As an animal lover, healthfood fan, and a partisan of 'natural, free, home-made and not necessarily store-bought,' I question the assumption that vets know everything worth knowing! Because MOTHER NATURE has a few ideas of her own, which you'll learn if you OBSERVE cats long enough. And VETS were trained in making MONEY really. Along with all that medical stuff that they KNOW, they know how to sock it to you! My pals dog had water sandwiched inside the flap of the ear. Easy to drain. A needle will do it. Five hundred dollars to fix.
Why do I doubt that we need expensive surgeries, animal shots/pills, toxic vaccines and manufactured diet products that vets recommend? Why do I feel that we don't always need vet visits for our furry friends? Perhaps it’s a lack of trust in the status quo, or perhaps it's my ETERNAL TRUST in MOTHER NATURE and holistic remedies..
We live in an era in which politicos lie to us about the need to bomb the third world-cave-dwelling semi-neanderthal Afghanis and Iraqis. There's a conspiracy going on with the men who lead us. A greed game propels it. So when Doctors recommend unnecessary surgeries all the time, I suspect greed. And when the allopathic medical community thinks vaccinating human babies is a good thing yet a lot of infants die of crib death from the poisons, statistically more than die of the disease, I again think GREED!
Capitalism gets to do its thing willy nilly and legislate their own laws. At Harvard they teach corporate accountants Enron, creative bookkeeping so the Masters of the Universe can pillage the revenues that stock investors periodically STUFF the MASTERS' golden goose with. They cross book the money away from the stockholders, hide it with HEDGED losses, or in FOREIGN NON EXISTENT CORPS where the sun don't shine, killing the golden goose and the investors and ultimately the hosts along with it. This just happened and the MELTDOWN still hasn't found a fix. I don't trust those Banksters who got the 800 billion bucks. See, JFK got shot when I was in college; it hit hard. I learned not to trust LBJ who ordered the hit (for his Texas Oil men Cronies,) nor Nixon, Reagan, The Bushes and Cheney, and not the CIA or the entire Republican PARTY. FISCAL CONVERSATISM? Not on a bet!
It's also been my personal cat-vet experience that they will try to sucker you for huge bucks, for things you could fix. When I had minor problems, things I could have fixed in a sec alone at home, this Vet in West L.A. tried to tell me that Petunia needed a 300$ surgery! She had a boil. I don't know if you realize this, but let me tell you, CATS cleanse their systems with boils. They are nothing if not billions of years of 'boil handy'. If a tomcat scratches another one, he gets a boil. Petunia had a lung condition and she cleaned her body by making a boil. The cure is easy. Hot compresses, steaming hot towels, but not so hot they burn skin, no, just comfortably HOT against your own inner wrist, given several times daily until the boil bursts. At that point, squeeze it clear, then put any calendula petal preparation, even home made from flower petals, washed over the wound so it heals. I'll give you canscalendula seed for free. Their petals seal any wound. Never put it on a wound that must drain. It seals holes!
What part of that is rocket science? Hot towels soaked in salt water, you got! Cats have some miraculous property to deal with boil holes without problems! They just seal right up! So I resent that vet telling me I had to hand a third of my monthly rent over to him for an over overpriced surgery! What a greedy gadge! The second I realized that was what the LUMP WAS, I left the Vet's office, came home and heated towels in salty, simmering water!
Today my neighbor Eddie the geriatric widower, on a fixed income, told me that the vet took 500$ for that puffy ear thing dogs get. Lymph fluid inside the ear 'til it puffs up like a french pastry. My cat had that last week or so, I did the hot compress thing and it popped and drained. This poor ole guy handing over a month of food money to a guy who put a few holes in the ear then some neosporin on the holes.
For over three decades, now, I have cared for a large flock of as much as 30 cats and often PRAYED for a vet's help because in such large groups, where viruses are in the bloodstream of unvaccinated mothers, kittens are mortally ill at times. (A true cattery has all the adults virus free, vaccinated in their infancy, and has linoleum floors you can bleach once a day! one cup bleach to a bucket of water, a mop, cats outside while you do it.) I had four human kids, no husband and no way to get vaccinations for cats which put kittens in jeopardy. So I learned to feed them real meat and vegies, build their immune systems, and let them get ill and recover. Survivors bred disease resistant infants.
You see, it's an ill wind that blows no good; never being able to afford a vet taught me how to live without one, follow a superb cat-health diet so the tribe doesn't ever need a vet, and taught me how to use a healthfood diet to crank up a cat’s immune system so they could impart their antibodies to their offspring.
Ascending to holistic feeder and 'amateur healer' status, like cat ownership itself, was inadvertent. In 1973, a fellow yoga student named Seva (the word means spiritual service on behalf of God,) gave me a pregnant queen she couldn't keep. A wiser pal warned me not to take it, but I shrugged helplessly and into my lap came Fluffy Tiger who soon delivered 6 babies. I had four babies of my own and as a single mother, never had an extra dime for spaying, vaccinations or vets. In those days there were no animal rescue groups paying part of the spay! Now there are and all my cats are spayed but then? Busy with children, I just waited until babies were two months old and gave the kittens away. That was my form of birth control. In those days, I fed this whiskered bunch 'convenience' or generic canned cat food thinking this was OK or it wouldn't be in stores, right? (HO HO HO was I to discover differently !)
Rents in West L.A. were costly so I never had the extra pennies for 'fixing cats.' I would have WISHED to neuter, but 40$ each would have been $400 the first week so I postponed. Naturally, the queens multiplied into a flock --soon a dozen. We gave away kittens by the basket load but some we were fond of would grow up with us and be unadoptable as teens.
I fed my tribe of cats --the 'itty bitty kitty committee' ---the most inexpensive kibble and cheap canned foods available, often generic brands containing corn and soya. When my tribe sickened on this diet, I didn't attribute it to diet but personal unworthiness. As GUILT was a habit with me, I continued to feed this junk.
That canned fish and beef "by products" is what I also ignorantly force-fed to sick cats who sickened, now with constipation on top of fevers, or with lungs completely closed by mucus. I also fed Gerbers to kittens who weren't nursing (as they had enteritis, (panleukemia) . Sick kittens either died or got well, survived and grew up with antibodies.
Not having a vet to advise me, (at that time I wasn't allergic to vets, I simply couldn't afford them) I didn't know from what disease. I didn't know the names of the yellow mucus disease or the smelly diaharrea disease. I just knew that no matter how well I fed my tribe or how well we nursed sick cats, occasionally we lost a kitten at weaning time. My kids would shout 'Mom, get a vet'. They'd heard of cat shots and complained that I was heartless not to give them to the cats but with four human children to raise and these huge L.A. rents, I could not afford vaccinations at $30 a piece plus 29$ for the doctor visit. Sixty for the first visit only more shots were always required.
Finally, so as not to get a total bad rep with my kids, I took one sick cat to a vet. The visit cost hundreds of dollars and the animal died anyway. I made a command decision: to spend money on luxuries like heating my home, buying food for my children and to try to get the kittens through these diseases with holistic remedies.
I should have figured the thing out sooner. My children were on a vegetarian diet, with plenty of raw foods with every meal. They never visited a doctor, I’d told school nurses that I was a 7th Day Adventist and my kids could NOT have vaccinations, and they all had their tonsils and lively immune systems and there was no fever they couldn't beat. When disease hit my kids, I would feed them rose hips in freshly squeezed (not pasteurized) orange juice and their T-cells would kick in, attack and kill the virus like a leaping panther. Later, they did NOT get re-occurrences of that particular virus because through that disease experience, they had achieved immunity. My children never saw a doctor or an anti-biotic in their lives. Dr MERCOLA speaks of the value of LETTING kids get diseases and never treating with medicine, letting their immune system duke it out with the bug, learn to recognize the bug so that later in life, the disease never repeats. Read his ARTICLE. It applies to cats!
The reason that I never vaccinated a child was that in Los Angeleno holistic circles, it is known that vaccinations are a shock to the body and children given vaccinations have danger of bigtime bad diseases, even crib death even way after the vac-latency period (!) With antibiotics, it is said kids continually get re-occurrences of the disease anyway for the rest of their lives. Did you know that? Even if you take the full sequence of 14 days, that bacteria comes back! Again and again.
I should have tried to do part of the holistic thing with cats, but for some unknown reason, I never correlated what I knew about human diets to the cats in our house. I always longed for vets and vaccinations and blamed the mortality rate on the lack of money, vets and shots. And felt guilty.
There is a certain power in the seeker's mind to know it NEEDS truth and to attract or pull in the right teaching force..i.e. the 'miracle.' By chance one night, I tuned into my favorite FM radio show, SOMETHING'S HAPPENING, at midnight on KPFK-FM and lo and behold, a HOLISTIC VET named ART. ART THE HOLISTIC VET! (Public radio is long on gurus, mystics, holistics, medical leftists, radical politics, philosophers like Alan Watts and Baba Ram Das so why not a Holistic GURU VET?)
I took notes and a few days later, took my favorite cat of all time, Peaches, to him. She had bad breath. REALLY bad. I had raised her since birth as the mother was a feral Siamese and left the baby in our garden. So Peaches was bottle raised, hadn't had a good childhood, diet wise. I adored her. He told me that the milk mix I'd used and later the canned catfood was too rich, and her liver was toxic. He talked while I made notes.
I typed his notes up later and they were the beginning of the cat healing knowledge I have today. In the wake of talking to him, I found a holistic cat book at the healthfood store. I couldn't afford to buy it, but I scanned its pages and took notes. I found that it is possible to create immunity to disease through a more natural diet and, when illness strikes, turn to holistic healing methods. Suddenly, the disease stopped in its tracks. Litters lived.
PREVENTION-The primary feeling of the holistic pet community is that prevention is best, especially nowadays when pet surgery approaches human in cost. Prevention of disease is based on vital foods and no toxic vaccinations.
