor any of the cats has gotten sick.

In fact, in nearly 4 months of raw feeding we've only had two instances of Feline Regurgitation Theatre -- and I don't mean two per cat, I mean two, period. And I'm not even sure which cat it was (other than "not Nikki", as Nikki was either outside or in a separate room on those occasions), seeing as it happened in the wee hours of the morning both times.

Even when the youngsters eat grass now (I bring them in a little bunch of it every now and then so they get some roughage in their diet, and just because they love it) they don't puke. I suspect the additional fat they're getting the way they eat now has cut WAY down on hairball potential, because this is seriously unprecedented.

As far as things go at the end that doesn't meow, litterbox conditions are about as pleasant as it's possible for litterbox conditions to be. The cats poop maybe once a day, perhaps once every other day, and it barely smells like anything. They pee more than I'm used to cats peeing but that's to be expected given they get a lot more water in their diet by eating raw, and it's also healthy for them to have more dilute urine (less likely to form crystals that way).

On the activity-level front, certainly nobody seems lethargic, and since the weather's finally cooled down, I've been seeing an upsurge in "run maniacally around the house" and "chase my siblings up and down the cat tree" games. So at the very least they're getting what they need to fuel their high-energy antics.

All in all, I would say the raw-feeding experiment I embarked upon back in July 2010 is turning out to be a rousing success. Not only do the cats seem to be thriving, they act like they've just won a free trip to Kitty Disneyland at every mealtime, and it's an utter joy to see them so happy. It seems as if they enjoy the process of eating a lot more, too...when they get a big chunk of bone-in meat, for instance, it's like a combination meal and puzzle game (since they have to turn it around, bite it from odd angles, etc., in order to consume it).

I am also, I should note, spending a heck of a lot less money than I would be to feed them solely high-quality commercial cat food, so it's turning out to be a perfectly feasible endeavor despite my being unemployed. (This is especially relieving seeing as there's really nothing at the grocery store in the cat-food section that Brodie could safely eat, given his problems with corn, etc.).

All that said, there are still some things I worry about, and I definitely want to make sure and get certain lab values checked by the vet the next time everyone goes in for a checkup. I know that it's possible for cats to look and act very healthy right up until it becomes obvious that they are, in fact, very sick, and there are a few nutrient combinations and ratios that can seriously mess things up if they go askew.

The main thing that I am concerned about in this regard is the calcium/phosphorous ratio. Meat contains a fair bit of phosphorous; bone contains both calcium and phosphorous. If a cat eats a diet consisting literally of whole prey (e.g., mice, small birds, lizards, insects) this ratio sort of takes care of itself, but when you're feeding smaller pieces of larger animals (no 15-pound cat in the wild is going to take down a cow!) you're faced with the task of having to cobble together something that hopefully provides the same nutrient balance.

Commercial cat food manufacturers do this by basically starting with rendered protein (which, due to how it has been processed, no longer contains sufficient amounts of nutrients cats need, such as taurine) and supplementing it in precise amounts.

When preparing raw homemade meals for one's cats, you generally aren't using many supplements, but rather trying to balance things on a more "macro" level. It's not impossible to do this, but it does take some vigilance.

I've used a kitchen scale to weigh out liver, for instance, and mix it with appropriate amounts of muscle meat, and in my earliest attempts I actually used bone meal powder rather than whole bone so I could measure more precisely. Now, though, since learning that Cora and Brodie and Shadow actually love crunching small bones, I will do things like try and include a few quail ribs in with each meal for a few days, or alternate one day of no-bone meals with a day of bony meals. I have a rough sense of what the bone-to-meat ratio in a mouse looks like so I just try and get as close to that as I can.

I suspect that, just as with humans, the net nutrient balance they get over time is more important than what they get in a single day. So in the end I guess I'm not THAT worried that I'm screwing this up...I just think it would be good to get levels of various things checked at some point to see if there's anything diet-wise that might need to be adjusted.

Cat Cognition Capers: Knocking Stuff Over Edition

Cross-posted from Existence is Wonderful

(A sort-of followup to Cats, Dogs, Strings, and Causality and A Small, Informal Cat Cognition Experiment)

Recently I tried looking up studies and/or scholarly articles on the phenomenon of Cats Knocking Things Over, but didn't come up with any interesting results. The majority of writing on this subject seems to be in the context of advice on "cat behavior problems", e.g., Dealing With Cats That Knock Things Down, How can I get my cat to stop knocking stuff over?, etc.

