August 20, 2000

This has been the week for questions. I received a lot of e-mail from people wanting to get their cats on a natural diet. Either my web page is doing well with the search engines or more people are thinking about switching their cats to a raw diet.

I tell people that most cats switch to a raw diet within 48 hours. I have only had real trouble with one cat, Pumpkin, in switching over. Also, if I knew then what I know now, it would have been a different story with Pumpkin. With the new feline future formula I see little refusal factor as well. It more difficult getting a cat who is on a dry food diet to switch than one who is on canned food. You can usually mix in a little bit of canned food to the raw to bribe them.

When dry food is being fed, I tell people to get it out of the house! The cat can smell it if it is in the house and will often hold out for it. Dry food is so highly flavored and scented. At least with the canned food it doesn't have an odor if it isn't opened.

If a cat will even just lick the new food, the owner is home free. The cat is accepting the new food as food. Even if they eat just a little bit the owner is home free. It's the cat that only sniffs the food and then walks away that is going to be a problem. Some will even try to bury the nasty stuff before walking away. As I said above though, most cats switch within 48 hours if the owner holds firm.

Many people who have cats equate food with love and that isn't the case. You can pour your love into the healthy homemade food you make for your cat, but when it comes down to letting the cat eat what it wants to eat if the food is unhealthy, then the love is misdirected. Pet food manufacturers have the taste factor nailed down firm. If cats won't eat their food, they can't sell it. They do what they have to do to make it palatable, often to the detriment of the nutritional value of the food.

I received e-mail from a woman who was having problems with her cat Simon. She was only letting him go a day before letting him have his dry food again. Because he was being so difficult, she decided to go first with natural canned food (he was on dry) and then switch to raw. She let me know on Friday that he finally ate the canned food. Initially though, Simon went a step further than the disdainful "sniff the food and walk away" routine.

"It was awful - the first time I put the canned food down in front of them, little Simon sniffed it, arched his back, HISSED, and backed away!!"

Simon gave the term, "hooked on dry food" whole new meaning.

August 14, 2000

I had a wonderful day this past Saturday. Donna, who has been buying the Feline Future supplement from me, called to ask if she could come and visit. We had talked many times over the telephone, but hadn't met in person. Because I didn't think she had Internet access, I sent her printed pages from NRN and other sections of blakkatz.com with her last order of supplement. After reading it, she said she just had to meet me.

We had a wonderful time playing with my kitties and visiting. Then we went to the Braintree PetSmart to buy Swheatscoop cat litter. Donna was still using clay so I had to convert her to alternative litter! The Braintree PetSmart was out of Swheatscoop so we ended up driving to the North Attleboro store which was about 45 minutes away. Much to Donna's delight, Wiley went with us.

While at the North Attleboro PetSmart, Wiley got to meet two greyhounds. He looked so silly winding his body around their legs looking up at them with adoration. Here's a cat that hasn't been around a dog in probably over a year kissing up to two dogs five times bigger than he is. He just doesn't know he's a cat. The greyhounds were a bit baffled by this strange black creature, in fact one was slightly afraid of him, but they were gentle with him.

I have been hearing a lot recently about cats having problems eating beef liver. Helen from New Hampshire has three Blakkatz kittens (now cats). The youngest one, Blow-in was off his food and vomiting for no apparent reason. Helen, panicking, started to give him tuna fish and baby food to be sure he was getting enough to eat. This super-rich, strange food was making him vomit as well. I told her he'd be fine for several days without eating, as long as he was drinking, and to just leave him alone. His tummy was probably upset and he shouldn't be eating with an upset tummy. Poor Helen was so upset when I spoke to her she was in tears about it. Because he wasn't improving, she took him to her vet the middle of the week just to be sure. Luckily, he checked out fine and the vet didn't send him home with medication of any kind or a special diet.

The food he was objecting to and vomiting contained chunks of beef liver. Helen has been using store-ground beef, which I've succeeded in convincing her to stop feeding. No matter what she pays for it, I don't trust beef that was ground in a grocery store. I don't mind ground chicken or turkey, but I worry about the beef. Helen placed an order for the grinder that I recommend on my diet page so she can grind the meat herself from now on.

Helen couldn't understand why her female cat, Molly, was eating the food without any trouble when Blow-in was throwing it up. Every cat is different. There are times that one of my cats will vomit food when all of the others are fine. Blow-in was weaned on a raw diet, containing beef liver. Who knows why all of a sudden he's having a problem with it. Was this a bad batch? Who knows what really goes on in the bellies of cats. Or, more importantly, in modern-day farming practices.

This story did have a good ending. On Friday, I told Helen to go to the grocery store and get two pounds of ground turkey and make up his food using ground turkey with no liver. She left me a message Sunday night letting me know he was eating the turkey with gusto and had not vomited. Previously, Helen was afraid to feed raw poultry. Maybe now she'll start feeding poultry in addition to beef. Keeping a cat on one particular type of meat is a problem. They get hooked on that type of meat and in time might refuse to eat anything else. More importantly, they are missing out on certain amino acids that are particular to different types of meat. The egg yolks will help balance that out, but it isn't a good idea to feed just one kind of meat.

