For those not already aware, Nutro has voluntarily recalled a variety of dry cat food products.

Today, Nutro Products announced a voluntary recall of select varieties of NUTRO® NATURAL CHOICE® COMPLETE CARE® Dry Cat Foods and NUTRO® MAX® Cat Dry Foods with “Best If Used By Dates” between May 12, 2010 and August 22, 2010. The cat food is being voluntarily recalled in the United States and ten additional countries.  This recall is due to incorrect levels of zinc and potassium in our finished product resulting from a production error by a US-based premix supplier.

Two mineral premixes were affected.  One premix contained excessive levels of zinc and under-supplemented potassium. The second premix under-supplemented potassium.  Both zinc and potassium are essential nutrients for cats and are added as nutritional supplements to NUTRO® dry cat food.

This issue was identified during an audit of our documentation from the supplier.  An extensive review confirmed that only these two premixes were affected. This recall does not affect any NUTRO® dog food products, wet dog or cat food, or dog and cat treats.

Affected product was distributed to retail customers in all 50 states, as well as to customers in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Israel.  We are working with all of our distributors and retail customers, in both the US and internationally, to ensure that the recalled products are not on store shelves. These products should not be sold or distributed further.

Consumers who have purchased affected product should immediately discontinue feeding the product to their cats, and switch to another product with a balanced nutritional profile.  While we have received no consumer complaints related to this issue, cat owners should monitor their cat for symptoms, including a reduction in appetite or refusal of food, weight loss, vomiting or diarrhea.  If your cat is experiencing health issues or is pregnant, please contact your veterinarian.

Consumers who have purchased product affected by this voluntary recall should return it to their retailer for a full refund or exchange for another NUTRO® dry cat food product.  Cat owners who have questions about the recall should call 1-800-833-5330 between the hours 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM CST, or visit www.nutroproducts.com.

If you feed Nutro to your cats, visit the FDA’s website for a list of recalled products.

Treats are a great way to reward or bribe your cat, but add extra calories and often are made with not so great stuff (wheat flour is the first ingredient in a lot of treats.)

Get more out of your treats and be able to offer treats more often by cutting them into smaller pieces.

Moist treats like Pounce are easy to break into pieces, and one Pounce treat is large enough to be cut into three pieces. Filled treats like Temptations also break up fairly easily and one piece makes two good treating opportunities. Hard, crunchy treats might be a little harder to break up into reasonable sized chunks.

A pea-sized treat is more than enough for a reward or bribe, and by giving smaller treats you’ll be able to give them to your cat more often.

What an easy way to get more love out of a bag of cat treats.

Photo by sillypucci.

This picture was posted on Cute Overload a few days ago, and I’ll admit, I’m confused. What exactly is cute about a cat this obese? He certainly has a handsome face, but from the neck down he’s looking more tragic than cute. This cat should probably be 1/3 as wide as he currently is.

Thankfully his family is putting him on a diet, but it begs the question – why, as a culture of cat lovers, do we still have positive associations with the image of the overweight cat, when the negative health consequences of being over weight are so well known?

Many cat owners recognize the risks of an overweight kitty, but others still hold it up as an ideal.

Where does this attitude come from?

The strange perception of fat cats being cute probably comes from a variety of sources.

• Is it the happy fat cat image that is portrayed in the media (Garfield et al)?
  
• Is it lack of education by veterinarians and organizations that adopt out cats (shelters, pet stores, breeders etc) to new owners?
  
• Do cat owners lack the ability or education to distinguish between muscle mass (healthy weight) and fat mass (unhealthy weight)? Or even between a cat looking “fat” because of dense fur, vs a cat being fat because it is carrying excess weight?
• Do people just fail to make the connection that obesity is a health issue that crosses species lines?
  
• Have pet food manufacturers provided misinformation about cat health and appropriate feeding?
• Are cat owners, unable to manage their cats weight, assuaging their guilt and negative feelings about this failure by attributing positive traits to obesity, thereby making it seem “not as bad”?

I believe all these are contributing factors to the “cute fat cat” perception.

Why should we care?

Even if we know that being obese is bad for our kitties, it’s much easier to ignore the very real dangers of obesity if we have a positive aesthetic association. We’re more likely to take our own cats’ weight less seriously and we’re less likely to discuss the inherent problems when the topic of fat cats comes up with other cat owners who may be less educated or aware.

So what can we do?

As a cat owner you can:

• monitor your cat’s weight,
• put your fat cats on a diet,
• discuss your experiences with dieting and health problems caused by feline obesity with other cat owners,
• contact cat food companies and demand that they put better feeding guidelines on cat food packages & provide accurate information about cat nutrition,
• learn to determine if your cats are at a healthy weight through observation,
• discuss weight concerns with your vet,
• don’t glorify obesity by sharing images without discussion or expression of concern.

As a shelter volunteer or worker you can:

• talk to the public and other volunteers about cat nutrition,
• talk to potential owners about the special needs of over weight cats,
• ensure that new owners of over weight cats are prepared to take the necessary steps to bring their new cat’s weight down,
• educate others about the dangers and health risks of feline obesity,
• show potential owners the consequences of obesity that some of the shelter cats are experiencing (poopy bottoms, mats, arthritis, daily medical treatment required for diabetic cats etc)
• correct misconceptions that fluffy, cobby or large cats are “fat”,
• correct misconceptions that fat cats are “big boned” or “muscular”.