The animal on a POWER diet may become ill with the 'childhood diseases of the cat world ---the so-called 'killer diseases' but most of your first generation will survive such diseases, the way healthy children survive the measles and chicken pox. That pet will then be immune to this disease, and so will his offspring.
To shun vets and vaccines takes an attitude somewhere between Buddhist forbearance, Taoist acceptance and American sang froid. You may lose some weak kittens, so be prepared. But in the end, this isn't ice cold Darwinian laissez faire. It's a compassionate "We will create the fittest and the fittest will survive."
CHILD BIRTH- 1.) Location Location. Create corners in closets, in boxes. Line with towels. She'll take her pick. NEVER let a pregnant cat outdoors in her last few days. Other cats eat kittens and so do barnyard critters of all sorts. And unsupervised births give HERNIATED UMBILICALS, meaning INTESTINES, hanging out in a big bulge like an egg yolk sized tumor. Only thousand dollar surgery can fix a hernia! So you must catch the baby in mid air and make sure the umbilicus reaches to the ground before you let the little guy go or he'll HANG by his umbilicus and it'll herniate! SO QUEENS must be locked in the house, shown their CLOSET FLOOR, lined with nice towels, far from the clamor of the household. Fail to do this you're gonna end up with VETS BILLS thru the roof to patch the muscles of the kittens' stomach.
DUE DATE: She'll lick her butt, that means they're coming. Take her to her prearranged closet, rub her lower back muscles, have scissors ready to cut umbilicus, as far from kitten's body as possible! Leave it there to DRY!
Rub the muscles over kidneys, in her lower back, during spasms. Rub her lower brain of she's worried. Lift, don't Pull baby as it emerges so it doesn't HANG by its umbilicus and RIP its own tummy. If you can lift baby far enough from Mom and she's not intruding (her instinct is to bite off the cord,) you can scissor the cord. Leave a few inches there to dry up. DO NOT cut near the belly. Scissors can slip, you're nervous, she's moving fast, so in and out deftly! eh?
Now if you're at work, unaware, or just busy it is entirely possible that she'll disappear on you, not show up for a meal. You'll never know she went thru labor. You'll just hear the kittens' little mealtime squeals. You'd better pray none of them were hanging too long in the mid air! Ripping their guts out.
If she has gotten outside and had a litter outdoors, in the bushes, retrieve the entire gang, create that sheet/towel lined closet floor and leave the door to that room ajar so she doesn't feel trapped.
YOUNG KITTENS: From the 1st day of life on, I take kittens into the light. put on my glasses and pick off fleas. If you have a sensible Queen who's in the house all the time, there possibly will be no fleas. I do the search with a cup of water beside me. l drop of detergent in it to immobilize the fleas who can float on a water surface and crawl right out of that cup.
POWER FOODS: So-called 'health food' products for animals have already started showing up in the marketplace but they're expensive. Don't bother with them. NO FOOD IN A CAN is good enough for your cat. The truth is that the best food use is probably fresh RAW meat or freshly cooked meat with some vegies. Some people say that today raw meat can be full of parasites and bacteria and viruses. In spite of this, the benefits of raw flesh on all-over health outweigh the dangers. READ PETFOOD TRUTH URL
Buy the meat in whole pieces, soak in a sink of water with a cup of vinegar. Or a pan of water with three tbsps of vinegar. Rinse well as bacteria isn't in the meat, it's on it. Slice it fine, serve quickly. Don't keep it around long. If serving frozen, thawed meat which is unstable, use it immediately when thawed. If you cook meat, simmer, (don't fry) keep it slushy like chili, mash in pre-cooked carrots, (herbs like parsley are optional) and top with freshly mashed, uncooked garlic, (viricide, bacteria-cide) add a few drops of olive oil, cod-liver oil, bone-meal and pediatric or pet vitamins.
When your meat is lightly cooked, throw in some of the raw vegie juices that you just made for yourself, so when you cook for them, juice your own carrot, celery, parsley and such and ADD DASHES to their meat, raw at the end.
If you have money, give raw juices with cream, in a dish, between meals. The cream adds Vitamin A and fatty acids which make the vitamins in vegetables assimilable.
ORPHAN KITTIES-If you have a baby cat that has absolutely no mother, you can do one of several things. Place the baby with another nursing mother and feed the entire litter regularly with eyedropper as nobody will get enough food if a strange kitten is interjected. The mother only has working nipples for the amount she gave birth to.
No problem. Throw one raw egg yolk in simmering water for five seconds, lift out, drop into a quarter cup of coats' milk. I like goat's milk from healthfood store, but any goat milk is alright. Just NO raw EGG WHITE. Save whites in a glass in fridge, get three, you make a cat omlet with some fat from some of your own meat. Throw whites in the adult cat soup where you cooked their vegies, doing so only at last minute. Egg white is fab protein,cooked.
BACK TO THE FORMULA you just made. Stir the pasteurized yolk in, (we kill salmonella that way, do the same if you make mayo for your family!) then eyedropper it into the animal. Wipe all faces, hands, bibs with a wet rag after feeding so ants don't invade litter box.
Hand feed the baby cat yourself ten times a day. But between feedings, let him hang with a real feminine squaw of a cat. Some unpregnant cats will "nurse" a baby just cuz they feel motherly. That kind of cat. Every house has one. No milk comes but the baby likes the company and the teat is a pacifier.
SICK KITTEN - The sick newborn
kitten is as good as dead. So PREVENTION is everything here.
WHY DO KITTIES GET ILL? Illnesses strike because of incompetent
maternal care during birth and immediate time afterwards AND
CAT MOTHERS can be very dumb. So you have to set up a fool proof environment.
1.) She needs a private closet away from main rooms where other cats are. 2.) she needs clean linens on the floor. I always have torn sheets saved for this. Change linens every few days. 3.) QUARANTINE. New mother has to be kept away from all other cats and catboxes. She needs a totally new catbox fresh, unused by others in past, disinfected, impeccable. 4.) She needs her own water and her dishes fed her in that new room.
The first week is paramount. Mom cannot be LET OUTSIDE. She can't worm her way thru doors and get out and leave the kitties and let them get cold. KITTENS have no temperature-regulating mechanism. They count on her for heat. Especially in small litters like two cats. If she goes for a stroll, she will space out and the babies will chill and they will die from that chill. For that reason, every single day, you must make ten trips just to feel the body temperature of the kittens.
FREEBIE WORM CURE - Cats have worms all year round. Dogs too I guess. So I GIVE PUMPKIN SEED water real real frequently. I washed little CHARLIE EDUARDO the other day, gave him a real shampoo. In the flea comb, afterwards, I noticed a single short worm. I knew where that sucker had come from!
I ran to the corner and took a pumpkin still lying around 6 mos after I harvested it, cut it open took out the seeds, Grinded what fit in my PALM in blender, whizzed it just a bit, not much, to get a milky liquid. GOT A STRAINER Strained it into a small cup THEN I PUT CONTENTS of strainer back in blender, a little more water, a little more whizzing, THAT I put into fridge. Tomorrow I'll strain it a second time & repeat the dose. This dosing is best done after fasting all night, before breakfast.
But that strained liquid? I gave the liquid to
every cat in the house. Just sneak up on them casually while they're sacked
out, spoon is already loaded, slide it into their maw. As it's organic,
I have no problem giving that
every 8 hrs just that one day. Same as PIPARIZINE
which is the wormer at the store. For a buck or two or three.
You are supposed to wait 14 days until the EGGS are born and do it again. A few times in one day. Best is on a fast, you know. Before you feed them morning meal.
CHILLED KITTEN?- Two layers of flannel (like pajamas pillowcases,) set against a heating pad which is set on lowest temperature. Envelop kitten top/bottom only until it feels normal temp. Then put it with mother, put flannel over the kitty and then heating pad resting lightly on top.
NEVER FEED A COLD KITTEN. A drop of cornsyrup on tongue, applied w. Q-tip if you suspect low blood sugar/ starvation. Otherwise, no milk until temp is restored or that baby will have serious indigestion problems. When body temp is restored, use eyedropper or MURINE bottle with nipple neck and go extremely slowly. If they choke on liquids, they strangle, inhale the liquids and die. So go very slowly.
MILK SUBSTITUTE- KITTENS can have goats milk, yogurt, egg yolk whipped together as a milk replacement. One egg yolk goes with quarter cup of milk products. DO Not use cow's milk. I hear it kills the babies. ANY GOOD SUPERMARKET offers goat's milk, 3$ a bottle and that may require a trip at midnight but so what? Miss one LENO it's no deal and if you go without ONE TV dinner next week the whole quart is paid for. Get Persian ethnic yogurts, which are the real deal. 94% of American name manufacturers' yogurts are bogus, all gelatin and carageen. Taste milk after a few days and return sour milk to market. Get a new one. They give it back to dairy and get credit. One good thing from the fall of the SHAH, all the yogurt makers who came to America!
LITE FAST FOR OLDER KITTIES - Some healers say fast a sick kitten. KITTIES cannot fast as they're growing. So use a slight variation for older sick kittens. IF there is a fever, we remember Grandma's old rule, feed a cold, starve a fever. Give baby a JUICE diet. MEAT juices mixed with CELERY juice. I use the blood from slightly cooked fresh beefsteak and I gladly give chicken broth, with many vegetables simmered into it, given with an eyedropper as kittens don't swallow automatically and can aspirate beverages. If I feel a slightly warm head next to my cheek or under my fingers, I immediately go into action. If it's diaharrea (enteritis, paneleukopenia, distemper all three names for this disease,) I segregate the cat. He cannot go in a litter box used by healthy cats, so he must be kept out of common rooms. Place the sick kitten in a large box if it's an older animal, or a smaller box if it's a kitten that might wander off the heating pad. I put several layers of rags or rag-toweling OVER the heating pad, which is set on LOW. You don't want to COOK him. It may feel good to the hand but still be overheating him, so err on the side of caution. His mother will come visit him or you can put her in his mother's litter box occasionally.
