And here’s a few of Fern and her kittens:

This is Onyx.  He decided that a coiled up extension cord made for a great bed:

I’m always hearing about new brands of “natural” cat food.  This one: Weruva, takes the cake. “Meow Luau Cat Food?” Where do they get these names? Here are the ingredients: Mackerel Flakes, Aloe, Carrot, Baby Corn, Water Sufficient For Processing, Corn Flour, Sunflower Seed Oil, Complete Vitamins and Minerals. How about “Green Eggs and Chicken” folks? Ingredients: Chicken (Boneless, Skinless, White Breast Meat), Water Sufficient For Processing Balance, Thickening Agent (Tapioca Starch and/or Potato Flour and/or Xanthan Gum), Green Pea, Dried Egg, Sunflower Seed Oil, Dicalcium Phosphate, Choline Chloride, Taurine. This food isn’t cheap either, 12-three ounce cans costs $14.29.

Apparently the company “hand places many of the other other ingredients into the cans, such as fresh vegetables and their other value added toppers. This delicate process allows their ingredients to maintain natural and recognizable texture which in turn allows you to see and understand the ingredients that are listed on the can. What you see is what you get! No more mystery mush!”

Hmmmm, still looks like “mush” to me:

Over the past week I’ve received numerous e-mails asking for help.  All of the people I’ve talked to have been very open to my suggestions and seem quite committed to doing the right thing for their cats.  These days, too many people are looking for a quick fix.  There are no quick fixes.  I am glad that I now have an excellent homeopath that I can send people to if their problems are beyond my expertise (or time).  I’d like to share some of what these people wrote to me:

“Thank you, Michelle. I already wrote to Ms. Marlowe. I visited her website and was very happy with what I saw, especially the information about human nutrition. My research on cat nutrition has led me to question many of the things that the medical establishment professes, including the traditional food pyramid. I also become more open-minded about alternative therapies, especially homeopathy. In fact, I worked with a local homeopath but we had no real rapport and I did not see any results. I hope that it will be different with Ms. Marlowe.

Your book was the catalyst for all this. Saying that it has changed our lives would not be an exaggeration and you should feel very good about yourself and your efforts. I understand how frustrating it can be when people dismiss what you tell them but you should feel happy that you have been an enormously positive influence on the lives of many animals and their owners.

I have read many of your blog posts today and will continue with the rest. There is so much good information there and some of your posts are very funny, too. Please post more photos when you can!

For the record, Muffin went to the vet this morning. She said that her stools have returned to normal (I had not seen loose stools in the litter box for two days and thought that she went to the flower pots but I was wrong–how nice!) but prescribed drugs for the worms. I do not intend to administer any drugs. I know that the worms will go away or, if they don’t, they are not a big deal anyway. (In fact, I read yesterday about a study which proves that humans with a limited number of parasites in their system suffer much less from allergies.) The urine culture results will be in on Tuesday. Let’s hope that they offer some clues about Muffin’s behaviour. Meanwhile, Muffin will remain an a strict regime of cuddles and hugs. I believe they can be as therapeutic as drugs.

I will keep you posted. Thank you for all your help.”

“First, I would like to thank you wholeheartedly for your book Raising Cat Naturally. I procrastinated for years about changing my cat Jordan’s diet. As a kitten she had urinary crystals twice and later IBD symptoms which lead us to a variety of Hill’s Science Diet Prescription foods. Your book made so much sense to me! Yet Jordan’s vet of 10.5 years did not agree.  Three months ago while getting her bi-yearly checkup with this same vet; Jordan was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism (52.2 T4). This was the turning point for me; I was determined to correct Jordan’s hyperthyroid state with proper nutrition. I started to make and feed her the recipe with bone (rabbit and chicken thighs) from your book. Let me tell you, Jordan has not vomited once since she’s been eating 100% raw (and it’s hairball season) and her skin is no longer too sensitive to be stroked.  Thank you for you time and assistance; and again for your extremely helpful book.”

It makes me happy that Raising Cats Naturally has helped people offer a better life for their cats.

I frequently get posts from people along these lines:

“We have a cat who was diagnosed with chronic renal failure.  She hasn’t been too bad until now, but she has diarrhea and her appetite is poor.  I have tried to give her healthy food but she prefers the commercial horrible food!  Would it be harmful to give her raw food sometimes?  She will eat lightly cooked fish.  Having read your article I am taking her dried snacks away, but the trouble is she may refuse to eat anything but her favorite “junk” food which I presume she was raised on.  Is canned human grade tuna so bad?  She used to love it but the vet said its too rich.”

I recognize that often by the time a caregiver realizes that the food she has been feeding to her cat is the worst thing that she could be feeding the cat, it’s too late because organs, usually kidneys, have begun to fail.  Kidneys cannot be rejuvenated and once a cat starts to go into renal failure, the changes of getting him to eat anything other than the junk he’s been eating for years is close to impossible.

Fish, it’s the absolute worst thing that you can feed a cat.  They get horribly addicted to it and when they consume it on a frequent basis, it does terrible damage to them.