(Of course, if anyone has any links to papers on this subject please feel free to share!)

But anyway. It occurred to me, upon seeing Shadow (one of three ex-feral littermates sharing my home) push a container of cat treats off my desk for the nth time earlier today, that (if it was indeed being done deliberately) such an action might represent a fairly well-developed understanding of certain physical principles. I.e., the fact that if one cannot readily access the contents of a treat-containing object, one might be able to gain access via utilizing the tendency of objects to fall over when pushed or similarly manipulated.

(Full disclosure: as a person on the autistic spectrum who is also interested in neuroscience and relevant cognitive research, I must admit it tends to catch my attention whenever I encounter what to me looks like an interesting ability or trait, in any species, being largely written off as a "behavior problem". Often it seems to me something is being missed when this occurs, so I'm driven to investigate in situations like this!)

Certainly the standard "I am not a professional researcher, this was all done completely informally, my home is not a laboratory, etc." disclaimer must be applied to these results. Moreover, I am well aware that interpretation is not data (and vice versa), and in truth the only thing that can be said for sure is that at least one of my cats pretty consistently knocks over objects when is is conceivable that he has reason to believe these objects could contain treats.

The following three videos appear in chronological order. All were filmed on 5 September 2010, in the afternoon, within the space of maybe twenty minutes.

In this first video ("Cats and Gravity I"), Shadow is shown pushing a sealed container of treats off my desk.



He had precedent for doing this, as this particular container is the usual one I put the kitties' daily allotment of treats in. Once, about a week ago, I left the lid part-way off, to see what he would do (seeing as he'd definitely be able to smell the treats within). And in that case he proceeded to nudge the container around with his nose until it fell off the table, scattering treats hither and thither, much to his and his siblings' delight.

Now, I am fairly certain that this first knockdown was an accident. However, since then, Shadow has pushed the treat container off multiple other surfaces (besides the coffee table), on multiple separate occasions. "Cats and Gravity I", then, seems like it could very well represent Shadow's having learned that "if I push this container, sometimes treats fall out!" I don't know that anyone in the cognitive research field actually believes this level of reasoning is beyond the domestic feline (I suspect not) but in any event, it makes for a good "baseline" data point in terms of the variables I am interested in observing.

In this next video ("Cats and Gravity II"), we have an interesting situation involving three cats. You may remember Coraline and Brodie from all those string and zip-tie trials I ran as a rough check of what experimental design conditions might be improved so that cats could better demonstrate their actual cognitive capacities in string-pulling tasks. In the case of that set of puzzles, Cora and Brodie were the only participating felines; Shadow preferred to simply watch.



However, in "Cats and Gravity II", you will observe that Brodie "experiments" with the treat-containing bottle but doesn't succeed in getting anything out of it, whereas Shadow makes one single decisive swipe and sends the thing crashing down. Note that this bottle is different from the treat container in the first video, but it is one that I've put treats in several times prior to this, so the cats would definitely be familiar with it.

(Coraline, meanwhile, is ignoring the whole business and seems more excited about the fact that I've gotten up from my computer chair, giving her an opening to steal it. To me this mainly suggests that at different points in time, different cats may have very different priorities!)

And then we come to "Cats and Gravity III". The outcome of this scenario completely caught me off guard (you may even be able to hear me exclaim "HOLY CRAP!" at one point). In this case I took a treat container that would be new to all the cats (another empty vitamin bottle, this time a dark purple one slightly larger than the white one used in "Cats and Gravity II"). I let them watch me putting treats into it, and then placed this bottle on top of a small end table in the living room (a different surface in a different part of the house than my desk, to control for position habit).



In this case, the video shows that initially none of the cats really showed interest in the new treat bottle when I first placed it on the end table. However, after I went over and shook it a bit, Shadow went over to the table, put his front paws on the top surface, and then proceeded to lift the bottle up with his mouth and throw it down onto the floor. (That's where I exclaimed "HOLY CRAP!", by the way.)

So...what to make of this?

Subjectively speaking (yes, I'm about to offer an interpretation), it looked to me like Shadow spontaneously came up with a really creative way of getting the treats he knew were inside the purple bottle. Which would suggest that he's learned to generalize beyond "if I paw at this maybe it will fall and treats will come out" and now understands that it is not the mechanical motion of pawing or nosing that's important, but rather, the falling of the bottle itself, if one's goal is to get the treats out of the bottle. This, to me, seems pretty significant, and again I'm curious to know if there's any literature out there saying one thing or another about this type of cognition in felines.