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The first rule of maintaining optimum health is: AVOID canned meat made of toxic 'meat-by-products,' Avoid GRAINS which all kibble type foods are made of. Cats aren't meant to eat grain. They don't have ptyalin in their saliva. They digest food with stomach acid, generated for flesh food. Dry kibble dehydrates the animal, ruins its kidneys and is usually filled with unhealthful palm or cottonseed oil.
Dr. Art taught me that canned foods, even the most expensive name brands, will cause a slow toxic liver reaction and food-allergies in the cat which throw its immune system off balance. The only sign is occasional slight mucus in the eye and maybe bad breath but that means the cat has waste products and acids storing in the body and hasn't digested the food well. Give that cat a very simple diet of real meat and vegetables, no canned food or grains. Enough toxic dump sites in his body and he will not survive the usual 'childhood' diseases.
MEAT THAT CATS LOVE: I have found that the best is cheapest. When you give RAW POULTRY, be wary! Sometimes, Salmonella is in the commercial hatcheries. Buy raw chicken. I used to find the 29c or 39C an lb frozen LEG quarters a bargain though it is from Arkansas and frequently a little stale. THE BETTER FRESHER meat is local, twice the price but today 2008, 79c an lb for quarters and whole chickens even on sale. Cheap stuff comes in l0 lb. bags at that low price, it's a frequent sale special. I usually cook one for myself and I noticed it is slightly off every time. So I now stick to local at twice the price. Every week one of my local markets has the tainted chicken quarters special. Soak in 1 tbsp vinegar for sink of water, then rinse and simmer with carrots and chard; cool, with hands in rubber gloves, break into pieces so that carrot and meat blend. Older cats can maybe deal with antique meat. ALL BEEF is aged, so it's antique. Pork is always good and occasionally is on sale at 99c.
BETTER is to buy turkey burger or chicken burger in a frozen, plastic bullet-shaped lb. package found in the store's freezer, used to be 89c an lb. Now $1.29 but all meat, no bone. My barrio market a chain of 14 markets that undersell the supermarkets has leg quarters at 69.c nearly all year long.
All super markets have the frozen turkey burger bullets now. Test the brand you buy for salmonella by thawing it and giving it raw to an adult cat and watching for salmonella induced enteritis. If none, you can give it to kittens. I feed all my kittens raw turkey burger. Because it exists. No raw chicken burger exists anywhere, anymore (I used to find it,) or I'd try that.
If you have money, when kittens are ready for meat, use raw rabbit meat, as it has no salmonella. I'd mince it raw, wipe a little pressed garlic smudges over it, covering every surface, a little codliver oil and voila! Sushi!
Those turkey burger bullets are cheap. That's incentive for use on large groups of adults. There is a full pound of turkey burger in the plastic tube. The .89C a pound I pay for turkey burger is much cheaper than any canned cat food partly because I cut it with vegetables when I cook it. I pay 33c for carrots. I feel all the carrot bags and pick the heaviest, generally getting a pound and a half for 33c.
Simmer vegies with the meat. Never cook broccoli long or hard. It has high sulphur same as cauliflower, egg yolks and onions do. We never use high heat on sulphur as it gives gas Barely show it to a low fire, grind and add to meat. Ditto carrots, kale, collards, swiss chard, greens like chicory leaves, endive leaves, your garden salad outerleaves, dandelion leaves but not sprayed salads from markets, organic only. The idea is to keep cost down.
I would give no oxalic acid-containing greens (like spinach). Carrots are wonderful but require MORE TIME than the meat does! So cook them 15 minutes, til soft, THEN add the carrots to raw meat, simmer with the meat, then cut carrots into small pieces. Don't serve in big carroty chunks cuz they won't eat it. If you want, you can use a Braun hand grinder or hand mash with an old forties masher. I don't have to cut up greens. Cats loveWHOLE greens cooked with the meat for flavor and aroma! They pull out and eat the greens first.. Greens can be STEAMED first, then added to the warmed, partially cooked meat. .
NOTE: All broths that cats don't consume are mixed with grains/potatoes, stale bread, stale cereal and are thrown over the fence onto the curbstrip when I see a flock of crows. I call them 'caw, caw' and they come.
I do not believe in giving cats grain (kibble) or potato. Starches go undigested as saliva in humans has ptyalin, not so in cats. They have no digestive enzymes for starches. They only have stomach acid for meat. Starch leaves mucus behind in the system and the basic philosophic concept behind holistic healing is one that's basically ecological in tilt. Don't allow toxic dumps of mucus to form because that's where disease grabs a hold.
20th Century medicine is ignorant of the fact that body toxicity causes disease not food toxicity or microbes from the air / soil/ floors. Allopathic medicine (what's mostly out there) is better at merchandising: i.e. " dirty disease can at any time get a hold on your nice clean body but our costly medicines come to the rescue every time." These are all post facto remedies. Give me PRE-facto every time. Build a body so it can destroy all microbes!
The beliefs of homeopaths would be terrible merchandising: "Disease only grows where there's toxic build up already in the body, impairing its immune system. Stop eating bad combinations of the wrong food, thusly removing stored toxins and you remove the source of disease." HOLISM would be a terrible tack for a capitalistic, linear society to take because LESS SHELF products would get SOLD that way, hence it absolutely stinks. It's heinous, anti-American heresy to admit that the downside of the body's universe is waste matter, poisons, toxins created by freely merchandised and toxic comestible products IN STORES but that's the horrible holistic truth.
Somewhere within us, a garbage barge loaded to the gills, trawls endlessly, looking for that ultimate dump site, and obviously, this barge is not turned away. A sequence of organs accept it, and in turn are dirtied, then invaded, infected and destroyed. Avoid the garbage pile by feeding the cat what he is meant to eat. RAW or semi raw meat with a little vegetable matter. Low starch vegetables are appealing to cats. They nibble grass in the wild and if you've ever seen a cat demolish a rat, you'll know that raw meat is appealing to them. True, rats are clean little buggers and most farm-grown flesh comes from animals so immune-impaired by grain-eating that their whole body has to be mega-dosed with ANTI-BIOTICS. The poulty is so infected with anti-biotic resistant diseases like salmonella that just touching it can kill adults.
In contrast, rats are not medicated, are totally clean. However, rats are an unreliably available food source. One you sure can't buy. That leaves us with roadkill. If the blood is fresh around it, pick it up and see if you can stomach a deer, rabbit, squirrel or pidgeon autopsy. I can't
So let's just RINSE commercial meat carefully in water, get surfaces clean, you get most of the salmonella off. The problem is with commercial grain-fed beef. They are very very poisoned with antibiotics. Just do a SEARCH on these keywords, "grain-fed beef" and "anti-biotics." on a good search engine. I've been feeding under-cooked farm-grown turkey and chicken for years with no salmonella problems in my cats or baby kittens who get raw burger as a first food. Beef may not have salmonella but it is toxic for other reasons.
Which leaves us with the concept of fresh caught fish. If you can get to ocean, that might be a good idea if you're prepared to get all bones out of each serving. It is not a good idea to give a cat a whole fish, too bony (lethal, pokes holes in their gut!) and 6$ a pound doesn't make sense, either. The fisherman's sports boats often come in loaded with extra fish, which will be given to pierside cat lovers who ask for it. My kids and I waited on piers for years.
Steam or parboil the fish til soft so you can pick out the bones. Not one bone can be in the meal. So get a big strainer and wear your reading glasses.
When I cook my costly WHOLE CHICKEN poultry, here's what I do. RINSE IT WELL. I mix 2 parts of the semi cooked turkey burger meat with 1/3 part steamed, mashed carrots and add diluted shmushed raw garlic as I serve. I use a Braun hand mixer which can turn a pot of lumps into puree in seconds. This is the simple diet secret that brought the flock back to health, back to immunity, and gave their bodies the ability to beat any disease. When I feed canned foods, the diseases immediately start up again. They are most visible in kittens in which all diseases are fatal.
THE SICK CAT: Into every whiskered darling's life a little malaise may fall. When your cat starts to feel unwell, and he gets the usual cat community flus, distempers, viruses or bacterial lung diseases, do what your holistic doctor tells you to do, or your children. FAST THEM. That's what I learned to do.
I use a slight variation for kittens who cannot fast as they're growing. I use the blood from slightly cooked fresh beefsteak and some chicken broth, mixed, maybe a little vegetable broth too, given with an eyedropper. I also immediately place the sick kitten in a large box if it's an older animal, or a smaller box if it's a kitten that might wander off the heating pad. I put several layers of toweling OVER the heating pad, which is set on LOW. You don't want to COOK him. It may feel good to the hand but still be overheating him, so err on the side of caution. His mother will come visit him or you can put her in his mother's litter box occasionally.
Whiskers will be restored to health by you, its second, loving mother, not a vet at some noisy, howling hospital that will freak out our darling, bleary pet. Remember how emotional you get when you're feverish? Imagine being abandoned in some Hellish Hospital of Howls. Puss has no chance of recovering when he's as freaked out and lonely as that place will make him.
Your cat's infection will be healed by love and warmth, by confining him in a box on a heating pad with several layers of toweling on top. Always test to see if you have sufficient layers of toweling because those pads even on LOW are really too hot for mammals. You don't want to 'cook' the cat. But never leave a cat outside or free roaming in a room. He will flop on the floor where there are drafts you can't feel and become freezing cold. Purr-ball must be confined in a box with tall, sheltering sides and a box large enough to offer him bathroom facilities in one corner if he can drag himself to that corner. It must contain rags that you can change and wash frequently if he soils floor of box or himself.
