"cshenk" wrote in message
...
John Doe wrote in rec.pets.cats.health+behav:

Gandalf ingold1234(AT)yahoo(DOT)com (Gandalf) wrote:

...

Yes, you need to switch food SLOWLY, gradually adding more of the
'new' food, in with their previous food.

I have always been told by vets to take about two WEEKS to change
foods, to give their digestive system plenty of time to adjust to
the new food.

As an aside, when one of my cats was quite elderly, and having some
health problems, I decided to switch her to Wellness, since it's
supposed to be one of the 'best' dry foods available.

I took about 2 1/2 weeks to make the change over.

About a week AFTER the change, my cat started having loose stools,
slowly getting worse over the next week or so.

I stitched my cat BACK to her previous food, Nutro, as fast as I
thought was 'safe', and the loose stools stopped almost
immediately.

There is no doubt that Wellness is a 'better' cat food...but it's
not better for every cat.

And, it's quite expensive. I gave away most of a $45 bag

And, I agree that Whiskas is kind of 'junk food' for cats.

I would try switching to another, better cat food.

Basically, almost ANY cat food is better than Whiskas.

I would try Science Diet, since it s now carried at MANY stores,
including some 'discount' stores.

I know that Fleet Farm carries it, and puts it on sale pretty
regularly.

And for all you 'canned food only' and even worse: all you nut
cases, militant 'raw food only' TROLLS, who are CERTAIN to show up
in this thread, sooner or later:

**BITE ME**

(**NOT** the FOUR LETTER words I'd LIKE to use, either).

I had two cats that lived to 16 and 18 years, with absolutely NO
health problems of ANY kind, until literally one or two DAYS before
they passed away, and they both ate either Iams, or Science Diet,
DRY FOOD, for their entire lives.

As one person has said, which I did not know: Iams used to be
better
food, than it is now, so that may have helped, some.

SO THERE!

I hope your 'raw food only' cats have diarrhea ALL OVER your beds,
and your expensive leather sofa and easy chairs!

Grumble **EVERY NUT CASE IN THE WORLD** has a computer now.
grumble.

Looks like you have serious communication problems. I can just
imagine what your posts would look like if you could color your
words. Creepy, IMO.

Hi John, new to this thread but i think we are looking at a win7
'livemail' thread so it's not possible to address 'who said what'
because you can't tell. I use a freeware Xananews (works fine with
Win7) and don't have that problem on my win7 machine.

I'll address the issues instead with knowledge of who posted what ok?

1- dry food used to not be much recommended because there were few
good
brands. IAMS and Science diet were fairly good in comparison for a
long time but they have no longer any real claim on that and in fact,
purina pro-plan is better now.

2- Wellness has a big reputation but has no grain free versions sold
in
the Norfolk VA (USA) versions that I have ever seen (includes dogs and
cats). Since due to grain issues with mine, this is a must. My
uderstanding is they started grain free but lowered the quality while
keeping the price the same. Like IAMS and Science diet, they now seem
to trade on reputation while quality is declining fast.

3- the ethic for a time was 'wet is best' because large scale
statistics showed a much larger segment of cats living past age 15 if
fed wet most of their lives. Thats not all the picture though, they
didnt have the same quality of food in the dry. Today the statistics
show there is nothing wrong with dry food is a true quality product is
used.

4- I do not 'raw feed' my cat. She gets a fair amount (close to 30%
perhaps) of 'raw' but my vet advised against it as her only food and I
agree. It can be done, and done well it's the healthiest diet of all,
but I lack the time to adjust all the ingredients (or a source for
some) to make it really work. I do raw feed at 50% of their intake
for
2 dogs.

5- I have the luck of the irish to have 1 cat and 2 dogs with grain
allergies. No, it's not that common and the cat can have a little
wheat gluten for 2 days safe if it happens by accident, with no
issues.
The dogs range from 'significant' to 'high reactive'. Raw feeding
completely avoids this issue if you have the time to make it work.

6- Learn to read labels of cans and check each one for petfood.
Roughly
4 of 10 versions of fancy feast are grain free. It's not advertized
as
such but check, it's true.

You might want to add this site...a good reference source:
http://www.petfoodratings.net/cats.html

This is pretty comprehensive and quite explicit, as well as lengthy.
But
now I'm getting rid of a lot of worthless wet food I have on hand, and
making a shopping list to find better food for my cat and new 10 week
kitten.