Kitties and Kombucha ...

Not together!
Just catching up on some stuff ... and the two big things to catch up on are the kitties and my foray into making my own kombucha. I was going to try to fit both into one post, but it will be much too long, so I am going to split into at least two posts.

Kitties first: Earlier this summer Cinnamon was very sick. I truly thought I was going to lose her. After much agonizing on my part, I finally decided to take her to the vet with my sister Donna's assistance. Given that Cinnamon stresses out so badly about ... well, everything ... I was afraid she was going to wind up in worse shape from the trip to the vet. As it turned out, I was in worse shape on that trip than she was. She started wailing as soon as I moved the cat carrier, and she didn't stop except at a few stop lights along the way, but she weathered the trip ok. Her illness stumped the vet. She'd vomited up everything she'd eaten two days in a row and had diarrhea and then didn't eat for another day or two - hence the vet visit. But when Dr. Drumm did his exam, she had no fever or palpable blockages. He gave me some medicine that was supposed to relax her digestive tract and prevent her from vomiting so readily, and he said that if she wasn't better by the next day he wanted her back at the office (Oddly, while she hadn't stopped eating, Sianna had also been sick for a day or so during this period of time). The medicine worked, and the next day she was eating a little bit without any vomiting. I still have no idea what was wrong with her - I suppose she might have eaten something bad, like maybe a sick mouse or something - but I really don't know.

Since her illness, I've been feeding her a little differently. My girls both get Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain Feline Formula - which has venison and salmon - for their first meal of the day. Then at dinner time, they get chopped up chicken breast that I cook for them (I do it all at once then freeze or refrigerate it until feeding) plus a little more dry cat food and if there is any broth left from the chicken they get a little of that, too. And before I go to bed, they get a rounded tablespoon of dry cat food. The other dry cat food that I feed is Purina One Beyond (salmon and brown rice) and I rotate that and the other dry food for the dinner and bedtime meals.

The main thing that is different about the dry foods that I am feeding is that they contain no corn, wheat or soy. Cats are what is known as "obligatory carnivores" meaning they MUST eat primarily meat to maintain proper nutrition. While cats might consume vegetable matter in the digestive tracts of animals they eat, they do not need to eat grains or vegetables. They need more protein than the average cat food contains, which is why I feed the Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain Feline Formula - it has 42% protein as opposed to less than 32% for most other cat foods.

A quick side note: Interestingly, when I was looking up the links for this blog article, I just found that Purina One had a voluntary recall of one type of food for salmonella. The symptoms, with the exception of fever, are very similar to what Cinnamon's symptoms were. It wasn't the same brand, but it does make me wonder ... although salmonella is fairly common - it is even found in ants these days. And I recently read that, while dogs and most healthy humans are very resistant to salmonella infections, cats do not have much resistance to it, as they generally eat what they kill immediately or not at all.

Anyway, Cinnamon has been doing very well on her new food regimen. I'm taking more care to control how much she eats and she has lost weight, which is also a good thing. She looks and acts healthier now than she did before she got sick. Sianna is also doing well with the food, although she isn't as into the cooked chicken as Cinnamon is. I wind up giving her less chicken and more dry food and Cinnamon gets less dry food and more chicken. And they still wind up finishing up each other's dinners - only a little bit of leftovers in each dish, but it's funny to see them sneak over to the other's leftovers.

Tomorrow - kombucha.