Searching for "raw feeding"

Why Cats Should Not Eat Dry Food

dry-cat-food

What you feed your cats will impact their health for the length of their lives, so choosing the best food is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a cat parent. With the overwhelming array of choices available and opinions diverging widely, it can be overwhelming to choose.Continue Reading

Another Furball? It Might Be Feline Asthma

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Guest post by Andrea Tasi, VMD

Has your cat been coughing? Watch the video at the bottom of this post and you may recognize that sound. Many people assume that the cat is trying to cough up a hairball and don’t realize that their cat could have asthma. Untreated, asthma can progress and even be fatal. But, like human asthmatics, cats can be treated and the disease can be managed.

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How to Read and Understand Pet Food Labels

cat-pet-food-labels

This post is sponsored by Darwin’s Natural Pet Products

As responsible cat parents, it’s up to us to make sure that we’re feeding our cats a diet that ensures optimal health. For most of us, that means that we’re going to compare different brands. In theory, pet food labels should offer an easy way to do that. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. In this article, we’ll explain what the jargon on pet food labels really means.Continue Reading

Ruby’s Last Journey: Water, Water, Everywhere! Hydration for Cats with Kidney Disease

When Kidney Failure Hits Close to Home

Ruby-The-Conscious-Cat

I never wanted to have to write this post.

Chronic Kidney Disease, also known as Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) is a common condition in cats. It is the result of a gradual decrease in kidney function. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never had to deal with this disease with any of my previous cats.

Until now. Last week, Ruby was diagnosed with kidney disease, and sadly, it’s already in the advanced stages. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how my little girl could go from seemingly healthy to terminally ill in less than two months. It just goes to show how good cats are at hiding signs of illness, and how even an experienced cat parent like me can miss the signs (or, admittedly, be in a bit of denial about the signs).Continue Reading

Allegra, Ruby and The Taste Test

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September 2022 update:

Back in 2012, friends of mine started a small company making safe, locally sourced pet food. They were involved in every aspect of the food they made, from farm to bowl. Their meat and produce was sourced from local farmers who follow humane practices. Pawgevity owners Carole and Norman King personally visited each farm they work with. Sadly, the company didn’t survive.Continue Reading

Allegra’s World: Busy Kitten

I’ve been a busy little kitten!  There’s always so much to do, a kitten’s work is never done.  I’ve got to keep an eye on the birds and squirrels in our yard – that’s almost a full time job right there!  And lately, we’ve had these very strange looking creatures attach themselves to the screen on the sliding glass door.  Mom says they’re called cicadas.  They’re really ugly, and when I try to bat at them, they make a scary noise and fly off!  Oh, and speaking of critters – this is the coolest thing yet since I came to live here.  These big black things are coming into the house sometimes, mostly in the basement.  Mom says they’re called crickets.  I say they’re really fun toys!  I chase them and they jump all over the place.  Wee!!!   The only thing is that they don’t seem to last very long, because I’m too fast for them!  But, unlike my other toys, I can eat them!  Yummy!  I do leave the legs behind, though – a little too crunchy for my taste.  Mom says it’s gross when I eat the crickets, and that she’d rather not know that I do that.  Ha!  I’m a fierce huntress!  This is what I do!  I bet she wouldn’t like it, either, if I left their dead bodies all over the basement.  Humans – sometimes they just don’t get it.

Speaking of toys – I got another cool new one.  Mom bought me a new cat tree.  You can see me posing on it in the photo above.  I really like it, especially the sisal scratching post, I use that a lot.  And I love it when Mom gets one of those fishing pole type toys and teases me with it around the cat tree.  I jump up and down and roll around at the base of it, it’s great fun.  Wee!!!  My birthday is only a couple of weeks away, and I’ve seen Mom take a box inside the one room downstairs that I’m not allowed in.  I wonder whether my birthday present is in that box?  It was a pretty big box!  Wee!!!  It sure is fun living here, so many toys, and so many presents.  Every day is so special!

I like that Mom works from home, and that she’s around a lot, so it was a little weird the other day when she was gone for a really long time.  She left right after our morning playtime, and she told me she would be gone all day, and that she would be back in time for me to feed me my dinner, but it still felt like a very long day without her there.  I slept for most of it, but then, I got a little bored.  Mom says I always look for trouble when I’m bored, and apparently, going by how she reacted, I found it.  I didn’t think it was that bad – all I did was chew on the edges of a book that stuck out from a lower shelf.  Oh, and I did knock her glasses off the nightstand.  But I do that all the time, and she just picks them up and puts them back.  Okay, so I did chew on the ends this time, and I guess they feel a little funny now when she puts them on.  Big deal!  That’ll teach her to leave me alone for that long!  Even though she said “oh, Allegra” in that tone of voice that I’ve come to know means she’s a little upset with me, I could tell that she tried really hard not to laugh, too.  I know I’m too cute for her to stay upset with me for long!

Oh, and I almost forgot – Mom has been feeding me some different food lately.  She says it’s called “raw” – I say it tastes really yummy!  I’m not a big eater, food kind of bores me,  most of the time I’m just too busy to eat, but this stuff, I usually inhale in one sitting.  It comes in different flavors, so far, I’ve had rabbit, chicken and turkey.   I like them all, but I think I like rabbit best of all.  Yummylicious!!!

That’s all for today – time to make the rounds and check on the birds and squirrels!

Amber’s Mewsings: Blog Anniversary

I told Mom that she had to let me blog during our anniversary week celebration – after all, I am the inspurration behind this site!  It’s been such an amazing year for Mom, and also for me, because when Mom is happy, I’m  happy.  I think it’s a bit ironic that the first real post on this site that Mom wrote was titled Amber is on a diet – but I guess I really needed it then, even though I still think that I was only big-boned and fluffy, and didn’t really need to loose any weight.  However, I know Mom wants me to be healthy for a long long time, and I guess being overweight is as bad for kitties as it is for people, so I reluctantly cooperated with the whole diet thing.  (This is where opposable thumbs would come in handy – I’ve figured out how to open the cabinet where Mom keeps my food, but I can’t seem to figure out how to open the cans…)  I’m happy to report that a year later, I’m back to less than 13 pounds, which Mom says is a good weight for me (and our vet, Fern, agrees).  Mom’s been feeding me some really yummy stuff lately – it’s called raw food, and you’ll soon read more here about why it’s so good for kitties.   It sure tastes good!

This past year, I’ve written eighteen posts in my own Amber’s Mewsings category.  I got to write about everything from how much I love to be my Mom’s mewse to what it felt like to be forced to have my teeth cleaned (nothing to love about that!).  I have fun writing my column, and I know it gives Mom a break from having to come up with new stuff to write three times a week, which I guess can be challenging for a human.  I keep telling her to let me blog more, because I have lots more to say!

There are lots of exiting things coming up for our site for this next year.   Mom said she’s going to do something called a teleseminar series – I don’t really know what that means, but she says that it’ll be another way to teach people stuff about cats and their health and their lifestyle.  Sounds good to me.  There’ll also be lots more giveaways – I guess humans love getting stuff for free, and Mom likes to give stuff away that she thinks our readers would enjoy, so look for more of those things.  And most importantly, there’ll be lots more mewsings coming from me!

And don’t forget to enter our anniverary giveaway for the cool gift basket my mom’s friend put together for us!