Questions for Dr. S, The Toast’s valiant veterinary correspondent, can be left in the comments. She’ll be back next Tuesday to talk about luxating patellas in dogs, and whether or not you have to brush your damn cat’s teeth.
I think that what we feed our animals can make a tremendous difference in their health and longevity. Most clients I talk to are very concerned about proper nutrition for their pets. Unfortunately, the pet food companies know this too, and spend a lot of money marketing foods to consumers. While reading the labels is important, not everything means what you think it does.
Organic Pet Food
There are currently no legal requirements for the term “Organic” on a bag of pet food. So while organic for people food means very particular things, there’s not a set list of what it means for our pets’ food. And yet, you’re likely paying gobs of money for the impression of quality.
Quantity and Quality
I honestly never read the ingredients list on a bag of food. I don’t feel this part of the label gives me much useable information about the quality of the overall diet. Ingredients for pet food are always listed in order of weight, heaviest ingredients first, lightest ingredients toward the bottom. This means that even if the first ingredient is chicken, chicken may not be the main source of protein and nutrients. Chicken is heavy because it contains a lot of water. It’s possible that the bulk of the nutrients may be coming from another ingredient that is further down the list simply by virtue of the fact that that ingredient has less water content.
AAFCO
I think the most important part of the pet food label is the AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) nutritional adequacy statement. AAFCO establishes the nutritional adequacy standards for each species and stage of growth. The nutritional adequacy statement is a claim that the manufacturer has produced a food that meets these standards for nutritional adequacy.
Also, the life stage the diet is intended for must be specified in this statement as well. We’ll get to that in a second.
Feeding Trials
Look for a statement (pictured above) affirming that the diet in question was determined to be complete and balanced using feeding trials. Feeding trials mean that for a minimum of 6 months, animals were fed nothing but this diet and it was found to provide adequate nutrition. Feeding trials are not a guarantee of optimal nutrition, but they are a step in the right direction. I would regard a statement that the diet is “comparable in nutritional adequacy” to a feeding trial tested product as significantly inferior to a statement that the product itself actually underwent feeding trials.
The manufacturers’ alternative to feeding trials is simply formulating the diet to meet the AAFCO standards. This statement simply means a laboratory has analyzed the diet and found appropriate levels of all essential nutrients. This is not as complete a picture because it does not have to take into account bioavailability of the nutrients. It means the nutrients are physically present, but doesn’t guarantee that your pet can absorb them.
Life Stages
There are only two recognized life stages according to AAFCO. They are growth/reproduction or maintenance. Labels you might recognize from your dog or cat food might be “Large Breed,” “Senior,” “Indoor,” and “Small Breed” but they are not official life stages with particularly different requirements. Really, these so-called distinctions would all fall under the category of maintenance.
A diet can also be said to meet the requirements for all life stages. This basically means it meets the standards for growth (in other words you could very well be feeding your chunky adult pet some puppy or kitten food.)
The Eternal Wet v. Dry Food Debate for Cats
…will not be decided by me today, because, honestly, there is no clear answer based on peer-reviewed research. Because cats are such little monsters about having their teeth brushed (more on that next week), I tend to lean towards a high-quality dry food for the dental benefits. Cats who eat exclusively wet food are likely to need more dental care (in the form of teeth brushing, special treats, and full veterinary dental cleanings.)
Brand and Flavor
I’m not going to tell you precisely what brand and flavor and type of food to feed your pets. For one thing I think knowing the pet and their health status is an important first step in recommending a food, for another it is just not possible for me to be familiar with all of the pet food brands out there. I have brands that I recommend to my clients after doing an exam on their pet but there are certainly other brands that make quality foods. The big thing for me is knowing that what you are putting in the bowl is likely to be well absorbed in your pet’s digestive tract, to meet all of their dietary requirements without providing too many excesses and not just turn into expensive fertilizer.
I recommend the brands I do (chiefly, Royal Canin, Science Diet, and Eukanuba) because I know how much research these companies are doing in the field of pet nutrition. I trust their quality control measures and the science used to formulate each of their diets. If you want specific brand recommendations ask your veterinarian. These recommendations are, of course, for healthy pets. Pets with certain health concerns may have more specific recommendations. The exception to the labeling I mentioned is veterinary prescription diets. Some of these will specifically say on the bag that they are for supplemental or intermittent feeding only. These foods are prescription for a reason and should only be fed on the recommendation of a veterinarian.
