———

My pets, my family, my responsibility. My husband feels the same way and he got the cats and me as a package deal. It was brutal to watch them die and it will be brutal to watch Maui go. I’m certain it’ll be by kidney failure.

Gina, I understand what you’ve said and I thank you for it. The logical part of my brain knows all that. But my heart weeps every day for my lost cats. I miss them - they were a part of my life for over 16 years.

I agree with both you and Christie that food choices are a personal choice - between a vet and a pet parent. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone what to feed (except my Mom). I do, however, remind anyone I’m discussing pets with to check the internet for recalls of pet foods on a regular basis. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore.

Gina, I understand what you’ve and I thank you for it. The logical part of my brain knows all that. But my heart weeps every day for my lost cats. I miss them - they were a part of my life for over 16 years.

I agree with both you and Christie that food choices are a personal choice - between a vet and a pet parent. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone what to feed (except my Mom). I do, however, remind anyone I’m discussing pets with to for recalls with pet foods on a regular basis. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore.

By getting into divisive arguments about how we choose to feed our pets, we let greedy corporations and careless regulators and legislators off the hook. And I won’t do that.

Even the cheapest generic food in the store should NOT HAVE POISON IN IT.

**
Sharon, this just made me cry. HOW COULD YOU KNOW? How could you know that across the world some greedhead substituted plastic for food? How could you know that U.S. importers didn’t question how cheap the ingredients were, and ask why? How could you know that a manufacturer tried to do the very minimum to let the world know when they realized they’d put millions and millions of containers of lethal product on the market? How could you know, when companies dropped their recall notices on their Web sites late on Friday nights hoping no one would notice? How could you know when the FDA wouldn’t even acknowledge for weeks and weeks that more than a handful of pets had been killed?

Girlfriend, this WAS NOT YOUR FAULT!!

And it goes back to my original statement. This is NOT about home-prepared vs. commercial food.

Everyone, EVERYONE, has the right to expect that at the VERY LEAST, no matter what they buy and where they buy it, the pet food, no matter how inexpensive or how fancy, will NOT KILL THEIR PETS. Man, talk about a minimum nutritional requirement!

This is about import safety and food safety, and a system of broken safeguards that reminds one of how FEMA — once a model agency we were proud of and counted on — was gutted and left to rot in the hands of political cronies. The pet-food recall was the FDA’s early warning. Next time, it’ll be their Katrina.

This is not about pet food, really. It’s about import safety and food system safety for animals and people both, and it still is.

My vet was very skeptical. Told me things were safe, etc. The other vet in the practice recognized that after $3000 in vet bills, we weren’t feeding out of a can until we knew said can was safe. She supported what we were doing, realizing that a large part of it was for our own peace of mind. In addition, she also realized that the true scope of the contamination wasn’t really known.

Plain and simple, what came off the table was 100 percent safer than what came out of a can.

We gave them supplements from the vet. We also scanned a few recipes and then cooked stuff up. It wasn’t any big production but solely based on our fear of having three elderly cats exposed for a third time.

I cannot reconcile that I put the food in their dishes every day. I blame myself and I will always. My choices harmed them. My choices have cost me 2 cats in one year.

I still have Maui. Surprisingly, she was the one who fell ill the fastest at the beginning. I guess the immediate IV and flushing made the difference. She’s fed off the table now - she has what we eat for dinner if she’s inclined. Plus her own Instinct food that she loves. She’s fed 4 times a day - no kibble. And I’m eternally grateful for every extra moment I have with her old kitty self.

Cleo and Dude’s ashes sit in their cherry wood boxes on my mantel.

Deb, I’m glad you never had to feel the pain that I do every day when I look at my mantel.

No advice to offer at all? Not even, “this is what I do, my dog has been healthy and happy on this for almost ten years, maybe you could try this while doing all that reading?

During the pet food recalls, so many of the advocates of home-cooked and raw behaved like you, Deb—gloating, whether openly or privately, over the fact that people’s pets were sick or dying, or the owners were in panic over how to feed their still-healthy pets safely, and deliberately not sharing some simple “this is how you get started while you’re doing your research” advice. With so many of the advocates of home-cooked or raw, there was no sympathy, no compassion, and no willingness to place the welfare of the animals over their glee at what the owners were experiencing in trying to feed them safely.

On my Chinese Crested forum, though, the home-cookers were willing to share. And my vet (you know, one of those awful people who know nothing about nutrition and are only interested in shilling for Hills?), when I told my vet I wanted to try home-cooking, she asked me to come in the next day, and gave me recipes, advice on portions, and information on where to find human-grade supplements in usable form.

Vitamin supplements? I buy them from a specific company.

Over a year later, still reveling in your superiority and not willing to share.

I was much more worried about my cats during the Recall as they eat kibble. I haunted this place, Itchmo and other sites during that time, learning everything I could.

And yet, felt no compassion for other people experiencing the same thing, because feeding home-cooked to one of your animals made you superior to them. And no sense, apparently, that your experience with your cats might not be unique.

I was lucky. Even though I fed kibble, the brand I was using was well manufactured enough not be involved, and I credit that to having done research ( thanks to my IE dog) to find the best food I could on the market.

Purina? You were feeding your cats Purina?

I mean, you do realize, don’t you, that the pet food crisis was not about the quality of the formulas? You do know that, right?

Good formulas, poor formulas, fantastic formulas; kibble, canned, or pouch—all kinds of foods were recalled. Some of the food recalled weren’t even supposed to contain any wheat gluten or rice gluten—but the contract manufacturer did unauthorized substitutions.

The pet food recall was about contamination, not formulas, and the only companies that can absolutely control what goes into their food are the companies that either own their own plants, or else have their own people onsite overseeing the process. Purina owns its own plants, and manufactures most of their own foods—and the only products they had recalled were the bottom-end brands they did contract out.

And yet very few people here would say that the Purina formulas are superior formulas, and it’s not where careful nutritional research would have led someone.

Lots of people who had done lots of research found themselves scrambling to find a replacement for their pets’ recalled high-quality food. What kept your cats safe was not actually your research, but pure dumb luck.

Wow - that sounds great! Why did I get such a dud recipe? You musta had the golden ticket.

I took the option of having them provide me with a recipe to make up the supplement on my own, and as well as I remember everything that’s in it off the top of my head, it has two types of Calcium, a multivitamin, choline, Lite Salt (for the potassium) and zinc gluconate. I grind it all up with a mortar and pestle and he gets 1/4 teaspoon of it per day.