Give feverish puss LIGHT MEALS, never fasting him entirely unless he's an adult and a fat adult at that. Eye-Dropper in raw vegetable juices for some meals, gruel, soup or other liquids a total of l0 liquid meals a day. You give also give pureed food 3 times a day minimum. You will also find or make some herbal healing additives. This is a lot of work, so plan on some family member staying home all day with him for a week or two. He will need bed rest, warmth, a perfect feeding regimen, all the things that work on us humans when they become ill, so this is great practice for someone who wants to eventually heal humans.
In healing humans, if there is a lot of mucus, you fast them to get rid of it. If a cat is fasted, he immediately flows with mucus, too, has difficulty breathing. If puss sounds mucusy, wrap him in a towel with a cowl hood, hold him over a steaming pot or basin and let him inhale the steam for 5 minutes. Put menthol paste, Vicks, Eucalyptus leaves or onions in the water for added power. Do this many times a day. He may wiggle but it won't scar his psyche. Our most affectionate cat Miranda Mumzoor, went through this hassle as a kitten, several times daily and survived this mucusy asthma, living to be a mother. But for life, when she ate canned food or kibble, she got instant mucus. I had to keep her on real meats and vegies for life. (NOTE: Learn to distinguish asthma's clear mucus from the yellow, purulent mucus of mycoplasma pneumonia which requires tetracycline medication or minocycline). Other kinds of pneumonia do well with amoxillin, 8$ a bottle from vet. Lasts 5days only once bottle is cracked. A pal wrote me: some of the babies were PCR tested for mycoplasma. The drug of choice to clear them is Doxycycline. My Russian friends tell me that Mycoplasma has a life cycle of 28 days (so the 14 days the vet says to use it is not enough). Just thought I'd pass this on (I'm reading your site)."
For the sick cat or kitten, there can be other meals beside chicken soup and blood. Give a sick cat rose hips from real roses. Take the red fruit, cut, throw seeds into garden to grow. Leave fruit soaking in fridge in 3 tbsp orange juice overnight. Next day, give to cat.
WHAT IF MY CAT IS ILL? Take all canned foods from a sick adult cat. If the cat will eat, only give genuine meat, lightly steamed with greens then ground up into burger. If there is constipation, you do not give more food, you banish solids, and put sick cat (or human for that matter) on a juice or broth fast. But when the cat has no appetite, gets violent at the sight of food, when his bowels are not moving and when he's exuding mucus, you cannot feed him. Fast him. Juices and soups only. It must be fed by eyedropper as the cat probably won't eat on his own. And you can't hurry that or he'll aspirate the soup and drown.
Don't do water fasts. Puss would quickly starve to death. You need to give him 'light' broth meals. When his appetite comes back, give real food, no meat-by-products.
You can make a constipated cat's bowels move with a little 'green raw juice' between meals. Use bland juices like collards, romaine, and even parsley in small amounts. Stay away from mustardy greens like certain spicy kales, or oxalic acid- containing leaves like spinach, chard. Feed 3 or 4 light meals of genuine meat as opposed to canned cat foods. I like Gerbers chicken, turkey or beef. (I don't let any veal or lamb in my house as these are babies and there is much suffering involved in their being penned for slaughter.)
If a mother is no longer nursing a kitten, I will dilute Gerbers meat with a little raw, green juice to make a digestible soup or with their carrot, stringbean or broccoli product.
There really is no occasion to water-fast an animal, especially a kitten who is growing and needs nutrients. Fasting works on humans but not animals. They are too fragile. When I tried total fasting, I lost them all. But thinned out nutrients work well.
LIGHT MEALS FOR SICK
CATS:
Light meals means no
toxic
cat food or gland meats, no fatty food like chicken with skin. It doesn't
mean 'no nutrition.' If there is diahharea, you would feed brown rice gruel
(or mush) mixed with Gerbers meats, vegies and acidophilis powder, just
until the cat's bowels tighten up and no liquid stools persist. Ground
up well cooked rice will 'bind' the bowels. To vary, give a yogurt meal
but it has to be real yogurt, that bleeds when cut. Give clean-source raw
meat in pureed vegetable, Gerbers meats mixed with low-starch vegies like
Gerber's carrots or string beans and some rice mush. Usually l jar meat
needs 1/2 jar of vegetables added to it.
Raw egg yolks from FREE RUNNING farm chickens marked on the box CAGE FREE are great foods, mixed with Gerbers stringbeans or carrots as eggs by themselves are too acid reaction, rich and constipating for a sick puss. I have bought cheap eggs from the dollar store for years, never had one of them cause salmonella dysentery in cats, or in me cuz I use it for mayo... so I feel that salmonella is not as prevalant as thought by many.
Steam and mash fresh vegies or mince raw chicken or turkey, washing carefully to remove salmonella. I thank God that In L.A. we get a l-lb plastic 'bullet' shaped frozen turkey burger for .70c at the biggest super market chain. The same tube is $1.29 at all other chains. I give raw meat to animals that are ill. For an animal with some mucus emanation from eyes, mucus free avocado is a good protein. Haas Avocado which is high protein, (the black, bumpy avocados) is the richest of all. Along with pale green part, use the greenest part, just under the skin. NEVER give a hard avocado. Never give overripe avocados. They can hurt Mr. Whiskers and even kill a dog. To make GUACA-MEOW, grate a dash of onion into it, a few drops of our BIOFLAVONOID COCKTAIL (recipe below) instead of lemon and some TOFU mashed in well. Forget the tomatoes, cilantro and hotsauce that makes YOU love avocado.
A sick cat doesn't want to chew or swallow and will sometimes fight you, so this has to be done very 'tactfully,' to prevent a fight. Stroke the furball, soothing, talking to him, showing him family members, walk him around, showing him his favorite sites. Sit where he most likes to be with you, holding him in the crock of your arm, watching t.v. maybe. Talk to him. Tell him how much you love him and want him to get well. Then, casually, help him assume the 'position.' On top of a rag, lying in Sphinx position, head up. Have that food all ready and pre-prepared right by your elbow. If it's a kitten, use a Gerber's baby spoon (available in super markets) with small, rubber bowl. The left hand goes over his head so that your left thumb and first finger can open top jaw. Use the SPOON TIP to open bottom jaw. Spoon- force-feed but gently. It's pasty, smooth food so it will slide down easily without his chewing. Eyedropper broths or yolks, being real cautious that he's not aspirating. I save eyedroppers from ever herbal concoction the healthfood store has.
Praise Puss after each bite. Continue until an entire meal is given. If his resistance becomes 'freaked out,' let him win. Walk him around again, try again later. If he eats his meal, put spoon down, resume your socializing on a very slow, relaxed manner as a reward. Spoon-feed thick soups (recipe below) or tofu-mole, or raw egg yolk (never raw egg white, it's not good for body of anyone!) mixtures. Do not cook yolks for sick animals. Their nutritive power is immense when uncooked. Between meals, give "Magic Rose Hip in Juice". (One of the most powerful foods on the planet is the red bolus of the rose, which becomes truly ripe months after the rose drops its petals. I have had great success in healing the so called fatal diseases by putting a cat on juices boosted by home-made SUPER high Vit C Rose Hips (which I find in the neighborhood on rose bushes).
These boluses are washed well, to remove poison spray, then sliced very thinly into citrus juice. It must be ripe citrus juice. Most commercial lemons, limes and oranges are picked green and are a disaster, much too acidic. Soak for a few hours, so the energy of the red rose hip goes into juice. Then Add a squeeze of fresh raw garlic equal to what would fit on tip of your pinkie. VERY LITTLE or your cat will do a backflip. (The bolus' central seeds are thrown in a pot in the greenhouse to root rose trees for your garden. ) 5 rose boluses are enough for 2-tbsp. juice. I leave this Rose Hip mix in a covered teacup in the fridge to saturate. It's good after a few hours, even better after 24 hours. Throw away after several days and have a new one ready.) When you serve, it's alright for the juice to be chilled as that way kittie feels the liquid when it hits his tongue and the swallowing reflex is activated. An eye dropper is a good way to give it, or a teaspoon, taking care not to slosh so much down his throat that he inhales into lungs which will cause him to get pneumonia and die of something other than the illness he has. Getting food or liquids into lungs is very, very dangerous, so always feed slowly, paying great attention to the cat's swallowing reflex, by noting WHEN he is inhaling and shoving food in AFTER the inhale is over.
VIRUSES- Immune system building is important for viral infections. Only the body's antibodies can beat a virus. I give a sick cat several teaspoons a day of ROSE HIP fruit drink which is just what I would do for a sick child, too. Mammals with fevers dehydrate. It is very important for feverish animals to be given spring water or vegie broth every few hours, day and night. Be watchful for the sunken eye that means only an I.V. could rehydrate). Astragalus is an anti-viral herb. Make a strong tea of it.
COUGH REFLEX-If you hear that wet cough and realize a cat has mucus in the lungs, you must rub his trachea, adam's apple and chest. Get him into a comfy socializing position on a towel in your lap. Rub from just under the neck to that place an inch down, where there's an indentation, over his collar bone, provoking coughing. WHen the mucus is clear, it's asthma. He is allergic to the usual toxins, cooked meat, junky cat food with meat by products, grains, (which all kibble is,) and pasteurized milk. So that cat needs raw certified milk, raw egg yolks, if he's a baby....and raw chicken soaked in lemon for a few minutes to kill salmonella , then minced.
HERBS FOR COUGHS: TO SUPPRESS COUGH- wild cherry bark, thyme leaf, licorice root, skunk cabbage, petasites, elecampane, yerba santa, grindelia, bloodroot, sundew, radish juice. WHY SUPPRESS A COUGH? First of all, cats cannot cough. I help them by rubbing the hole under adam's apple, rubbing the esophagus, providing them with an itch that makes them cough.