Tags: advice, animals, dr. s, food, veterinary wisdom, your cat cannot be a vegan do not do this
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We feed our pup The Honest Kitchen, and he seems to like it and it seems to do right by him.
Dear Dr. S! Can you weigh in on “making your own raw food for your pets” as I have heard that some people who have more free time (and money) than I, do this. I love my (stupid, yet endearing) cats, but cooking for two people is enough without cooking for two (cranky, bitchy, demanding, picky) cats as well.
I did a raw food diet for our two cats when they were young; I calculated that it was only minorly more expensive than any regular food (and probably cheaper than premium pet food) but it was a lot of time/effort. Getting into the routine of making big batches I could freeze in individual portions made it a bit easier, but it was still a lot of effort. Along the way I fell out of the habit and now mostly feed ours a mixture of wet/dry supplemented with raw stuff every few days (mostly portioned out from what we’re having, pre-cooking) and they’re still happy and healthy.
The only difference that I can really tell is, as embryoconcepts notes below, their waste is more bulky and smelly when they’re eating regular cat foot. On the other hand, I had a hard time getting my boycat to eat enough to maintain weight on a raw diet, so swings and roundabouts, I guess.
(Obviously I am not a vet, and would be interested to hear what Dr S has to say about this too!)
I am actually not a big fan of either raw or homemade diets. The raw diets can pose a human health risk (food borne illness such as salmonella and E. Coli) so caution is warranted especially in homes with children, elderly people, or others with an immunocompromised status. I don’t think there is much evidence to support raw diets either (cooking certainly improves bioavailability of some nutrients).
Homemade diets are problematic in their own right. It is actually quite difficult to ensure that you are creating a complete and balanced diet. There was actually a published study evaluating many of the homemade diet recipes available and they found most of them were not complete.
Ingredients are so important though! Yes, they’re ordered by weight, which doesn’t tell you as much as you might like, but it does tell you that there’s good or bad stuff going into the food. You want to avoid, at all costs, crap fillers like corn, wheat, and soy (many pets have allergies to these, and they don’t do a whole lot for them nutritionally) or byproduct meals (can include things like beaks, feathers, and feet, ew).
I worked in a pet food store for six years and we had a heavy emphasis on nutrition training. What you feed your pet is super important! Feeding them healthily and well can help prevent a ton of issues down the road.
ps your cat is really not a vegan, your dog is probably not a vegan either, come at me bro.
Chances are if you’re the kind who thinks a dog or cat is vegan, you also think owning a pet is equivalent to slavery.
You would be surprised at the number of people I met who insisted that their cat/dog be vegan because they themselves were vegan.
My god that’s distressing.
I have occasionally hate-read the Vegan Cats Facebook page. It is full of very deluded people who feed their cats lentils covered in nutritional yeast and call that “cat food”.
D: D: D:
I’d like to see these people also go out into the wild and scold tigers for eating meat
There’s actually a guy on there who keeps talking about how he wishes he was rich, because he doesn’t think any animals need to be carnivorous and that they all would be vegan if someone opened their minds to it and if he was rich he’d start converting lions.
I think we should raise money to send him out to convert* the lions.
*be eaten by.
<3
PLEASE DON’T BE JOKING
I AM NOT! I mean, even the other cat vegans seem to consider him a bit out there, but he seems to be 100% serious and will argue with those who believe otherwise. It is beautiful.
bet you their cats eat spiders behind their backs anyway. I think my cat could survive for a little while without a lot of animal protein, it’s the killing that really keeps her spirits up. I know what science says but I say, give a cat an eggplant that runs away and bleeds a little and it’ll be ok.
Don’t forget about the squealing, very important.
If you want a vegan pet so bad, get a fucking hamster
Which is actually a bad idea because hamsters are not vegetarians and require animal protein to be healthy as well. As do most rodents. They can survive on a vegetarian diet, but it’s far from ideal for them. Also, a hamster eating a cricket or jumping like a pudgy fox to catch a mealworm is the most adorable thing ever.
“Nuh-uh! We taught a lion to eat tofu!”
*sad, dry cough*
I came to the comments specifically to see how long it took for this to show up. This is my happy place.
I was /so ridiculously happy/ when I realized I could be the one to make that reference.
or byproduct meals (can include things like beaks, feathers, and feet, ew).