I also heard from a woman who lives in Hawaii. She's got two cats. One is eating the raw diet without complaint. The other is holding out and giving her an awful time. When she introduced beef liver to the cat who was eating the raw food though, he vomited after eating. I just don't know what it is about beef liver. I don't think it's the toxins. The liver's job is to filter toxins and in the filtration process, filter itself. If toxins were a problem, and they probably are, they'd be stored in the fat of the animal. Perhaps any medication the animal is fed during its lifetime is stored in the liver.

Be careful of meat that's too fatty. Remove most of the fat. Keep in mind the natural prey animals of a small cat would be small and lean, not plump and meaty like a cow or a turkey. When feeding poultry, use the darker meats. The texture of the dark meat will be closer to the type of meat in a small bird. A small bird wouldn't have the breast meat a turkey or large chicken has. Better yet, use Cornish Game Hens. If you can afford it, squab or other small game birds are perfect.

Nutricology sells liver-organic glandular capsules (similar to their multi-glandular capsules which are already in the diet recipe). The raw liver in the recipe can be substituted with the liver-organic glandular powder (open the capsules). Feline future is revising its supplement formula to contain freeze-dried liver powder. I wrote to Natascha at Feline Future to find out how many capsules of freeze-dried liver should be used in a normal recipe and will post that information as soon as I get it.

August 8, 2000

Summer is finally here! This is the first time this Summer that I've had to shut the blinds to keep the cool air in. I don't use air conditioners. I just don't care to breathe artificially cool air. The cats make like cat rugs when it's hot. They manage to stay cool by lying stretched out on the wood floor. Remember heat rises.

My latest HTML project is going well. The proposed page is for Scientific Solutions, Inc. I'm quite pleased with it.

Wiley always sits on the desk next to the computer when I work on it. I think he's learning HTML by watching. Pretty soon he'll be a freelance designer. He's become quite spoiled lately. Every day now he has to go outside and roll on the sidewalk. The neighborhood kids write on the sidewalks with chalk. Wiley rolls in the chalk and becomes technicolor! The kids love it. Technicolor Wiley! Silly cat.

Last Saturday at the Assisted Living Center that I visit with the cats, we did the visit outside in the courtyard. The cats were great. I only brought Wiley, Yukon and Charya. Bella gets too car sick. Moon was in invisible mode. I didn't feel like looking for her. Yukon made like a tiger in the bushes. Charya (who's come such a long way from when I first got her) and Wiley stalked birds and bugs. The residents loved it. Wiley kept taking off around the building, looking over his shoulder as he headed out of the courtyard — are you following me? Brat!

August 7, 2000

As I mentioned in my first August entry, things are going really, really well at Blakkatz. All thanks to a little book.

I just finished reading, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, by Karen Kingston. It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. Especially if your life isn't going as well as you'd like it.

Since I finished it, I have done major "space cleaning" which means "clearing away low level energies." There was a lot of low level energies in this apartment. Mainly from my most recent relationship.

The past two weeks I've been removing anything and everything that reminded me of the past relationship. The things were either sold, given away or simply trashed. Anything I wasn't using, or was old, dirty, represented a time in my life that wasn't so good, is gone. I'm sure the trash pickers had a hey day.

What a difference in the energy here. I'm happy and content. No more anguish over the man who used to live here. I don't even use his name anymore. Up until a week before the space cleaning I was still attempting to contact him. Now I feel no need to do so. It's done, over, I have no need for him in my life.

The cats seem more at peace and happier than they were before. I've rearranged every room to encourage energy flow. I've been cleaning top to bottom. The cats even got a new litter box. A much nicer one, lined with plexiglas and on wheels. All of the old litter and the old box was thrown out.

So, now we have a clean slate to start with. It was very good timing to do this cleaning in preparation for the visit of my friend, Martin, from New Jersey the 26th of August. He's bringing up his red tabby male, GC Miribu's Daze Gone By of Wannapurr, to breed to Moon and Bella. It is a good environment to bring new kittens into. No more bad energy.

I'm sure many people do not believe in good or bad energy flow or energy healing. Karen Kingston says in her book that if you clear the clutter and remove bad energy it opens up your life to good energy and good things. I have already seen good results.

I needed a new chair for computing at home. The one I was using was not at all ergonomically correct. I almost busted my back working on the iEmily project. The Friday after I did the major cleaning, I got an e-mail from the owner of the Natick Relax Your Back Store. I had e-mailed him previously wondering about floor models or slightly damaged merchandise. While their chairs are wonderful, like sitting on a cloud, I couldn't afford one. The Natick store had just received a used Hag (Swedish brand) chair that retailed for $900. I could have it for $200. I drove out Saturday to look at the chair. It is wonderful and I'm using it now. The old office chair went out in the trash.

I've also received offers for male kittens to replace Voodoo. Nothing viable yet, but I can afford to wait for the right one thanks to Martin's kind offer to use his red tabby male.

Breeding a red tabby to a brown tabby results in very "hot" brown tabbies (meaning very warm color). Bella, my brown tabby, is already a very warm brown so her kittens should be almost orange. Judges like that. Who knows what I'll get when I breed him to Moon, my black female. Martin's male is a good outcross as well so the health should be good in the kittens.

It feels so good to be moving forward and feeling content. It has been very difficult for me since March. I have learned that it takes time to heal from a failed relationship, but you do heal. It isn't necessary to jump into another one in order to heal (which was what I've done in the past). I'm happy with myself and my life now. And that's a good thing!

August 3, 2000

We are starting out August with a new, clean slate. It's very exciting and everything is going really, really well. More soon.

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