However, this was of course a tiny sample set. And I did not do this series of "mini-trials" in response to another study I'd be able to cite and/or comment on -- like I said at the beginning, I couldn't find any studies about cats knocking stuff over. No peer-reviewed references = not "ResearchBlogging". Plus, for all I know, cats' understanding of gravitational cause-and-effect is already well documented and known and I just fail at searching for this documentation.

That said, at the very least, I think anyone who really wants to study cats' understanding of cause-and-effect as it pertains to objects in a broader sense would do well to try out a variety of different scenarios involving different types of objects, and requiring different types of attentiveness and planning on the cats' part.

I find it terribly problematic (and this goes back to my discussion of the string experiments again) when a single particular test is taken (whether by the study authors, the media, or both) as meaning something globally significant about a given population's abilities or lack thereof. In the absence of a single task (or task type) with huge amounts of existing data backing up its ability to test "general" cognitive ability in a given domain, multiple tasks of varying attributes would seem to me required for appropriate levels of rigor.

Also, I have to say that another reason I wanted to post these videos is because now more than ever I am beginning to think it is very important to have as much of an experiment on record (for multiple parties to view and evaluate) as possible. Even though I (hopefully) disclaimered the heck out of my string experiments, I still would rather do things as close to "right" as possible for a layperson -- just because I'm not a real researcher doesn't mean I can't practice holding my informal stuff to higher standards.

Finally, I would just like to say that I would be extremely interested to get people's comments on what it looks like is actually happening in the videos above. As in, if you think Shadow is doing what he's doing deliberately, what aspects of his actions lead you to think that? I'm curious about this because I see my cats doing all sorts of things all the time, some of which (to me) look "deliberate", whereas other things they do look thoroughly "accidental". Only I haven't come up with a good way to describe what "deliberateness" looks like in quantitative terms.

I suspect that in general this sort of issue comes up a lot in animal cognition research, which has me curious as to whether there even exists any kind of objective way to measure something so "internal". Behaviorism (in my opinion) fails miserably to account for everything that could potentially be important (for one thing it often seems to completely fail to account for, say, different sensory and perceptual modalities on the part of the researcher vs. subject), and much of what I hear from "evolutionary psychology" sounds like it's been pulled straight from someone's nether orifice, to put it politely. So I'd be really intrigued to know what other tools or paradigms may currently be out there that might be more promising.

Crunch GROWL Crunch Crunch!

Well seeing as I referred to Shadow's Happy Food Growling in my last raw feeding update I figured I would post a video of this phenomenon.

It's embedded below (and in case you are unclear on what "raw feeding" means, I should warn that this is NOT something you want to watch if you are extremely squeamish about raw meat or the sound of bones crunching).

(Note that he did NOT catch the bird himself, it's from the grocery.)



Shadow is taking on about a third of a whole raw quail here (the torso section plus a wing, I think) and enjoying himself immensely. What's weird is that when I'm preparing raw meaty meals for the cats (which, in the case of the quail, basically amounts to "chop into thirds and serve") it seems completely disgusting, but as soon as I give it to the cats my brain flips into "ooh, Discovery Channel!" mode. Like I'm watching some nature documentary about miniature panthers or lions. Seeing those carnivore teeth and jaws in action is pretty astounding!

Raw and Whole Prey Feeding: A Trial Run

...is something I've actually gotten up the nerve to try recently. There will probably be several lengthy posts about this, but for now here is a picture of Cora polishing off a quail:



I should also note that I am not doing 100% raw for the moment...I am still learning about and evaluating what research there is regarding this sort of thing. But the younger cats have been getting around 50-60% of their daily diet in the form of raw meat, bones, organs, etc., for nearly two weeks now. (Nikki won't touch the stuff but that's no surprise -- for the moment I am just glad she is back to liking grain-free wet food.)

Briefly I will also say that:

- Nobody has gotten sick
- Poop output and stink seems to have been reduced by at least half
- Coats are getting softer and shinier
- Brodie seems to have a lot more energy (which makes me wonder if he is just really, really bad, even for a cat, at getting any benefit whatsoever from carbohydrates, which even grain-free commercial cat foods generally have some of)

Hence, so far I would say things look very promising!

(And yes, I am supplementing with extra taurine -- technically cats "should" be able to get all the taurine they need from raw prey or prey-model food containing enough heart and dark muscle meat and such, but I don't want to take ANY chances with that particular amino acid.