The same kind of things animals eat regularly in the wild? Maybe not feathers, but animals will happily crunch up a lot of stuff that seems ‘gross’ to us to no ill effect.
True enough! My main issue with byproduct meals is that they don’t have to tell you what’s in them–could be beaks, feet, feathers, could be other stuff, you just don’t know.
Homer: Aw, how come he gets to eat meat and we don’t?
Marge: You wouldn’t want what he’s eating; it’s mostly snouts and entrails.
Homer: Mmmm, snouts.
That is actually not true. By product meal is a strictly defined term and can not include things like hide, feathers, and beaks.
Good to know, thanks!
THIS IS FANTASTIC. THANK YOU.
My cats are chunky little beasts, so I think a lot about their food. I follow a diet recommended by a previous vet that is seconded by my current vet–although my current vet’s feeling is that they are obviously healthy and happy pets, so he’s not super worried about their plumpness. (This is one reason why I like him! The other is that he tells them that they are pretty, and has been known to kiss their fuzzy little heads.) But I do read labels sometimes in a search for nutrition that might ease their dry skin or tendency to have hairballs, and I am completely fascinated by this explanation of what those labels mean.
Your cats sound like mine! Regular people are always saying how fat she is (she is zaftig!) but the vet’s unconcerned because she’s happy/ healthy/ playful. There’s just more of her to love.
I tell people that my cats are “cobby.” That is a thing! They have short little legs and tails and round little heads, so. It is not my fault they look like silvery-blue cupcakes.
I think it’s less “your fault” and more “your advantage” that you have extra adorable kitties.
I have a cat that has issues with chronic dry skin and dandruff. The things that seem to help a bit (some were our vet’s suggestion, some were me just trying different things) are:
1) Using a very high-quality, meat-based corn-free kibble (I use “Solid Gold” by Indigo Moon, it’s expensive but nutritionally dense, so we portion it in small amounts – 1/8 cup, twice a day).
2) Having half of his daily calories come from moist food – he gets a small amount twice a day, before he gets kibble (otherwise he will just eat the kibble and leave the wet food, ugh).
3) Salmon oil, 2 pumps added to his wet food in the morning. This was our vet’s suggestion, and totally transformed his coat! He still has dry skin, especially in winter, but his fur overall is glossier and markedly better than before.
Salmon oil! That sounds promising! They both actually have beautiful coats, soft as bunnies, but definitely get winter dandruff. I’ve been thinking more protein/fish would be the way to handle that, but wasn’t sure how to work it in.
One vet suggested rubbing them with baby wipes occasionally for the dry skin. I have not brought myself to try this out–they already don’t like the unscented dryersheet rub when they are staticky.
Oh god, I’m hoping you don’t HAVE to brush your damn cat’s teeth… :-/
I read an article by a woman who fed her six cats raw diets and brushed all their teeth nightly. I can think of no better depiction of Hell than brushing the teeth of six cats nightly.
D:
Our vet recommended Greenies treats instead of brushing, as our cat loves them and will eat them, and they have so close to the same effect as brushing without the hassle of trying to wrestle with a cat.
It’s a really good idea to brush your cat’s (or cats’) teeth, if you can do so with all your limbs intact. Our vet strongly recommended we brush our cat’s teeth, but since he was already adult and not used to having human fingers in his mouth (without nipping at them), we decided not to. We regret this decision to some extent, since he has chronic dental problems and if we’d been more diligent early on we might have been able to control them better. On the other hand, he also has a vicious bite, and we’ve both had to go to Urgent Care for treatment.
Our next cat will be a kitten, and toothbrushing will commence soonest.
My kitty is on Royal Canin LP because of her kidneys (she is 20 and her kidney function IMPROVED over her last blood test, yay yay, I love saying that) but she wants to eat everything I eat. Because she’s also lost weight I am sometimes tempted to let her have a little. I know dairy is bad, but basically – what vegetarian people scraps are okay for a kitty? And for a kitty who has kidney failure?
Premium dog food is totally worth it, in my book. If, for no other reason, the reduction in quantity and odor of waste. Seriously – there’s a huge difference, and you will appreciate it. Best bang for the buck that I’ve found is Taste of the Wild. I get 40lb bags delivered, Subscribe & Save style, for best price and convenience. Strongly recommend. Slightly pricier, but also excellent: Candiae and Blue Buffalo.