TO DEAL WITH THE FLU-Lomatium, St. John's wort, Hyssop, Lemon balm, Thuja leaf, Echinacea. ELDERBERRY and Zinc,
TO CLEAR LUNGS-chickweed, lobelia/muellin, radish juice, white onion juice, cayenne, garlic, lemon. Shoulder stands work for humans, so if cat will allow you to do it, get him upside down.
FOR MUCUS- chamomile, peppermint, hyssop, ginger, cinnamon, golden seal, eyebright, ederflower, plantain, marshmallow, comfrey. Give strongly brewed chickweed tea with lemon, cayenne, garlic and onions squeezed in, as this breaks mucus up. Between meals, eyedropper a sick cat with herbal 'specifics' i.e. for lung mucus, chickweed and mullein tea. Don't give a mucusy cat any rice gruel. That's just for the diaharrea set.
TO KILL VIRUS- Garlic, Lomatium, St John's Wort, Hyssop, Lemon Balm, Thuja Echinacea. Licorice Root. Garlic. ELDERBERRY fruit. Rose Hip.
THE COUGHING CAT! Well, there's no such thing. Cats cannot cough on their own like dogs. (One reason that you can’t feed liquids easily without drowning them.) When you have a cat with lung mucus and want that cat to cough, you must create an itch so strong that the cough response is stimulated. I rub their throw, their adam’s apple area, when you find the point that makes them cough. That will help empty lungs of mucus. Humans know how to spit mucus out when they cough; cats unfortunately don't, they swallow it. Swallowing it is still better than having it in the lungs where it can suffocate. Do the hooded towel herb steam inhaling 3 times a day with eucalptus, onions. Rub onion juice on cat's nose beforehand or squeeze slices with a hand held over steaming eucalpytus leaves in boiling water. As cats leap about unexpectedly, TOWEL-contain the entire cat, so he won’t flip the hot pot. Another person may have to hold the HEAD COVERING towel. Asthmatic cats respond to steam/herbs very well. LIST of HERBS for both humans and cats, which you want to save to your cache, for future reference, is at THIS URL
Besides herbal tisanes, in addition, give sick cats three, substantial, vegetable/meat/ garlic SOUP meals at her normal meal time. Sick cats must continue to eat while they fight off the virus or bacteria and there are certain vitamins or foods that enhance the immune system (like ascorbate, garlic, rose hips.) Practice on yourself when you're ill, to find out what these are.
SOUP RECIPE: BUY: Chicken with bones, parsley, carrots, celery, onion. Simmer meat, cracked bones for 1 hour. Add green leaf vegies only for the last l0 minutes. Remove bones, blend or puree. Add lemon, garlic, bioflavenoids at the last minute. These you don't heat. Skim off fat. They don't need that, now.
When I first discovered 'healthfood' and New age healing techniques, PREVENTION OF DISEASE THROUGH DIET and FASTING were what I did for myself. At first sign of a sore throat, I quit all foods: meat, dairy, grains. I drank raw juices made on a juicer, ate vegetables only if I was starving. If the hunger persisted, I added butter to the vegetables. That always worked and banished hunger. I took various herb capsules that were tonic and specific for what ailed me, horseradish for my liver, for instance.
At first recognition of a virus, I would take nature-lax pills to empty bowel of all food from the day before, I'd keep very warm, wrapped up and rest l00% of the time and lo and behold, my immune system would kick in and that sore throat would go away. I had created the antibodies required.
Over the years, as I no longer created toxic waste dumps in my body, and had re-educated my tastes to enjoy savory VEGETARIAN proteins like nuts, avocados, vegie burgers, hummous, (a garbanzo dip, and ask for recipes) all disease ceased. The annual flu didn't come to my door. It's now twenty years I'm without a cold or flu! I feel it's the same for cats.
To avoid making our body a garbage dump, and attracting disease, learn to select POWER foods, use them mostly raw, and properly COMBINE, i.e. to eat proteins with salads, to eat proteins "dry"--- (no cokes, no milk) so food digests better. Don't mix acid digestion proteins with starches which require alkaline digestion. Eat grains with salad. No sour with flour. No sugar with meat. And no pasteurized dairy at all.
As animals don't eat a great variety of foods combining is not an issue for them. I did find that grains are not suitable for cats. Having no ptyalin enzyme in their saliva to digest starches, they simply turn grain into undigested mucus. I do not give kibbles at all. I give only market-purchased fresh or frozen raw meat, warmed, partially cooked, but mostly raw.
THE KIBBLE QUESTION: Many people feel grain is not natural to cats. I am one of them. Some cat experts recommend kibble be given but mixed with meat, and made mushy and wet, to avoid stressing kidneys and causing FUS. But I notice that grain causes mucus in immune compromised cats, immediately. ALL the cats I've ever seen react badly to GRAIN. Eyes start to water, mucus appears at the nose and asthmatics get snuffly. So I don't use it. I keep it around for feeding wild cats when I drive around the neighborhood though.I figure the starving guys who eat rats and birds (a total healthfood diet as it's raw and fresh, full of enzymes,) can handle clog!
If you want to feed kibble and note that commercial kibbles are costly and often contain heart-damaging lard, cottonseed oils, make your own with any organic whole grain flour (just let soak in dough stage for 2 hours on back of stove to dissipate the phytic acid.) Best way is to sprout your wheat kernels or other grains in water for a day or two, then food process until it's a fine flour. Then proceed the way you make your OWN crackers. Add olive or other natural oil, a natural mineral rich vegie broth then roll into a large cracker. Bake at low temperature; always under 325 so nasty acids don’t develop in the food, then crumble. Store air tight and dry, and slightly cool so it won't get rancid. Add to expensive meat/vegetable mixtures, but keep the whole thing mushy when served. If mucus develops in the cat's nose or eyes, discontinue starches and kibbles.
Not that meat is the perfect food. It can be a killer. The holistic vet, Dr. Art, told me that many cat health problems come from acid saliva which comes from an overloaded liver and a too rich diet. Change the diet he says. Banish skin and organs from chicken meals. And obviously, no tinned meats from Kal-Kan and Friskies. They're made of meat-by-products. This isn't real meat. Commercial pet food is really nothing but ground up 'offal' an accurate sound for what it is: bovine lips and hooves, chicken beaks and nails, cock combs and claws mixed with the rendered, dead fat from bodies of animals killed at the pound. This creepy graveyard brew will cause an immediate, invisible allergic reaction in your pet, an immediate drop of immune system integrity. That in turn invites viruses which are really opportunistic and secondary to the basic insulted allergic condition.
There's a reason FIV and FeLV are so frequent in animals today. They are CAUSED by that costly American diet of tinned meat by products. This diet will eventually damage the animals that consume it. If you love your furball, you'll give her real meat, cooked lightly in pure water, at low temperature, until part of it is no longer red, but much of it is pink and fairly raw. (Some sources say you shouldn't give RAW flesh unless you somehow KNOW there are no parasites in it but YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT.) So cook the meat at very low temperature, which leaves enzymes in the meat but kills parasite life, add some grated cooked vegetables (beet/carrot, greens/broccoli) mixed in with garlic at the end. If you drink celery or carrot juice, and frequently make it, add a shot to the plate of cat food for live enzyme activity is magic.
Always give bottled spring water, never faucet water, and always leave plenty of water on the floor in the cat's dish and change it daily as it gets dirty fast. A BRITTA water purifier is nice. You pour faucet water through it, and clean water results!
SHOULD AN ADULT CAT LIVE OUTDOORS in the YARD? Most cat fanciers say no. They can roam, get hurt, attract dogs. Cats evolved in Africa, a clement part of the world, though they were brought to colder areas of Europe as ratters. But if they are ferals and your state is chilly? A friend in West MASSACHUSETTS has wild cats outdoors. She turns her patio benches upside down in winter, lines the furniture with towels, wraps the entire affair in plastic, leaving a cat body sized doorway and the ferals live there all winter, playing on snow in daylight. She feeds them several times a day. She is now trapping and neutering, then releasing, to stop the endless babymaking.. What this tells me is that in any state, as Massachusetts is the coldest we have, you can certainly leave feral cats out in winter if you build an insulated house and line it with soft towels. Their body heat will warm the room.
Dr Art told me that the most frequent disease of American dogs and cats is skin tumors. Kidney problems next. Both are due to skin no longer functioning as eliminatory organ. Remember, skin is a 3rd kidney. Poor skin means horrid smelling urine, all from a diet of l00% meat which puts a strain on entire animal's health. Add vegies to the meat, and 'loofa ' your pets' skin, also massage the skin, get circulation into the whole thick layer of it. Skin is almost 1/3rd of an inch thick. And get rid of that top layer of dried, old skin with a regular, good brushing. So get an OLD, strong bristle hair brush and reserve it for Fluffy or Butch.
Use camphor, peppermint, eucalyptus, fennel, spearmint on the cat's skin. Make strong teas of these leaves if you can find them, put brush in it, brush backwards into her fur. Use witchhazel and Lipton's tea on hot spots especially those near her ears. If you have lavendar or nasturtium in the garden, rub these upon his fur.
