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I have sinned.
My mother taught me to feed dogs and cats raw meat and bones and scraps. I fed the animals in my care on raw food and scraps until a vet suggested that I should cook my animal's food to avoid salmonella poisoning and I should avoid giving them any bones except those which could not be splintered. I rejected my mother's experience based on generations of caring for working dogs and cats in my blind acceptance of a single vet's advice. My animals fed on cooked food were not vigorous and had various illnesses with no clear cause. My vibrant neutered female cat who had been raised on a predominantly kangaroo diet, grew old quickly on a cooked diet and succumbed to urinary blockage at around 10 years old. I was given no possible reason for the disease and did not connect it with diet. My new pup was raised on cooked food. Although he had neither flea nor mange infestation, he had almost no hair for the first year of his life. I despaired and the vet advised changing to a 'premium' brand of processed food. Darky grew a full thick coat and I rejoiced. I was uneasy about his occasional attacks of 'tonsillitis'. I was reassured that this was 'not uncommon' in dogs who exercise a lot. My mother's dogs never had tonsillitis. They were always bounding around. The cats at home have come from almost opposite beginnings. One was left with me by a feral mother who had been shot. He was about 2 months old and a supremely fit little bloke. He remained so for 8 years until he suddenly began to age - just like the neutered female I had lost so young. I became anxious again and questioned the vet. The vet recommended a 'premium' brand of dry food. Three months after my substituting this for the home-cooked meal James experienced all the pain and distress of an infected and swollen urethra. This, despite the 'premium' food claiming not to predispose cats to FLUTD (Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease). Would you believe that I still did not question the cat's diet? After his acute episode was resolved with antibiotics, a botched catheterization and a prescription diet of canned shit, I was fully prepared to keep him on a diet of canned prescription shit for ever - even though his mouth had begun to stink. I am a slow learner, so it took an acute episode of FLUTD in my other cat (a neutered tom like James but a young five years old who had been weaned on processed food and who had had trench mouth from day one) to get me to start to think for myself again. It was as if the vet had anaesthetised me for those eight years. Even with this third cat in my care developing premature ageing (which the vet said was within normal expectations and which I accepted against the evidence of my own memory of family mousers dying at 15, 16 and 21) and urinary disease, the vet never suggested there was anything in my active care which was possibly a cause of this torture. Even the younger cat's (George) trench mouth was brushed off as 'typical' in some cats. My search of the readily available information on the internet about FLUTD did not yield a clear direction on diet. But I am very grateful for special interest groups of non-vets who maintain a general undercurrent of plain advice about animal care which is readily accessible via member's sites and newsgroups. Among their supportive recommendations was the clear understanding that FLUTD was most easily seen as a disease of civizilation and had been most successfully controlled with plain measures like ensuring hydration was always optimal and ensuring that as natural a diet as possible was provided. It took me all of 24 hours to research down the other main malaises my cats and dogs were displaying. My animals were being poisoned. My mother has been dead for 6 years and we were never close so I had nobody to reinforce my decision to leap into the forgotten and by now unknown world of raw food for my carnivores. Your book was noted in one of the news groups on cats. Thanks for persisting. You gave me back my confidence. All the animals here have been eating a diet of raw meaty bones exclusively for three months. I am still working out how to ring the changes with eggs, offal and vegies for the dogs but I have confidence that the cats are healthy enough now to eat all the variety they need with mice and rats caught around the goose pen every morning and evening. The cats no longer need to use the litter trays inside at night. Firstly because they are sleeping a relaxed and deep 6 hours instead of a broken, anxious-not-to-make-an-awful-smelling-poo in the case of the younger George (clearly he was only just able to tolerate most processed foods) and secondly because they need just a chicken wing most evenings to satisfy them and allow them to settle down for a good night's sleep. And obviously that is not enough for them to have to empty their bowels during the night. I don't have to supervise regular drinking as I did with processed shit. They drink regularly and readily - looking after their own natural appetites. I have even cleaned out the rainwater tank so that they can have the best water inside too. While it is pleasing to see the older James once again able to leap in play across the grass after the younger George, the miraculous transformation of George is still something to marvel at. He used to jitter and jump on his way, he now walks powerfully and smoothly. He used to crouch in a tight sit after eating to clean himself very quickly around the paws and mouth before starting on a round of about 5 or 6 different possies to find a settling spot to sleep. I never thought it was anything other than his personality. Now I think it was pain and anxiety. Although he managed a fair amount of sleep at night it was always in periods of no more than an hour punctuated with about 20 minutes of wakefulness during which he came to me or the dogs or James for distraction. I was often woken at 2am by his bounding around followed by a noisy scrabble in the litter tray which I got up to quickly take outside before it stank out the house. He couldn't stand the smell any more than I could. The most wonderful change in George is that he now lies full length after his meal and luxuriates in grooming himself. Whether it is because his gut is not being assaulted any more or whether it is because his inflamed gums made any grooming painful, I don't really care. He is just so obviously happy. The dogs' teeth are again looking clean after years of my leaving them for as long as possible before taking them for that always depressing anaesthetic and scrape ( I always felt so defeated to have been doing everything I had been told to keep dental disease away and to still see that yellow film creep down my dogs and cats fangs - my mothers' dogs had always had clashing white teeth and had never had a vet near their mouths) Darky hasn't had a snorting fit since he started chewing raw food. I know it is too early to decide his infected throat has been overcome but his mouth smells glorious for the first time ever. He can beat the younger Daphne up the hill again. I suspect he may not be the longest-lived Huntaway in history but I am confident I will not lose him to 'old age' at eleven. Daphne is a heeler/collie cross supposedly but she has at least a quarter staffie from it all, so I will be very happy if she doesn't develop what everyone these days says is unavoidable in staffies - that early arthritis. And if she does I will be sure I have not contributed to it. We went for a ride to the beach last week to bury the tins of prescription cat shit which I had left in the car boot after bringing the very unhappy George home from the vet three months ago. The dogs dug the hole nice and deep for me. The sea will dilute the poisons once the tins rust away. Or if the tins are aluminium, then they will become inert rocks over time for mussels to grow on. I hope my animals will forgive me my lack of care for them for the years they were forced to eat shit. I hope that any damage done by processed food poisoning can be repaired to some degree by returning them to their carnivore metabolism. There is no more reason I should blame the vet I listened to for nutrition advice than I should blame the GP who I laughed at when he suggested that I look for the 'heart tick' [symbol of suitability. Ed.] on food that I buy. I haven't ever bought processed food for myself beyond pasteurised milk and French pastries - and that only because it is no longer legal to buy milk directly from a dairy. I would be happy to take a calculated risk at a good farmer's gate for the benefits of whole milk. I don't like preserved and processed food. I delight in fresh vegies and fruit and my own eggs and goose meat. I am not very fat, do not have any malaise. I understood the reductionism which has marched into medicine much better than I understood it with vet medicine. I am happy to take the risks associated with eating to appetite and tradition rather than to prescription. I am now just as happy to be able to exchange my carnivore's wellbeing for the small lifetime risks which are a carnivore's inheritance. You helped me get my perspective back. I have become alert to any opportunity to make both vets and pet owners think about what they are putting small carnivores through. This has unfortunately meant that I have had to leave a practice with a very good surgeon because the surgeon refused to accept that my questions about diet needed to be addressed. But there are always opportunities at booster time and other necessary visits for me to get other vets to consider their compliance with the myth of inappropriate and dangerous raw food for our home carnivores. And it is so obviously a myth that we will just have to eventually wake up.
Nancy McIntyre |