Man Taste of the Wild is GREAT – the change in my dog was instantaneous and dramatic, w/r/t coat and waste, which I will not go into detail about. We started out feeding him Blue Buffalo, too, but apparently it’s not good enough for our delicate, expensive little pony-dog with the sensitive stomach.
Any time you switch a dog to a better quality food, you HAVE to do it gradually. Like, much more gradually than you would expect. The results otherwise are…unpleasant. For everyone.
Oh, for sure! He had a lot of stray-dog related stomach issues in the first place, so we actually fed him Blue Buffalo for the first year we had him (when we got him he was on prescription food and also was severely underweight so we slowly transitioned him to BB) but he just never seemed to acclimate to it. (But was also battling all sorts of intestinal things so I didn’t switch his food until he was 100% in the clear as per the vet and still having issues with his diet.) Then we eased him onto ToW and as soon as he was 100% finished with BB, he was fine! Which, let me tell you, was a relief. I thought we were never going to be done with the GI problems. DOGS. So delicate, yet so prone to eating everything.
I’m sorry, I will talk about my dog’s butt forever. It’s just had such a large and long term impact on my life
I UNDERSTAND.
MY PEOPLE
Can we declare this a safe space to talk about traumatic dog poops? My delicate flower mutt has a whole bunch of food issues that actually gave us a parvo scare when she was a pup. After a lot of careful experimenting she finally ended up on Orijen, the second most expensive brand of kibble I could find (of course – what a bitch), because it’s grain/corn-free and it’s totally fish-based. I discovered that all grains and chicken give her the splarts, and it was a huge ordeal to find good quality food that didn’t have either of those ingredients.
Orijen is so great! So pricey but so great. I’m personally in the if-it-doesn’t-give-them-splat-poops-it’s-worth-it camp. (Also I bet her coat is totally lovely. Bonus: Orijen comes in those damn near vacuum-packed brick-like bags and can be used as a weapon.)
Intriguingly, we had to switch my dog off of Blue Buffalo. He was eating their puppy chow as a puppy, but when we switched him over (gradually) to the adult formula, he suddenly started drinking tons (like, literally gallons) of water, and peeing everywhere, thanks to all that water. Nothing explained but anecdotal internet info, but we found another corn-free* kibble that he likes, and now he’s fine.
*the corn in the puppy chow from the shelter was giving him ear infections/skin irritations. Aww, special snowflakes.
We use Taste of the Wild, too! Mostly because I like to think my dogs aspire to be like the wolves on the bag, the same way I aspired to be like the athletes on the Wheaties box.
But man, they have the softest, glossiest, loveliest coats ever and beautiful strong white teeth!
ToTW bag artwork is the best. I like the cat food one with the puma on it.
(So people know what I’m babbling about:
)
omggggg it’s like a crappy children’s book from the 90s!
Our neighbor’s cats keep breaking into our house to eat the ToTW.
Inspired, no doubt, by the majestic puma.
And then there are majestic puma slap-fights.
I know that your comment probably means that the neighbor cats just sneak inside with your own cats and help themselves to the buffet, but in my brain I immediately had a vision of Mission Impossible-style hijinx (picked locks, lasers, booby traps, double-crosses, etc.) No need for tiny leather catsuits, since they already have cat suits of their own, har de har har.
(I’ll see myself out…)
I’m going to take this as an invitation to talk about cats that are not even mine. Yes? Yes.
Their names are Saturn and Jupiter, and they are both orange. Jupiter is larger but they are both big big cats. (Oh, you say, what clever names! THEY DO NOT BELONG TO THE SAME PERSON. They do not even belong to the same household.) Here are things they have done to get Call of the Wild.
1.) Slam themselves against the door repeatedly on the off chance that it is closed but not latched.
2.) Gone into the house. Hidden somewhere for hours until we lock doors and brush teeth and fill the food dish and sleep. Emerge to stuff self.
3.) Stood in an alcove, made “oh I have just been grievously injured” noises. When I rush out, seeking my own dear cat, they sneak in through the open door and chow down.
4.) Befriend my cat. Fall asleep together in a pool of sunlight. Bathe his ears. When I call him to come in, shoot into our house like a furry rocket ship. Swat at my cat when he gets near the food bowl.
We eventually just gave in and have a protection racket food bowl outside for them. The drop in vet bills alone is worth it.