If you see spots where the hair is falling out, puss has MANGE, a form of liver disease, that weakens the body so parasites can get into skin. We must treat liver at same time as we try to kill the invisible bugs on the skin. FOR CLEANSING ANIMAL's LIVER: Add 5 mg zinc and 1/2 tsp real crushed garlic to food. Add l0,000 units of Vitamin A to daily food. GET RID OF FOODS that are toxic like commercial cat foods.' FEED ONLY A PURE real meat DIET: Give no milk or milk product to cat. Best food: real raw meat, like little capons, turkey burger or chicken cooked with carrot/collards, blended or crushed into meat. Cook vegies separately, mash, add to slightly cooked turkey burger. NO Table food, no salt. Use Plantain, or calendula, a common garden weed and flower, massaged into the skin once a day, also golden seal and lavender. Make tea out of these herbs, bathe it on skin. Open capsule of goldenseal, pour 1/2 cup boiling water over it, let it sit covered until it brews. Keep all teas in fridge between use. STICK cotton ball in tea, but cotton ball can't go back into tea. You need to pour tea on cotton ball, use a clean cotton or the disease gets in the tea. Get some NATURAL FLEA shampoo with citronella. Wash cat daily. After shampoo sponge on the lemon rinse.
LEMON RINSE. Slice l lemon thin, including skin, pour into heat proof glass jar, pour l pint boiling water over it, cover, let stand over night, then keep in fridge. Sponge onto cat several times a day. COMMERCIAL MANGE medicine is highly toxic, insults the liver which gives you a problem. But,if you take a few drops of mange medicine, mix it in the goldenseal tea or lemon rinse and sponge it on, you might made the parasite decide to give up, die, move or all three. Give your pet exercise and massage so there's optimum circulation in the skin, otherwise the kidneys are overloaded and the kidneys slowly die.
BOILS: In the first decade of cat-mommy-ing, I didn't neuter my males so they often came home with big, sore LUMPS. Those big lumps look serious but they're not. They can grow very suddenly on a cat (often from a scratch or wound) and they aren't tumors; they're a boil or lump of white blood cells left over from an internal gland infection. Cats are so good at evacuating poisons that even lungs or lymph glands can dump their load through the skin, create huge boils which break open, drain messily yet heal perfectly well. Doesn't happen as often with humans, though in toxic plague ridden Middle Ages in Europe it did.. but on cats, expect boils. Easy to cure. Just apply hot compresses, or mullein poultice until lump grows bigger. The skin will become hairless and shiny, a sign that it is about to burst. Get cat over newspapers. Press, it will rupture, pus will depart the cat. Take cotton balls and squeeze the remaining lump clean, let it drain clear. Calendula petals smashed to paste, then applied to a gauze, applied locally will heal it shut. Antibiotic ointment, the "over the counter" kind, NEOSPORIN, is fine too, so I SMUSH a tbsp of petals IN A tspoon SMIDGE of neosporin.. Calendula flower is amazing in its ability to heal any hole on an animal's skin. You may think you need stitches but try this stuff. It's a common flower but products made of it are available at any healthfood store. My favorite is the atomizer spray they sell but you can make your own you know. Ask me for seeds to this miracle flower, a biennial. I can send you a half cup of seeds any time of year.
KIDNEY DISFUNCTION can be fatal! The frozen kidney happens to all animals on high protein dried feed, twice the protein level of tinned, cooked meats,and worst, tuna and fish! And table foods that have salt in them. Tun/Fish are especially detrimental (*try fatal!) to cats. As is kibble. I NEVER use kibble, but if you're gone all day, occasionally, it's ok, to leave a snack around; just be sure to wet the kibble when you serve it. Use vegie broth, spring water or 'vegetable boil' water. BUT if your cat has mucus, allergies, red eyes, avoid grains entirely. Raw meat for him.
BALANCE the richness of meat and cut down on it's high uric acids by adding grated carrots (raw or cooked) to meat. Avocado and Tofu can be used. (NOTE: But make certain avocados are not overly ripe; they can kill an animal when they begin to get soft, or smell sour.)
NOTE: Homemade vegetable garden additives will be much more laden with vitamins than the artificial lab vitamins put in commercial kibbles and cat foods.
RECIPES FOR YOUR FURBALL
REGULAR MEALS- Cook the meat, Cook soft vegies with it at the end, Carrots take longer, so you start them BEFORE you cook meat. Mash together. Season wi. raw garlic.
'T.V. DINNERS':When you travel, your roomie may not want to cook so leave her a stack of TV dinners. These frozen meals have to be fully cooked. When your local supermarket has a sale, load up. Boil l0 lbs of chicken, lamb, gland meat, sweetbreads, turkey or beef, mixing them as you wish. Discard the broth. It's all uric acid and not much use. Except for crows.
TWO CROW RECIPES: (I live in a crow region. My bakery has 30 loaves a week giveaway stale bread, which I freeze, drop into broth, throw onto sidewalk strip for crows.)
RECIPE TWO. Stir two cups
flour and some oil and broth, get a wet dough. Fry lightly in the chicken
fat left over from cat broth. I clarify all broths and have tubs of sludge
around. Then add broth, to make dumplings. Throw them at the crows, while
you caw loudly.
Problem was, my cats would
eat the dumplings get all mucsy! HAD to have the chicken meat served them,
lock them in house before I could feed crows!
SO, where were we? Making cat meat.. Cool the meat, pull from broth, puree or hand blend, mix in a third mashed vegies, wrap in l lb. patties, freeze. The roomie thaws it on a shelf as a cat will find it, open the foil, maybe eat the foil. My plates are stacked behind closed doors. That works for me. Broth goes in fridge. When fat chills on top,I scoop it off, put in tubs for crow cookery. I would love to learn to make soap with it.
CHICKEN DINNER- Cook 4 chickens at a time, cool. SKIM off all fat which is congealed at top of cassarole. Put in a jar in fridge, useful for frying cat burgers on a skillet.) Pull off fatty skin, discard. Pull dangerous bones out, leaving in the calcium bone-KNOBS and as much marrow as you can, mash with vegies, or blend vegies into puree, stir in meat. Freeze in foil for t.v. dinners.
SERVING- HAVE PET SITTER thaw l in the morning, either sealed in dish cabinet or thaw in fridge, that takes 8 hrs Or nuke and pour this meat/vegie mixture over kibble, if your cats handle grains well, (mine don't) stir and serve. Le Petit Pet Gourmet will love his TV dinner.
COOKING FRESH DAILY- I find it just as easy to thaw out two bullets of frozen turkey burger, cook it up with carrots, mash the carrot part with an hand masher before adding to crumbly meat. I never owned a Micro-wave, so what do I know from convenience? I cook for adult humans and I cook from scratch for cats, twice a day and never think it's too much work.
HERBS AS MEDICINE-Dr Art spoke of healing specific diseases with herbal extracts. If animal is incontinent or has pain over kidney area when massaged, one brews a tea of plantain, parsley, fennel, carrot (any part), celery, comfrey, ginseng, mint, oregano, thyme, PLUS, and most important, all kinds of diuretics like cornsilk, uva ursi, and give by teaspoon. Puss probably won't drink it in her water dish but put it there anyway and prevent her getting garden or toilet water.
For animals with kidney problems, who have pain when massaged there, cut down on protein by extending meat with vegetarian proteins: tofu, greens, carrots, cauliflower, beets or other non oxalic-acid vegies and avoid dry kibble and high ash tuna or fish. How to make these foods appetizing to pet? MIX with some meat, give aroma with onions, olive oil, and garlic.
Dr. Art went on to talk about:
FATAL CAT VIRUSES: BABY CATS grown in a group GET a most often fatal, foul-smelling DIAHARREA called viral ENTERITIS. Panleukemia. This is in the adult cats, possibly the mother because they were not given vaccinations against it when they were young. It is always fatal. And it is fast. Vomiting, no appetite, diaharrea, Diphasic fever, (two peaks), second one takes the kitten. Or, they get DISTEMPER, (the fatal headcold). They get these two diseases around the time the mother starts to wean them when they lose their mother's milk-carried antibodies. That's at the 5 week point.
These are the two serious diseases in the cat world, the real killers. They are not hard to tell apart. It's distemper if fever, raspy breathing, lung congestion is present along with foul-mucus, suppurating eyes, swollen lymph glands, a bad odor from mouth and in room. If distemper is suspected, it is highly contagious by saliva, breath, hands, other pets, even the owner's hands, also through the area itself, so quarantine the sick cat. At first sign of any diease in a tribe, throw all adult cats out into yard, seal the house. Keep the mother and babies inside. I wash the cat boxes out, sun them, give house cats new cat boxes. The weaning period of kittens is dangerous as when milk departs, that's when the milk-conferred immunity also departs. For that reason, try to keep over feeding the mother and get her to take her children into 8 weeks of nursing and magic milk. It's possible. But not if you gang feed, because many cats will beat her to the gobble. So, feed all the other adults outside, feed dear Mama who's nursing her Double rations and do it inside. That milk is protection for the babies. Even if you fed the kitten the best Gerbers meats, there is no antibody in it. When you take a 5 week baby off milk and start feeding it meat, you are asking for trouble. DOUBLE FEED MOTHER and use her for kitten food and only her and you have a chance of getting a kitten to an age where it can beat the dreaded panleukemia.
Because all cats destroy furniture, mess carpets, I always keep cats in the part of house with linoleum. I am lucky enough to have a separate breakfast room with a lot of furniture for perching on top of. The cats don't have to get under foot in the kitchen. They can use a window to get into a large, fenced garden. In summer the windows are open; in Winter they are sealed but the cat can go out the back porch door which has a 'cat door' in it.
Year round I have blankets, towels on the floor, a carpet, and a lot of cartons and baskets lined with towels. Their laundry gets done regularly with bleach in the water. Everything gets hung in the sun.
TO CLEAN AREA: Cats are sent into the garden. Shut doors. Floors must be swabbed in hot water, soap with a half cup bleach minimum, added to a bucket of water, to remove germs or other, later litters can be affected. Always remove all pets while bleaching a room and for several hours afterwards. The fumes will give them compromised immune systems and lung infections. Just what they'll do to you if you clean a shower, for instance and inhale too much bleach.
