How My Cat Baba Survived the Pet Food Recall

One day, I noticed my kitten Baba's litter box business was kinda dark greenish to black, versus the usual brown to dark brown. At first, I thought maybe she was chewing on toys or intaking some carpet on the side. after all, kittens are active, roam, and Baba will make a box, a bag, even the carpet her latest toy. Then stories came- PET FOOD RECALL. At first, I started thinking it was only dog food. I was thinking about all those fellow pet owners who had sick or dead pets. Then, it expanded to pet food. I went to the pet food recall website, and looked thru the brands. Low and behold, the cat food I bought Baba at Wal-Mart was on the list. I had been giving Baba a can of defective cat food a day, hence the cat poop of a different color. I gathered all the cans, all which had serial numbers that were part of the recall, and took them back to Wal-Mart and got a refund. What is a conscientious pet owner to do?

You try to make sure your little one is well. But my more immediate need was getting Baba to a healthy diet that would not kill her or make her sick. I replaced the meal times with the contaminated pet food, with different kinds of hard foods. Baba has taken a special fancy to the 'Fancy Feast' hard foods. Baba loves the seafood flavor and the turkey-chicken flavor.

So what did this pet owner do?

- Cook for my pet.

When I first got Baba, I used to cook her salmon fish and put it in a cupcake tin. She was a growing kitten, so the portion worked out to be about right.

- Camouflage hard pet food.

Sometimes, hard food camouflaged with a meaty looking gravy or broth makes your cat think they are eating wet food. However, if your cat is a finicky eater, they may not go for homemade gravy when their palette likes the brand you used to buy.

- Experiment with different kinds of hard food.

I bought a few different brands of hard food that came in different flavors and gave Baba cupcake tin sizes of multiple kinds of hard cat food at the same time. Usually, within a day, I saw what she liked to eat and what she did not. I used the hard foods to make up for the wet food meal she was getting from the contaminated cat food.

Other ideas, which I did not try, because my cat has more of a working class lifestyle, was to buy gourmet cat food from the local Pet Plus store. There is also a local eatery that caters to cats and dogs. But as Baba came over one evening as I ate lunch leftovers, I discovered something new she liked she had never eaten before--- mashed potatoes.

Whether it was deliberate, accidental, or just one of those things--- this pet owner felt sad. You love your little or big pet. You do your best to keep them safe and healthy. But to try and take care of them, and not even know that you may be hurting them hurts. Whether it be melamine or rat poison or whatever went wrong in the processing, you can never buy a can or box of pet food and feel the same way again. No matter the refund received for the contaminated food, what is lost is peace of mind that by selecting the best brand of pet food that you can, you are helping your pet to be healthy because the reality nowadays is that you just don't know. And in the current environment, we may never truly know.

Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/271760/how_my_cat_baba_survived_the_pet_food.html