This answer is so much better than I could have imagined.
There IS some high-level deception going on here (the hiding out overnight, the fake “wounded gazelle” thing, etc.) Cats are crazy!
YES I love ToTW. I think the puma gives him something to aspire to.
v. important
I love Taste of the Wild. My gassy/allergic to everything bulldog has no issues on it and my gigantic Rottweiler has the prettiest coat and nicest poops. Love that stuff. I believe Diamond manufactures it but not positive?
It is worth knowing that in the UK, there are WAY more restrictions on how you can label pet food and what it has to have in it. For example, they have to say exactly how much of the meat percentage is the meat named on the can. Most standard UK pet food brands are around 30% ‘meat’, and often as little as 4% is the named meat on the can.
It used to bea joke that there were more restrictions on animal food than human food. That’s no longer the case, but it was for a long time. We’re weird about animals here.
(Personal feeding: I feed them a wet food with around 70%-90% named meat, and a dry food with around the same. Low or no grain too. Brands: Applaws, Natures Menu, James Wellbeloved)
I just read online that wet food is better for cats because they are basically not wired to feel thirsty, so they aren’t very good at drinking enough water; since the wet food has a high liquid content, it helps them stay hydrated. Is this legit? And if I fed dry food instead, are there ways to make sure my cats get enough hydration (beyond just leaving bowls of fresh water that they often ignore)?
Cats: basically insane.
My vet has said this too, so we compromise by feeding 3/4 kibble and 1/4 wet food, the cats have the wet food about three days a week.
Also, some cats are desperately in love with water fountains. My friends’ cats would absolutely not drink water from a still bowl but they’ll happily lap from a fountain all the time, so sometimes that can do the trick.
I give my cat all dry-food (some money grain-free brand that, based on the packaging, will turn my delicate indoor cat into a rugged mountain lion) and I just started putting a stemless wineglass full of water at the top of the stairs and holy cow, she drinks from it all the time! Have you considered moving your water dishes for novelty/the possibility that your cats are elitist monarchs who will only drink from delicate glass bowls?
Friggin’ elitist cats. Mine would drink from a regular bowl, but only if it had been filled in the last few hours. Water that had sat out overnight? How dare you. She’d just stare at it, offended, and, if I walked away without rectifying the situation, meow at me until I emptied and refilled it.
My cat will only drink from a full Mason glass! Elitist hipster cat…
MIne will only drink bottled water now. In his defense, the tap water does taste like ass down here.
I read somewhere (who knows where, so take with a grain of salt) that cats aren’t wired to have their water right next to their food, so putting a water dish elsewhere in the house (like the top of the stairs!) encourages them to drink. Anecdata-ly, this has proven true for our cats. They really like to drink from the water dish in our office, not the one by their food bowl in the dining room.
Also, my parents have a Drinkwell and all their cats (and our cats, when they are staying at my parents’) love that thing, but it seems like a huge pain in the neck to clean.
I had the same experience. My cat is on long-term diuretics (managing congestive heart failure) so she needs more water (sort of like a kidney cat). I still have a bowl by her food dish, but once she is done eating she comes straight upstairs to my bedroom to drink from the bowl I keep there. It took me a little bit to get used to waking up in the early a.m. to the sounds of a cat lapping water, but she loves being able to snooze on the bed in the sun, have a little sip, then go back to sleep.
Anecdata-ly! I am charmed!
(We forget that cats need food and water, and he’ll remind us about the food but not the water, so we moved his water dish next to the sink where we see it and he immediately started drinking WAY more water – like Oh-no-the-kidney-failure-has-come amounts of water. And he was fine.)
Oh THAT’S why he likes the water from the dog bowls or the kitchen sink or the shower instead? Noted! Moving the useless, ever-ignored water bowl off the bathroom counter tonight.
The Drinkwell–and, I’d guess, all plastic fountains–is a huge pain to clean. The gunk adheres to the plastic in a way that makes it utterly impossible to scrub off. We had one for years and I hated it and did all kinds of soapy soaks that did nothing. My mom got a metal fountain a while back and it seems much easier. In fact, I am now tired of Hateful Kitten knocking over the stupid little water-cooler-looking thing we have now, so a metal fountain en route from Amazon right this second.