THE CAT BOX QUESTION: Cat litter boxes contain microbes and spread disease onto kitty's paws, and paws go in mouths. Boxes must be bleach-cleaned weekly and waste-cleaned daily, by picking up waste with a plastic bag over your hand. Throw waste into a larger plastic bag. Try to use 'cat doors', allowing cats access to yard and avoid cat boxes entirely. Cat boxes really are primitive and spread disease.
In Winter time, we all must use cat boxes full of sand or litter as cats will not go out on a cold night. As I have never found the extra money in my wallet for expensive plastic cat boxes and liners, I like disposable cat boxes made from juice carton-bottoms from supermarket displays. I line them with plastic so there's no soaking the linoleum, then a newspaper, then fill with 1" cat sand. We use them for 2 days then dispose of the whole thing. Then my son gave me four cat boxes as a gift. This allows me to SUN TWO for a week while I USE two, then interchange. Wash the dirty one after it's dumped, sun it for a few days.
Kittens have their own, smaller boxes because I don't want them in contact with diseases from the adult box. I make it by razor cutting a small door in a very small box, lining with foil, newspaper then sand. Many diseases are litter-born so don't let kittens get near an adult litter box. Dont let adults use the kitty litter box and they will try to.
Unless you are really prepared to clean litter boxes regularly, best is to train cats to go outside in the yard and let them use the flower beds. But cats are practical creatures. They cannot be bothered to go outside when the weather is chilly. Kittens can't be bothered, period. It is important to train kittens early about boxes, by making them available. Every time a kitten finds a new place to go, I plop a litter box lined with newspapers there. Kittens don't get sand in their litter boxes first week of toilet training. For two reasons. One is, they chew sand. The second is, SAND means 'TOILET' to older cats, and would encourage older cats to use the boxes I meant for kittens. So I only give kittens newspapers at first. I put the kitten section of house FAR from the cat box section. NONETHELESS, kitties are so smart, they find the adult cat box anyway!
DISEASES! Kittens with the diaharrea or distemper lung/eye mucus disease have a high mortality rate. It takes kittens 2-5 days to die so as they reach 5 weeks of age and mother is trying not to give them milk, you must start DOUBLE FEEDING MOM, watching the babies with a hawk eye for signs of good appetite. Any nausea, vomiting or diaharrea, you are going to have a visit from the viral bad fairy. You have to realize you have diaharrea (the smell is best indicator for me, it doesn't smell like usual evacuation. ) Juveniles and Adults can live longer. REALIZE they are ill and instantly start the cure phase.
The cure for enteritis or diaharrea involves rice mush (rice gruel) with acidophilis powder, cayenne, garlic, ascorbate in it. (GRUEL or MUSH RECIPE GIVEN BELOW.) If a sick cat is getting trampled you can place the ill member of litter in a separate basket with a heating pad set on low UNDER several layers of newspaper, then several layers of toweling. Boxes are good as they prevent drafts. You have NO IDEA how many drafts are on floors that you never feel!
Kittens are 'given to the mother for friendship, not feedings. FELINE ENTERITIS makes all appetite depart. They will not nurse. Fever also makes any animal prone to being cold. It exhausts them, gives them chills. Sick cats of any age should have a heating pad placed in their quarantine area, set on 'low,' with many towel layers of thick fabric firmly stretched over it to avoid overheating them. Make certain room is draught (draft) proof. Get down on floor and see what cold swirling air hides there. Blanket your windows and cracks under doors. Most draughts come UNDER doors. TOWEL the cracks up. If there is FELINE ENTERITIS I also lock all adults out of the house. Mothers and sick kitttens are inside house, ALONE.
ONE MORE THING, when kittens are cured, put them outside, too, for a few hours while you use bleach/water on all floors. CARPETS have no reason to be in a cattery! You can't bleach them!
DIET FOR DISTEMPER-This is something that mostly hits kittens. They are very quickly without appetite and will not nurse with their mother. They barf and flow from the bowel. ALTHOUGH they do not want to eat, you must try to get thick brown rice GRUEL down them to STOP UP THE BOWEL. Beside mother's feedings, the attempt to heal distempered animals will involve oral feedings at 3 hr intervals. It will involve a thick slugey GRUEL, like a paste almost. That is instant PLUG UP. Between meals a soup or broth made of celery for natural salt and carrots/onions for natural sugar. And give them electroylyte solution like pedialyte.
Mix gruel paste with egg yolks, pureed meat, or Gerbers chicken for substance and boiled cracked-bone broth for calcium. Add parsley, thyme, oregano, garlic which are viricides, disease healers and squeeze some raw garlic in at the end. Puree or strain and give every two hours with a rubber baby spoon or eyedropper. Take care food isn't aspirated. Food can't be solid, must be mushy-wet as feverish cats 'dry up' their food and become constipated. They get 'stopped up' with solid foods, then die from constipation. So give electrolyte water (pedialyte) every hour or give Rose Hips in juice between meals. No milk is given a mucusy cat as milk produces mucus.
For cats with colds, one can experiment with raw chlorophyll juices, freshly extracted from parsley, celery, with a little carrot in it as well. But kittens with enteritis can't have juice of any kind.
DIET FOR FELINE ENTERITIS- This is always the first disease to hit kittens around weaning time. Loose bowel kittens who are NOT NURSING, who are barfing their last meal, mother's milk of course, who can't keep that meal down, who may be evacuating liquidy stools, must instantly have thick brown rice gruel to stop them up and an electrolyte solution to replenish body's fluids, (i.e. a vegie broth made of celery for natural salt, onions and carrots for sugar. Put some ROSE HIP cocktail in, too.
GRUEL-The main food for a loose bowel cat is gruel. The idea is to 'stop' the cat up. Use basmati/or brown rice to make it, give it with spoon or if babe is tiny, dropper fed. Rice gruel is the healing food par excellence for diaharrea in animal or human.
GRUEL RECIPE: Toast or parch your brown rice on a thick skillet. Not too hot or it will get brown. Turn it golden. Some grains will pop like popcorn. Cool grain. Grind in your coffee grinder. I have a tiny MOLINEX. I wipe out all coffee, from lid and base. Dry. Maybe a blender could turn it into fine powder. Use a strainer to sift out the larger crumbs. Take the fine flour that results, drop into boiling spring water, as if you were making mush. Add pinch salt and little honey to replace what body has lost. Boil slowly for 3-5 minutes, til thick. Keep extra mush covered in fridge, heat when needed, thinning with more spring water as required.
GRUEL ADDITIVES: At serving time, I add raw garlic, from garlic press, just a tiny bit, a/ 18th of a tsp, a pinch of red cayenne powder, a little cod liver oil from a capsule and a little ascorbate. (Vit c powder.) I always have ascorbate in the house. Any healthfood store has it. I keep it for when I serve kids grape or fruit punch soft drinks, I add a tsp to every glass! Any headcold in a kid, they get ascorbate in their drink.
Dr. Art recommended goat's milk yogurt which you can make yourself with a qt. of goat milk and some culture from a container of plain yogurt and which puts the right kind of bacteria inside the cat to fight the WRONG kind which is making him ill. Cow's milk based yogurt would be fine if that's all you've got. But I use acidophilis powder, now available in capsules at the healthfood store, always kept on ice by the way, breaking one open on each serving of mush.
There are other things to do for diaharrea. One source suggests hot astringent enemas. A mixture of geranium, ginger root, mint, strawberry leaves, comfrey, magnolia bark made into a tea, eyedroppered warm up the rectum of animal and orally, too, (but with a different eyedropper). GIVE LIQUIDS BY MOUTH only if cat is conscious enough to swallow. Be careful as if he's groggy, he'll breathe in any food or liquids and die of suffocation or pneumonia. In sick cats, the swallowing reflex sometimes disappears. Make certain food is hot or cold so that he feels it in her mouth. If it's body temperature it will be inhaled into his lungs.
FOR ADULT CATS: You can FAST older pets, fatter pets, but when animal has diaharrea and is fasting already, in a sense, because there's no food absorption from diaharrrea, his body is being STRIPPED of minerals, sugars, salts. Give an electrolyte replacing solution such as pedialyte or if no money for that, sweetened salted vegie broth. That's what we do for any mammal with diaharrea. Children in third world countries always get diaharrea! ERT! ERT! (Electrolyte replacement therapy!) is necessary. Sweet/salty/minerally.
Give fresh, raw Chlorophyll juice, diluted for minerals, high energy. Juice is made up of parsley, watercress, kale, comfrey, romaine, and other gentle greens that have none of the highly laxative oxalic acid found in spinach/chard, a few tsps in their bowl of food. It is always dangerous to make a pet drink things. They aren't intellectuals they don't know a human is safe. They're young, so they're panicky and THEY BREATHE IN THEIR LIQUIDS. They don't do it when they lick up their liquids, but when you hold them and put liquid in their mouth, they don't get it. They are inhaling!
Kittie's immune system can attack and beat the enteritis virus if we can plug her bowels and prevent her dehydrating while she's ill. When puss starts to recover, she can have thicker soups and solids. 2 tbsp of vegetables and Gerbers pureed meat and carrots mixed might be a meal. If you KNOW there is NO salmonella in your egg yolks, raw yolks with warm milk might be good for a cat that was half way recovered. Meat/egg by themselves are too rich for a really sick cat. For them it's better to feed vegetable/meat and bone broth. Simmer meat/vegies in pure water 1/2 hr, low temp. Cool and give by eyedropper or murine bottle. Someone must feed sick puss at night, so shifts must be arranged in the family with feedings at 3 a.m. and at dawn.
FIVE REASONS WHY NOT VETS? 1.) Sick Animals could not get such loving care at a vets. 2.) the strangers would alarm them, give them the 'blues.' 3.) no vet ever heard of any of these holistic remedies! 4.) Vets give antibiotics, vaccinations and other horrors that kill even healthy cats! 5.) HUGE FEES! And Vets charge you even if animal dies, so why should they bother to learn to do things right? They got the Vet degree and you don't.