I wish I knew what pet food companies put in their food to get cats so addicted to it.  I believe that they spend more time conducting taste tests than they do in actual feed trials.  If they were to conduct long-term feed trials, they’d likely discover the err of their ways, but they don’t care about anything other than making money.  I’d like to put some of those pet food company executives in a laboratory cage and feed them dry cat food for a few months and see how they do on it.

Addictions.  I’d love to eat Big Macs and fries for lunch every day, but I feel like crap after eating this type of food.  I expect cats who are consuming kibble on a daily basis feel like crap as well, but they don’t have the reasoning power to figure out it’s the crap-in-a-bag that is making them feel so bad so they keep on eating it, until they die.

I’ve written a fair amount about Marcus in my Border Collie journal.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned him here at all.  Briefly, I met Marcus through my friend Wally.  I borrowed three calves from Marcus in April.  We have since become involved.  It is somewhat of a funky relationship, but it is what it is.

Back in the beginning of May, while helping Marcus and a friend of his move some cattle, I got run into the side of the barn by a bull.  I injured the middle finger of my right hand.  I don’t know what I did to it.  Originally I thought there was a sliver in it, but I was not able to dig one out.  After going to an urgent care center because it had become extremely swollen and painful and being told by the doctor there that I needed to be seen by an orthopedic specialist, I did something that I’ve been meaning to do for years now, consult with a homeopath for myself.

The woman I’m using lives in Georgia.  She is not a medical doctor, but a highly trained classical homeopath.  I’ve known her for years through my dealings with natural rearing as it pertains to animals.  She is a dog breeder and I first used her to treat Gel who has done amazingly well under her care.

I’ve been using homeopathy for my cats since 1993.  I’ve consulted some with a homeopath who practices in Massachusetts for myself, but to date, it hasn’t been successful.  Sometimes it happens that way.  Either the case needs to be seen with a new set of eyes or the patient needs to be at a point where he/she is receptive to this type of healing.

The journey that I’ve taken since I first started consulting with this homeopath had been nothing short of amazing.  It’s been difficult and painful, but the differences in me, physically and mentally, have been extraordinary.  I know I have a long way to go, but I feel that I am on the right path.

Every day I thank Marcus for putting me in that field with that bull because if it had not been for the injury to my finger, I may very well have not consulted with the homeopath.  Marcus knows nothing about homeopathy and I expect he wouldn’t understand the spiritual nature of this healing modality, but that’s okay.

On Saturday night Marcus came over with his son.  We sat in the living room playing with the kittens I’m fostering.  We all had a good time, even Marcus who isn’t terribly keen on cats.  The red male and black male kittens have had names since I brought them  him.  The red male is Red and the black is Onyx.  I hadn’t been able to think of names for the calico kittens.  I had been considering “Confetti” for the one with more white on her, but I was at a loss for a name for the one I favor for no reason other than she has more black on her.

Marcus was holding this nameless kitten in his palm.  Her head and neck were between his two middle fingers and he was rubbing the sides of her head with his fingers.  Within minutes, she fell fast asleep.  He started calling her Pumpkin.

This startled me.  I had a cat named Pumpkin, a solid-black domestic shorthair who was all but feral whom I adopted from a local humane shelter.  It was Pumpkin who introduced me to natural rearing and to homeopathy.  The first article that I ever wrote for a magazine was about my journey with Pumpkin and homeopathy.  Marcus could have called that kitten anything, or nothing at all, but he called her Pumpkin.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  There are no coincidences in life.

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.”

– William S. Burroughs

So now all four kittens have names and unless someone turns up specifically looking for a naturally-reared kitten, they’ll all be staying with me.  I’m too attached to all of them.  Maybe one day soon I’ll get some pictures of them posted.

Here is Splash, one of the kittens I rescued two years ago now from a local flea market, enjoying the life of a farm cat.

I took these photos  this morning.  I can’t believe Ted just lays there and lets a cow sniff him.  He’s a silly cat.  And talk about silly, Fern now has an inside job, guarding the kittens.  Gel’s inside job is breaking up cat fights.  Yes, my cats occasionally fight.  They don’t actually come to blows, they just make a bunch of noise.  Ah, life with Border Collies, cats, sheep, cattle, ducks and soon goats.  It is very, very good.

Fern has a new calling: finder of wild kittens.  If we can catch them at four to five weeks old, there is a good chance I can tame them and find them homes.  The problem is finding them in the barns and out buildings up at my neighbor’s (his name is Red) house.  I brought the dogs up on Saturday and while we were visiting, I saw Fern locked in on a kitten hiding under a piece of equipment.  Because of her stare, the kitten was frozen in place so I was able to reach down and grab her.  I came up with a growling, spitting, hissing fiend which I promptly plopped in a carrier.  Then we went up to the loft of the barn where I was told was some pretty calico with white kittens.  I brought Fern up with me.  The stairs going up to the loft are in a bad state of disrepair.  I lifted Fern up and put her on the stairs (the bottom three are unusable) and she quickly scrambled up to the loft and went in search of kittens.  I got up there and followed her and sure enough, she found the two kittens and I caught them.  I wouldn’t have found them on my own.  Maneuvering around the loft was treacherous, to say the least, but Fern had no trouble negotiating.  I wasn’t sure how we’d get her down the stairs though.  I call them stairs, but it was really a ladder.  After handing off the kittens, I called Fern down the stairs; she came without hesitation and allowed me to lift her down as the jump from the last viable step was too much for her.  I guess I did her early surface work well as Fern’s confidence negotiating through poor footing was astounding.