Beloved Cat is fine with the plastic toddler bowl of water next to the bathroom sink upstairs, as long as I refill it every night as he monitors my toothbrushing.
You put an actual glass of liquid at the top of your stairs and this has worked out well for you?
I’m impressed.
My cats very deliberately push glasses off the table, but ONLY if they have liquid in them.
I’ve read that cats’ natural diets (rodents, birds, bugs, etc.) is about 80% H2O. And very low carb – obvi. Cats are obligate carnivores. Therefore kibble is far, far too dry. And has way too many carbs for a kitty’s very different biology.
I’ve even read that the cheapest wet food is better than the priciest kibble (in terms of being nutritionally appropriate). And that kibble is responsible for the diabetes / obesity / kidney disease epidemic in house cats. I switched my cats to wet food, and they lost weight, their coats improved dramatically, and one cat went into diabetes remission.
I feed kibble as a daily treat for teeth. Not sure if it’s necessary, but they like it.
I think of kibble as the post WWII cat-food version of processed food for humans…???
‘whatever is cheapest at walgreens’
‘I want my dog to poop forever and ever and ever with no reprieve’
(is it different for cats? maybe cats are tougher.)
‘I want my cat to never stop puking’
my cat has thrown up once in our ten years together
Once that you’ve found
Those weird stains that appear on the carpet overnight? Cat puke. The soft warm stuff on your face? Cat puke. In your fridge? Cat puke. In your bed? Cat puke.
Nothing like catching an animal in the act of eating its own puke and/or poop, only to then puke or poop that again. *it’s the ciiircle of life*
That gave me flashbacks to the time my foster dog puked up worms, ate them, and puked them up again, and I had to intervene with my bare hands to prevent him and my other dog from eating them all.
Also, smelliest possible. Great, thanks.
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Today on “Catfood Trolling with Mallory”
OL’ ROY! Bags and bags of it!
“Now with 200% more corn! For that home-grown corn taste dogs love.”
Ol’ Roy is just ground corncobs and lard with the occasional smattering of rejected hot dog parts and high fructose corn syrup. Because that’s the AMERICAN way to eat, dammit.
I googled “America Dog” and this came up, god bless this great country:
AMERICAN* DOG (*all products pictured originate from People’s Republic of China)
(*assembled in Mexico)
I feed her Iams and she just deals with it.
The cat has thrown up twice: once for some sort of hairbally reason, and once she threw up because she ate a silverfish and we gave her treats for eating bugs. She then proceeded to throw up the treats all over the carpet.
Argghhhh cats are obligate carnivores, people who want their cats to be vegan like them should not own cats, arrrgghhhhhhh
I am completely brainwashed by the grain-free wet food only people, like fanatically so, but I suppose I might change my mind if anybody ever asked me to brush my cat’s teeth. so far, they have not. and as a result my cat is shiny as the morning dew sparkling on the tall grass and as strong as a tank. but as long as I’m not trapping live baby rabbits and sparrows and bringing them inside for her to hunt, there is still room for improvement, I suppose.
my cats are the healthiest, strongest, glossiest cats my vet has ever seen and I put it down to the grain free high meat diet.
I WILL NOT EVANGELISE HERE I WLL NOT THIS IS THE LAST I WILL MENTION ABOUT HOW HEALTHY AND HAPPY AND ENERGETIC MY CATS ARE
I will evangelize just a little bit, not for the grain-free paleo lifestyle, making your cat eat like a Pallas Cat of yore and go to Crossfit workout or whatever else that entails, but just for starting with a stray cat you pick up off the street. because my cat used to hang out in the dumpster and eat whatever questionable garbage she found on the ground before I kidnapped her, and to this day she will eat literally anything I give her and, except for a single hairball one time, never ever throws up. I feed her the fancy stuff because I feel guilty about not being a good enough owner in other respects, but her favorite foods are sticks of butter and human blood, so I don’t know that she really cares as much as I do.
I feel like this is really just driving home to us all that cats are like people, and some of them are gonna live to 100 while they chain-smoke Benson & hedges cigarettes and sip cheap scotch, while others are gonna drop dead in the middle of a healthy job for no good reason.
(Not that you shouldn’t try to feed your pets good food, mind you. Just that it might be utterly pointless in some cases!)
Better be free-range organic baby rabbits.
gently hand-strangled with a locally-tanned vegan leather thong
I think you mean sustainably-raised organic hemp thong.