One study in which two groups of cats were fed, respectively, a commercial diet and a diet of whole ground rabbit, resulted in one cat in the raw group suddenly dying of cardiomyopathy due to severe taurine deficiency. When examined, other cats in that group were also found to have signs of deficiency, so their diet was supplemented with taurine for the remainder of the study. So while I would guess tentatively that the process of grinding the rabbit was responsible for the loss of taurine, again, not taking any chances here.)

I also tried (in addition to the chicken, turkey, quail, and beef that the trio have been quite happy with so far) getting some frozen feeder mice at one of those pet stores that caters to reptiles. Yes, I know, kind of gross (and the mice were so cute despite being dead!), but in a way I sort of feel like feeding whole prey is a way for me to really come to terms with what a carnivore is. Store-bought kibble may come in cute little shapes reminiscent of children's cereal, but it still (if it's of any quality) contains dead animal bits and something in me finds it a bit unnerving to be so disconnected from the "source" of said animals. If that makes any sense at all to anyone.

In any case, so far only Brodie seems willing to actually eat the mice. Cora and Shadow played with them a bit, but didn't seem to recognize them as food. (Which I am sure Brodie is just fine with...he got what they didn't eat!).

Further Feline Food Follies

DISCLAIMER: I am not connected with any pet food industry companies, receive no compensation for writing about a given food, and will not ever exclusively promote any particular brand as the One True Nutritional Answer for All Cats. In my household I purposely try and rotate brands and flavors and I have no "brand loyalty" other than in the practical sense of continuing to buy what my cats eat, enjoy, and do well on. Hence all opinions and impressions stated herein should be considered the observations of one individual, not the party line of either a company or a group with the aim of discrediting a company.

---

I've offered the resident felines many, many different brands and flavors of food (wet and dry) and the younger cats have mostly been happy with whatever they've got in front of them. Coraline is somewhat pickier than her brothers and has stronger preferences (i.e., she is a fish fiend!) but she's not nearly as finicky as Nikki.

That said, I am pleased to have finally found a dry food that everyone likes and that doesn't trigger any of Brodie's food intolerances (he reacts to corn the way a human with severe lactose intolerance reacts to milk -- gas, bloating, and a nasty case of the runs). Oddly enough it's a "weight management" formula (specifically, EVO Weight Management), but you can feed it either in a weight loss amount or in a weight maintenance amount because it's very nutrient-dense.

The younger cats all liked the "regular" EVO (both the chicken and fish flavors) just fine, but Nikki wouldn't touch it for some reason. She did, however, like the Innova Cat & Kitten Formula, so for a while I tried feeding that to everyone -- until it became evident Brodie couldn't tolerate it. Innova doesn't contain corn but it does contain barley, and I am beginning to suspect Brodie is one of those cats that has worse-than-average problems with grains, period. Anyway, to make a long story short, on a whim I picked up a bag of Evo Weight Management one day a few weeks ago and it ended up being a huge hit with everyone -- including Nikki! So I am definitely planning on sticking with it as their "primary" dry food (while continuing to mix in other grain-free varieties -- right now they're trying Blue Buffalo Wilderness Salmon).

And then there is the matter of wet food. Everyone here gets about 3 oz. of wet food daily, divided into two portions. I figure that way they can get some of the benefits of the generally higher protein content of wet food in addition to increased hydration. The younger cats have usually been willing to at least try any wet food I give them (especially the boys...Cora sometimes waits to see if her brothers will eat something before trying it herself!) but again, Nikki...not so much.

This has caused me some amount of angst because she has outright rejected EVERY "high quality" wet food I've offered her. Wellness, Evo canned, Tiki Cat, Natural Balance, Felidae...essentially Nikki's reaction to these sorts of foods is either to sniff them and literally gag, or run away from them making grumbly "harumphing" noises.

She liked a particular supermarket brand for a while (Paws Premium, purchased at Lucky's grocery) but then both she and Shadow suffered a full day of vigorous vomiting after eating what I suspect was part of a "bad batch", so I don't feed that brand anymore at all.*

What Nikki does like, however, is Fancy Feast, otherwise known as Kitty Crack. I couldn't believe her reaction to it the first time I offered it to her. She inhaled it, then proceeded to lick the plate absolutely clean! Needless to say, I was ever so slightly shocked. So since then I've been getting her the "Classic" (pate') varieties of that, as despite not being anywhere near "human grade", it's at least a way to get some extra protein and water into her diet. Her favorites so far have been the Savory Salmon Feast and the Ocean Whitefish & Tuna Feast.