I managed to get some photographs  to be used in the article I wrote on clicker training cats.  It’s bloody hot here in North Carolina and when it’s this hot, my cats go underground during the day.  I don’t see them except for very early in the morning or late at night.  They are cranky in this weather and very uncooperative about having their pictures taken.  Ted, in the photo below, thought eating the clicker was better than having his picture taken. I’d like to see if I can’t get some of the little kittens as they are in such a cute stage right now.

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The calico with white kittens are perhaps a bit too young to be away from their mother, but I was not inclined to leave them up there for another week or two for fear that they’d go wild, if we could even find them in a week.  My landlady brought me two more last night, but they were already too wild to easily tame.  I wish all the cats up there could be spayed or neutered, but Red can’t afford it, nor can I.  The best I can do is take a few of them, bring them up and find them good homes, or keep them myself.

 I recently purchased a collection of essays and short stories written by Margaret Atwood entitled The Tent.  This essay belongs here in NRN, while I put the essay entitled The Tent over on the Spellcast journal, although, it would be in place here as well.  Both essays were thought-provoking.

Our Cat Enters Heaven

“Our cat was raptured up to heaven. He’d never liked heights, so he tried to sink his claws into whatever invisible snake, giant hand, or eagle was causing him to rise in this manner, but he had no luck.

When he got to heaven, it was a large field. There were a lot of little pink things running around that he thought at first were mice. Then he saw God sitting in a tree. Angels were flying here and there with their fluttering white wings; they were making sounds like doves. Every once in a while God would reach out with its large furry paw and snatch one of them out of the air and crunch it up. The ground under the tree was littered with bitten-off angel wings.

Our cat went politely over to the tree.

Meow, said our cat.

Meow, said God. Actually it was more like a roar.

I always thought you were a cat, said our cat, but I wasn’t sure.

In heaven all things are revealed, said God. This is the form in which I choose to appear to you.

I’m glad you aren’t a dog, said our cat. Do you think I could have my testicles back?

Of course, said God. They’re over there behind that bush.

Our cat had always known his testicles must be somewhere. One day he’d woken up from a fairly bad dream and found them gone. He’d looked everywhere for them – under sofas, under beds, inside closets – and all the time they were here, in heaven! He went over to the bush, and, sure enough, there they were. They reattached themselves immediately.

Our cat was very pleased. Thank you, he said to God.

God was washing its elegant long whiskers. De rien, said God.

Would it be possible for me to help you catch some of those angels? said our cat.

You never liked heights, said God, stretching itself out along the branch, in the sunlight. I forgot to say there was sunlight.

True, said our cat. I never did. There were a few disconcerting episodes he preferred to forget. Well, how about some of those mice?

They aren’t mice, said God. But catch as many as you like. Don’t kill them right away. Make them suffer.

You mean, play with them? said our cat. I used to get in trouble for that.

It’s a question of semantics, said God. You won’t get in trouble for that.

Our cat chose to ignore this remark, as he did not know what “semantics” was. He did not intend to make a fool of himself. If they aren’t mice, what are they? He said. Already he’d pounced on one. He held it down under his paw. It was kicking, and uttering tiny shrieks.

They’re the souls of human beings who have been bad on Earth, said God, half-closing its yellowy-green eyes. Now if you don’t mind, it’s time for my nap.

What are they doing in heaven then? said our cat?

Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.”

– Margaret Atwood

The kittens are doing really, really well.  They are reliably using their litter box and the horrible odor that previously permeated the cage they stay in during the day is gone!  Yea!  It would have been particularly miserable coming home to that stink these days given it’s quite warm and the house is all closed up.

They are delightful to watch.  They are fascinated by the dogs, especially Gel.  The other evening the black kitten (Onyx) bounced up to Gel, who was standing in the middle of the floor in the living room looking at me with that “Is it time to do something?” look, and batted at his front leg.  Gel leaped about 20 feet backwards in surprise.  Last night it was his tail that was the thing of interest.  Fern is extremely fascinated by the kittens.  When they are out, she follows them all over.  She tries to herd them, but cats don’t herd.

They are eating really well, anything I put in there is fair game now.  I was having to put small bits of food into their mouths so that they’d recognize it as “food” but now all I need to do is put the plate in there.  Yesterday I came home to an empty plate and screaming, hungry kittens!

Pictures to follow soon.  I have to take some photos of clicker training Tess for the Animal Wellness article I just sent on to them.