“gently hand-strangled” made me burst out laughing, thank you
My middle aged cat will eat whatever dry food is on sale. He has never had a health problem. He skeleton is enormous, he’s not fat, his coat is very glossy. He hadn’t been to the vet for an actual checkup since he got neutered (whoops) and the vet had nothing to say, other than he’s incredibly handsome and as healthy as a middle aged cat can be.
The dog, on the other hand, has a host of medical problems, both genetic and because she WON’T STOP EATING DUMB SHIT. We feed her Authority (Petsmart’s *quality* brand), and routinely dump things in it, like canned pumpkin, carrots, and Greek yogurt, mainly to help her digestive system deal with all the stupid non-food things. All we do is love her and spend money on her and she’s determined to swallow whatever flotsam she can get in her stupid adorable mouth.
We have to give Old Dog a can of green beans every night now w/ her kibble, to keep things stable within her & throughout our home.
My dad likes to tell people how the healthiest dogs our vet ever saw, two beautiful glossy golden retrievers, were fed KMart brand dog food. I think he does this to justify buying Blue Seal. But hey, the dog is fine so far.
(Also, after our first dog ate an entire bowl of hard-boiled dyed eggs and most of my brother’s Easter basket* and was totally fine, I think we’re all a ittle skeptical. This is probably not wise.)
* Chocolate, foil, plastic grass and all. Totally fine. Maybe the moral here is that Labs are basically garbage disposals on legs.
I bet his excrement following the Easter basket snack was LEGENDARY.
WORDS FAIL.
Labs are DEFINITELY garbage disposals on legs, and for all the chocolate is super bad for them, every lab my family ever owned had, at some point in their lives, destroyed an Easter/Halloween basket’s worth of the stuff. (Maybe because the cheap-ass stuff you eat on holidays is low in cocoa content? Who knows.)
Weight matters. If you have a big honking dog like my former roommate’s 90lb hound, it would take several pounds of chocolate before s/he had more than mild digestive distress!
Yeah, a friend’s lab once ate an entire birthday cake, threw it up then ate it again.
…did you know my dog? He did shit like that all the time. Cake, fudge, crayons, bread, plastic bags – there was nothing he wouldn’t try to eat at least… several times.
When I was a kid, our dog (also part lab) once ate a bag of Halloween candy. The vet basically told us not to worry, because there wasn’t enough actual chocolate in “regular” American candy to bother a dog that big. And that we should just call back if we didn’t see a lot of wrappers coming out the other end in a day or so. So, yes. 4-legged garbage disposals!
Yeah, I think most labs are part goat. They will eat anything they can get their hands on (paws on?) and usually be ok, other than tending to be chubby (from what I’ve seen with other people’s dogs – So many people have them as family dogs, and all that vacuuming up of dropped Cheerios and stealing sweets and begging for hand-outs has its effects, etc.)
However, I knew one once who tried to eat a whole spiral-bound notebook, coil and all, and that did end up doing him in, poor thing.
My two cats are complete opposites, I would love some advice on how to handle that better. The boy is a high-energy cat who likes to zoom around and doesn’t care that much about food, he eats until he isn’t hungry and then goes back to playing. The girl’s idea of play involves gently batting at something until the boy shows interest and then giving up for fear of being pounced upon, who will eat until she pukes and then eat some more if I let her. Needless to say she is a bit more… cuddly than he is.
My cats are similar. The only way I can keep them both eating reasonable quantities of food is to keep the active cat’s food on top of the fridge where fat cat is too fat and lazy to reach.
My boyfriend’s cat was addicted to dry food to the point where he would gorge himself into UTIs with it and was also quite chubby. Only giving him a small amount of crunchies each day led to constant bad behavior on his part, so we switched him over to wet food per the vet’s advice. Now he is super skinny and has started eating litter (gross), which the internet tells me is a sign of anemia. We’ve started mixing crunchies in with his wet food, but he definitely will be taking a trip to the vet in the next few days.
🙁
My cat (Siamese) seems perfectly healthy no matter what combination of crunchies/wet food/grazing/controlled feeding she gets.
The cat I had when I was little ate nothing but Meow Mix crunchies her entire life and lived to 22, so.