Seeing as she's going to be nine this year I know I have to start watching out for (and taking measures to prevent) issues like diabetes, kidney problems, and the like, and everything I've read recently suggests wet food is a step in the right direction as far as that sort of thing goes.

And aside from the issues of dubious manufacturing quality/evasiveness on Purina's part about the source of their ingredients (these are major, non-trivial issues, just not the main subject of this post), some varieties of Fancy Feast are actually pretty darn good for cats from a nutritional standpoint. Some varieties are awful -- basically bits of textured wheat gluten in "gravy" made from who-knows-what, and I've noticed that the "fancier" and "cuter" the graphics on the cans are, the worse the ingredients tend to be. E.g., the "Elegant Medleys" line would be right out in my household, seeing as everything in it contains corn starch.

So, somewhat contrary to what the marketing might suggest, the FF types best for cats are the most unassuming-looking ones, in particular the "Classic pate" varieties. These tend to be pretty much all animal parts and water, with some vitamin supplements added in (always necessary when serving cooked meat to cats).

Yes, some of the animal parts are described in slightly worrisome terms like "meat" and "meat by-products" (no indication of what KIND of meat -- pork? beef? hamster? wildebeest? emu? soylent green?) but seeing as cats in the wild aren't THAT picky about their protein sources, I figure they might be better off with a few mysterious byproducts here and there than with some kind of "oatmeal, blueberry, sweet potato, thyme, and acai berry" concoction as one might find in a Premium Natural brand ("Premium natural" brands can be awesome, or they can be...not so much better for cats than supermarket stuff as designed to appeal to Hippie Human Sensibilities. References to "healthy complex carbohydrates for energy" are a warning sign in this regard, as cats have practically no need for carbs, period).

What I would consider an "ideal" cat food (aside from the obvious primary criterion of "something the cat likes, eats, and doesn't get sick from") would be very basic, consisting of mainly muscle meat from poultry and/or rabbit mixed with an appropriate amount of organ meats, with any necessary supplements (such as calcium) added in appropriate amounts. Some foods do approximate or even exactly match this but they tend to be pricey and definitely inaccessible to a lot of people as they are only available at specialty pet food stores, or (in the case of raw feeding) logistically difficult to prepare on a regular basis. Short version: if at any point you're stuck with "grocery store" cat food, Fancy Feast Classic varieties are definitely not the worst you could do, nutrition-wise.

BUT: all that said, lately I've been wondering if Purina did something to change the Fancy Feast formula. I'm not the only one wondering this. Because for the past week, ever since I got the most recent package of the stuff (a 24-pack of the Classic Seafood varieties), Nikki has been...less than enthused. I know sometimes picky cats like her sometimes just get tired of their former "favorites" (makes sense...I was a picky kid growing up and I remember occasionally getting worn out on any one of my "staples") so I suppose that could be all that's going on, but the fact that other people have been reporting similar reactions from their cats makes me suspicious.

Moreover, the younger cats seem to be eating their FF (or FF-mixed-with-other-stuff blends) with considerably less gusto than before. I am not so concerned about this in their case seeing as they all actually eat plenty of other brands, but I will certainly be plenty annoyed on Nikki's behalf if Purina DID change the formula/flavoring in one of the only wet foods that doesn't disgust her.

And I will also be beyond irritated on behalf of the many cats struggling with health problems like diabetes and chronic renal failure, who have up until now done very well on the all-meat varieties of FF. It is not absolutely clear that a significant change has occurred, but still, I think pet food manufacturers need to be VERY cognizant of just how sensitive cats' sense of taste is. A change that seems "insignificant" to a human might make the difference between a given cat loving a food and deciding it's fit for litter-box burial.

So, as I continue to await further news of what the F is going on with the Fancy Feast Formula, I will certainly continue to experiment with other food brands and flavors. I got a somewhat promising result with the Whole Foods 360 store brand of cat food (ocean fish and tuna flavor) -- Nikki has eaten nearly two cans of this with reasonable enthusiasm, so I may get some more of that to make sure it wasn't just a fluke!

---

* Yes, I did contact the manufacturer of this supermarket brand, describe the symptoms, and give them the batch number, etc. I was told several weeks later via a letter they had "tested the batch and found no evidence the food was responsible for [my] pets' illness". But who knows what exactly they tested FOR. In any case, I figured that it made the most sense to just not feed that brand anymore, so I don't. One midnight trip to the emergency vet was enough!

---

Carnivorous By Nature

Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.