As a veterinarian you can:

• make sure your clients understand the dangers of feline obesity,
• determine your patient’s ideal weight so that their owners have a baseline,
• teach your clients how to use their hands and eyes to determine if their cat’s weight is changing,
• teach your clients how to use their bathroom scale to weight their cat,
• provide feeding guidelines based on what your clients are feeding, and make recommendations on switching to a more appropriate diet if necessary,
• make sure your clients understand the seriousness of obesity and how important it is to be persistent in reaching and maintaining ideal weight,
• promote the benefits of a healthy cat.

We live in a society that has a tendency to glorify unhealthy extremes and ignore the underlying dangers of things we consider aesthetically pleasing. Changing cultural attitudes isn’t easy, but we can start by changing our own and promoting the beauty that comes with good health.

One of the intimidating aspects of raw feeding to the uninitiated is ther perceived cost and time investment required – often people express interest in starting on raw but are worried that they won’t be able to afford it or that it will take too much time and dominate their lives.

Time is precious and we’re all short on money, so no one wants to spend hundreds of dollars every month feeding their cat, or hours every day preparing food. In reality, raw feeding can cost less than a high quality commercial diet, and daily prep can be cut down to one minute per meal – no more time consuming that cracking open a can.

My monthly prep

I prepare food in batches, usually once or twice a month. If I choose large or whole bony items, like a whole turkey, pork shoulder or undressed rabbit I’ll spend 3-4 hours cutting, weighing and bagging. If I opt for small or pre-cut items like chicken hearts & gizzards, split chicken wings or chicken drumsticks, monthly prep can be done in an hour or so.

Meat gets cut into roughly 1oz pieces, organs into bite sized pieces and things like chicken wings and legs stay whole. All the meat goes into a big pile on the cutting board or into a big mixing bowl.  I have three cats so one snack sized baggie holds one meal for all three of them (4-5oz) – the food gets weight out and the filled bags get lined up on the counter. Once I’ve filled my space, I seal up all the bags and toss them in the freezer. Repeat until all the meat is packaged up.

I don’t use any fancy recipes or supplements. No grinding, mixing or measuring out extras.

Total prep time per month: 3-4 hours or less

My daily prep

Twice daily feedings are really easy. You can take food out the night before and allow it to thaw in the fridge, but I usually forget and that’s okay. When meal time come around, I grab a baggie from the freezer, fill a dish with hot tap water and drop in the baggie. I ignore it for 10 minutes and when I come back it’s thawed and warmed to body temperature. Each cat gets about one third of the bag, which gets dumped into a dish or directly onto their feeding mats. Then the baggie goes into the trash (or you can rinse and reuse them if you’re feeling really ambitious and environmentally conscious.)

It takes me about 30 seconds to start the food thawing and another 30 seconds to distribute food to the cats. All in all a fast and simple process at each meal.

Total time spent feeding per day: 2 minutes

Cost of supplies

Feeding raw requires very few supplies. All I use are:

• small kitchen scale ($5 at Walmart)
• a couple of good knives, which I already owned
• a cutting board
• tongs and a large serving spoon for scooping portions into bags
• baggies (75 for <$2)

You can invest in a grinder for the transition or other special tools if you feel like spending the money, but other than the scale, I never needed anything that I didn’t already have in the kitchen.

Total cost of one-time purchase supplies: $5

Total monthly supplies: $2

Cost of food

Buying food is probably cheaper than you would think. There’s a wide variety of options out there, providing different costs, types of meat & level of convenience.

My regular purchases are (and keep in mind that these prices are on the higher side, as I’m in Canada and in a city with limited options):

• pork shoulder picnic roast (<$2 per pound)
• chicken hearts & gizzards (about $2 per pound)
• chicken drumsticks (<$2 per pound)
• chicken wings, split, tips removed (<$3.50 per pound)
• beef liver & kidney (about $2.50 per pound)
• beef heart (about $3 per pound)
• whole turkey (<$1 per pound on sale)
• deer & wild rabbit (free, from Freecycle or hunters)
• misc meats (free from Freecyclers cleaning out their freezers)

I occasionally splurge and get the cats a more expensive treat, like farmed rabbit, frozen mice, cornish hen and the like, but they’re not staples and don’t affect my overall budget. Over time, my food costs average out to about $2 per pound. My cats eat 9-10oz per day between the three of them, so my daily feeding budget is about $1.25 for three cats.

Compare this to feeding a premium canned cat food, which usually costs more than $1 per small can (and each cat needs at least one can per day, if not more).

Total daily cost to feed three cats: $1.25

As you can see, raw feeding need not be time consuming, complicated or expensive. Anyone who can find the time and money to feed a good commercial diet can easily fit raw feeding into their life without disruption or hardship.

Watch for more articles on raw feeding. I’ll be discussing benefits, my experiences, why I decided to go raw, and practical considerations. Or, Get started with raw at http://rawfedcats.org/.

What is your daily food budget per cat and how much time do you spend on feeding? If you were familiar with raw feeding, what was your perception of how much time and money it would take to switch?

Photo by Niels Timmer.

For those who feed a raw diet, I’ve created a chart with guidelines for feeding by body weight. It’s recommended to start with 2-4% of body weight per day.

This chart lists body weight in 2oz increments for cats from 3lbs to 22lbs12oz and provides feeding guidelines based on 2, 4 and 6% of body weight. Metric conversions for body weight and food weight are also provided.

Click here to view the spreadsheet as a separate page.

I hope you find this to be a useful resource. Remember – these are just guidelines. Your cat’s individual needs will ultimately determine how much you should be feeding.

Keep watch for more articles on raw feeding.