Yes! Our family cat was a big fan of meow mix, but she was also a slightly feral barn kitten who was most definitely supplementing her diet with squirrels and such from our yard once she was moved to suburbia. (She and the Husky/Malamute cross my parents had when I was a baby would apparently tag-team the hunting whereby Kitty would hunt stuff down, and Nukies would carry it home.)
Ooh, relevant! Mental Floss just posted 20 Facts about Cats: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55726/20-fun-facts…
I am ASTONISHED that catbrains operate 83 times faster than the most sophisticated computer. Really?! Also, I am not sure about #15: my cats get water all over their chins a certain percent of the time. I find it hilarious.
I have a coworker who has an adorable little Min Pin, but she feeds him nothing but cooked ground beef and he is SO VISIBLY UNHEALTHY IT MAKES ME SICK. And she keeps going on about how he’s her baaaaby, and he’s soooooo healthy and spoiled, and I’m just like DUDE, LOOK AT YOUR DOG. He has tons of dandruff, he smells awful, and his teeth are dreadful. I just want to kidnap him and feed him real food. Ugh.
Sorry, I have a lot of feelings about feeding animals inappropriately.
Oh no! Poor puppy.
Wait, do people really try to make their cats go vegan? Is this a thing?
They do because they are monsters who have done ZERO research on cats before obtaining one.
buy a fuckin’ rabbit, dudes
Don’t get it too close to the vegan cat, though.
I feed my cats Solid Gold Indigo Moon dry food (gods, even TYPING that feels so pretentious) and everyone comments on how glossy Kuno’s coat is and how soft and fluffy Sida’s is (short and long-hair, respectively.) It has helped in a lot of ways for them, except weight loss. They FAT.
The Solid Gold food really helped my cat’s dry coat a lot. The only real “problem” with it is that he loves it SO MUCH that he will eat far too much of it too quickly and then hork in the bedroom at night. We’ve taken to giving him moist food about half an hour before putting any kibble out, in hopes of forcing him to pace himself.
Have you considered a treat ball? It took our dummy cat a while to figure out, but he eventually got the hang of it.
My cat is super-picky and will only eat cheap, nasty food such as her favorite, Purina Be Happy. (We got her from the pound, and I assume that she developed a preference there.) I’ve always wondered if cheap pet food is like cheap people food in that it’s designed to be kind of addictive.
Cat don’t care, as long as it’s seafood flavor. (If it’s not seafood flavor, hell yeah he cares. I have the puncture wounds to prove it.)
What’s fun (“fun”) is the old dog + the young dog dinner time, with the old dog’s very specific diet which is different from what the young dog will countenance (young dog loves every food except green beans; old dog eats green beans every night). Have to stand between them while they eat so old dog won’t oust young dog from her bowl & end up with Unpleasant Consequences in my house.
OH MAN on tenterhooks about teeth-brushing! I’ve been brushing my kitties’ teeth twice a week for a year or so, and they hate it sooooo much, and my husband never does it so I worry they like him better, but I know old kitties who’ve had to have bunches of rotted-out teeth removed and I don’t want that to happen to my lil friends!
Said lil friends are super grumpy about going back to Taste of the Wild after bingeing on Purina for the past nine months we lived with my folks. I know, cats, junk food tastes better. That’s why I’m eating a half dozen Reese’s peanut butter cups RIGHT NOW.
My huge kitten (8 months, 10 lbs: kitten-crazy at full-body weight) just wants whatever I’m having. Far beyond obviously-appetizing stuff like tuna or chicken. He steals tortilla chips, baked goods, vegetables…I don’t know if it’s the flavor or the theft aspect. But mostly he just eats human arms.
That's seriously such a bummer. If you love/respect animals enough to not want to eat them, maybe take a sec to understand them? YIKES
The Drinkwell–and, I'd guess, all plastic fountains–is a huge pain to clean. The gunk adheres to the plastic in a way that makes it utterly impossible to scrub off. We had one for years and I hated it and did all kinds of soapy soaks that did nothing. My mom got a metal fountain a while back and it seems much easier. In fact, I am now tired of Hateful Kitten knocking over the stupid little water-cooler-looking thing we have now, so a metal fountain en route from Amazon right this second.
Beloved Cat is fine with the plastic toddler bowl of water next to the bathroom sink upstairs, as long as I refill it every night as he monitors my toothbrushing.
I came to the comments specifically to see how long it took for this to show up. This is my happy place.
I can’t stop laughing at all the comments thanks guys
Thaks gaes