- From "Ode to Spot", a poem read by the android Data in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, 'Schisms'

A few years ago, while visiting Matt's parents (Matt being my Significant Other; his parents live locally to us) I witnessed a scene that probably plays out all the time in nature, but which I don't see all that often when I click links entitled "cute kitten video!!" In the back yard, a tiny (probably 7 weeks old at most) feral kitten was gleefully flinging an object around. Initially my reaction was typical: along the lines of "aww, how adorable!" But then I got a closer look at the object...and saw that it was a partly-eaten dead bird (most likely a house sparrow). Which I have to admit gave me a bit of a jolt. But that jolt was only momentary because I remembered, hey, this is a cat. Cuteness does not equal vegetarianism, after all!

So yeah. Personally I tend toward a vegetarian diet and prefer plant-based foods for myself whenever feasible. However this does not mean I would ever be tempted to impose my preferences and choices in this regard on my cats. Moreover, while I certainly disagree with factory farming practices and don't think I could stand hanging around in a slaughterhouse, I do accept that nature includes carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, and somehow I doubt things would go well for life on Earth if all the carnivores suddenly disappeared!

But on to the main point of this post, which is to discuss a weird thing I've noticed looking around in the "pet" sections of grocery stores and the like. And that is the way products (especially food) for dogs and cats are marketed, formulated, and made available. I don't want to take the time right now to go around photographing display shelves and ingredients labels, so take this for what it's worth, but I suspect most people who've looked at these items will be familiar with what I am describing here.

Basically it looks to me like there's this perception of cats as being these dainty little creatures whose sensibilities might even be described as "delicate". Whereas dogs (with the exception of the "toy" breeds) are associated with a sort of rough-and-tumble "outdoorsiness" (or something along those lines). Dog food cans and bags tend to employ "strong"-looking or blocky lettering and dark or bold colors; cat food packaging is heavy on the pastels and the flowery script. Dogs and cats can of course be either male or female, but in many cases it seems like cat products look stereotypically "feminine" whereas dog products look stereotypically "masculine".

Now of course I am not claiming that the observations above are universally or 100% true for all foods and other products. For instance, foods marketed as being "natural" or "holistic" tend to use similar (frequently neutral or "artsy"-looking) packaging colors and designs for both cats and dogs. And there are certainly exceptions to the "all dogs are boys, all cats are girls" imagery; i.e., the archetypically masculine tomcat and the fluffy pink-beribboned poodle both show up repeatedly in popular culture. But I still think the overall trends otherwise I am describing here are at least prevalent enough to be worth mentioning.

All that said, I want to specifically focus on food here. Biologically speaking, cats are obligate carnivores (meaning they must consume the particular nutrients found in the flesh of other animals in order to survive). Dogs, while also technically carnivores, can eat a more omnivorous diet and tend to have less digestive trouble with grains than cats do. Yet the marketing and available selection of cat and dog foods and treats in many of the stores I've visited would suggest the exact opposite!

To illustrate what I mean, I was in one store recently (a local hardware store that is really more of a "general household goods" emporium, i.e., they carry lots of gardening equipment and rugs in addition to nuts, bolts, and tools) and in their "pet" aisle I noticed several things. One was that the selection of dog food was about twice as large as the selection of cat food. Another was that the dog food selection included at least one of the "natural" brands, noted as being high meat/low grain. The cat section included no such option; if I'd been restricted to buying food there, I'd have been completely out of luck as there was nothing Brodie (who gets severe stomach upset from corn and probably barley as well) could safely eat.

I have noticed the same trend in most grocery stores as far as treats are concerned. Treats of course are not a necessity, but as long as one isn't over-feeding one's cats or dogs, they can be a nice little mid-day surprise or supplement. But ye gads. Dogs get all this nice jerky stuff -- essentially pure meat -- while cats get these little "Fun Shaped" crunchy or chewy things that are, of course, predominantly corn. What. The. Heck.

So yeah. I am not sitting here fuming in outrage over all this -- there are, after all, multiple local pet supply stores where I can easily find reasonably species-appropriate cat food -- but this sort of thing does confuse and annoy me. It just seems like there's this bizarre cultural stereotype of cats being dainty, girlish...salad-eaters, or something, that is totally incongruous with their carnivorous reality*. And I don't think it does anyone, much less cats themselves, any service to misrepresent or disregard this reality.

* Not that there is anything wrong with being girlish, my point is more that there seems to be a conflation of cats with feminine with needing-less-meat, etc., which makes no sense at all, and wouldn't if applied to dogs or humans either!

---