So you're probably going to have your best swack at healing them, at HOME where five family members can take turns with the meals every two hours. The 3 a.m. feeding is the hard one. Give it to someone who's not an insomniac, the type that can go back to sleep after an earthquake. Dad if he's a saint. Or a teen boy with an alarm clock.
If cash is tight, you need to give this a try and cure your cat without a vet. Spend your cash on the human members. A vet costs 50$ a visit, minimum, hundreds for boarding. An animal, for all we love her, is still an animal. If the budget for humans is tight, perhaps an animal shouldn't be ON it.
EYE PROBLEMS: Many otherwise healthy kittens get drippy eyes. Clean eyes with mild boric acid or mild lemon water solution on a cotton ball. Failing to find that in medicine chest, use hot water some lemon juice in it. (Put 1/2 tsp boric acid powder in l cup boiling water. Keep in jar. Pour onto cotton ball so jar doesn't get infected.) Golden Seal, Yellow Dock, Eye-bright herb tea, VERY diluted lemon juice (.005%) or codliver oil can also be used to clean eyes to prevent bacterial infections from starting in this 'culture.' If the drip turns into conjunctivitis, use Neosporin ointment original formula only, topically. That means OPEN EYE, PUT A wad inside, close eye and rub i a circle. Dose ROSE HIP COCKTAIL, by mouth. (slice red rosehips into OJ, leave covered, overnight) When one kitten didn't respond to Neosporin, I used CALENDULA spray, available at the Healthfood store. It worked miracles for me when nothing else would. I sprayed it into the eye, then rubbed the Neosporin over it. This flower has amazing healing properties. I could tell you about the time the pitbull nipped off my cat's tail how it healed that wound and skin grew over entire stump because calendula will seal any wound!
The EYE INFECTION SYMPTOMS that go with most virus can blind baby cats. Art said that boric acid wash, eyebright tea, mild lemon juice in distilled water could be used. Iodine in mild solution also works, while codliver oil, NEOSPORIN or other 'over-the-counter,' triple antibiotic ointments are placed under lid, then with eyes closed, rubbed thoroughly into eye socket. Make certain the Neosporin has no lidocaine or numbing agents. Get 'original formula'. The 28 gram tube costs the same as a 2 gram tube the vet sells. Another incident of VET RIP OFF that turns me off the tribe. When I caught the conjunctivitus from cats, I used the neosporin trick and instantly cured it in me. And realized the stuff felt GOOD. No problem with its use!
PARASITES. Dr. Art told me that even a holistic vet likes a DRONSIT pill or shot for tape worms but I expelled a tape worm once, years ago in Mexico, after a snack of pumpkin seeds. So give this age old remedy a try. For all kinds of Worms, try Green or black walnuts hulls, garlic, pumpkin seeds ground up in water, then soaked in that water overnight, given in food or raw, strained and by eyedropper or teaspoon on an empty stomach. Pomegranate root bark is another worm killer and we all know someone with a pomegranate tree. Piperazine preparations (the active ingredient in pumpkins seeds) bought over the counter (most worming products have it) will also do the job. What ever you use, you must mark it on a calendar and repeat it l5 days later to get the hatched baby worms which you couldn't GET when they were eggs. I am always checking stools with a magnifier and flash light to see when I must repeat.
MITES IN EARS:-Use a Q-TIP with a little extra cotton on it, clean out inner ears. See blackness? Make a bug killer potion. I make my own Q-tips with sturdy malia tree twigs, cheap sale cotton balls. If you suspect mites or little bugs to live inside a cat's ears, making a black wax, (fecal matter) use garlic/lemon juice on the Q-tip. Or if you can afford it, a jar of powdered boric acid powder. This KILLS bugs. Or Neem Oil or tea tree oil both parasite killers, or mix some black walnut extract in. I've mixed all of the above, used home made q tips. Bigger than store bought. I use hyacinth sticks, which growers use to stake plants, florists shops have them. So do garden shops at Walmart, Home Depot. They're Reusable. Twist a half cotton ball on tip. Swirl in ear without touching eardrum HARD!!!
CONSTIPATION IN KITTIES-Constipation in kitties isn't necessarily true constipation but can be from intestines doubling back into themselves closing passages and is quite mortal. Give kittens a large box they can crawl around in, so even when SMALL, they get plenty of exercise. Don't let cats lie on each other. Give the mother cat room. Do not give constipating civilized foods to a baby cat. When young cat leaves nest, starts running around house, initiate meals of pureed meats mixed with vegetables or Gerbers vegies and meats mixed. Give a good diet from start; If a kitten shows symptoms of a hard, distended stomach, is constipated, and you suspect intestinal 'doubling up,' massage may help return intestines to place. Surgery is the only other alternative, and it would cost a ransom, so massage your heart out.
KIDNEY DISEASE is the Achilles Heel of all OLDER CATS:PREVENTION: Low Ash diet. Give no dry kibbles and cut down on FISH. Why does every generic, canned slim price catfood on the market have fish as its sole ingredient? Why isn't the ash content written on packages of cat kibble??? Because consumers don't scream at petfood producers. If you love animals, start writing angry letters. Meanwhile, load up on sale cuts of steak, sale chicken, (I can find 5 lb bags of drums or leg quarters for .29c or .39 c an lb quite frequently); sale lamb is not possible. Pork is dangerous. In the old days I did not give pink meat to my pets or family as parasites are endemic in meat but the illnesses kept coming. So finally I said, parasites are not as mortal as disease and I went with the raw meat, with no bad results. Of course, I always smudge food with raw garlic after it's cooked, which kills parasites. Half the time I gave their meat and fish raw, half the time cooked.
With all meats, remove fat, toss away, freeze the meat in 1-day ration size packages. Go fishing; save junk fish or bait fish. Always de-bone fish. Fish bones are more lethal than modern chicken bones. What you might do is simmer, cool, large amounts of fish, then STRAIN, add boiled pureed carrots, vegies, then package in foil or plastic, freeze in small cubes. Microwave before serving. Be certain to get all fish bones out of final product as one tiny bone can kill a pet.
The DISEASES which Vet sees most often are:
DISEASE SYMPTOM CAUSE CURE
1.SKIN visible weak kidneys water/brushing
2. Heart shortness of breath fat/sedentary exercise
3. KIDNEY incontinence overload o'protein VEGIES!
4. FLEAS, scratching bugs flea comb/bathe
FLEAS! This last is the problem that bothers pet owners most. To fix, buy a few Essential oils like citronella, pennyroyal, (NEVER directly on skin, just on fur) cedarleaf, teatree, eucalyptus. Or make by boiling leaves, cooling, pouring off the fragrant oils which rise to top of water. Fingered through coat, placed on all four paws, and different pulse spots on the body, they will actually repel fleas. Or use 'erigeron', Canadian fleabane on the cat's coat or get 'Wooly and Wild' spray (available at 800-368-5057.)
THINGS FOR CAT TO TAKE INTERNALLY FOR FLEAS: mash a garlic clove and Vitamin B-1 tablet into every pet meal. I use dried garlic powder added after food is cooked as it's so easy to use. FLEA REMEDIES FOR YOU: If you are bitten, put itchy ankle under hot water faucet 5 seconds, as it removes itch.
I find that my kittens attract l0 times the fleas as adults so I use them as vacuum cleaners for my house. Every other day I bathe the kitten. (I only do this in hot weather, i.e. flea season). A kitten bath is different from an adult bath in some ways but not this one: YOU PUT ON A SHOWER CAP as fleas can leap. For kitties, you pre-fill sink with body temp water with one drop of detergent in it. You have a second sink filled with very HOT WATER todrop flea bodies in. Slide kitty in up to the ears but not allowing water in ears.Caress the spots his mother usually licks so he realizes this is a grooming exercise not an attempted assasination by drowning. Hold him there if he's ok with that, until fleas come to the tummy, throat. WHile I wait, I soap him with any bar soap or shampoo. The fleas will come to top, as they move immediately to the highest point of kitten's body. Pick off all you can, letting them fall into other sink so they cook instantly. Leave a flea in HIS sink, they swim for him. Got as many as you can see? Wrap cat in teatowel, carry him out into the sun where your reading glasses and another bowl of very hot water awaits. Root around til you see that glint of copper. Pick off the fleas. They can't move because they're wet, fur is wet. It's like shooting ducks in a barrel. Towel him dry roughly. He likes it. Return to his mother. Do all the cats in the litter once or even twice a day. They will clean the house. Change their bedding regularly so eggs can't hatch there.
ADULT CATS:In warm weather, shampoo cats. Get two sinks of body temperature water ready; one for soaping, another with hot water for murdering fleas. In Winter, set up a towel or two and floor heater full blast, get bathroom warm, bring puss in and lock the doors. In summer sunny lanai works.
You will be using either diluted dish detergent, diluted human shampoo, diluted pet flea shampoo or plain old bar soap. Immerse puss slowly, talking in a friendly voice, soap him all over. Use an old toothbrush to loosen flea refuse on lower spine tail top which accounts for that red color that comes off the cat. Then rinse him in second bucket or sink, or tub. A two sink kitchen basin is great. After rinsing him, squeeze him off, wrap him in a towel, sit down to pick individual fleas off. I peel back towel a little from his face, start on top of head. Then peel back from neck, work that area, then shoulders. Fleas are suffocating under towel and trying to crawl up to the head, so this method peels him slowly, like a banana.
Towel him dry if it's cold. If day is warm, go outside in sun, pick off fleas that are suddenly immobilized and quite visible. They're the color of copper pennies, very shiny. Squash on table surface or newspaper with fingernail or drop into a pot of hot water with l drop soap in it.
On cold days, (rare that fleas are a problem then) plop him in front of heater and rub him dry and search for stragglers. If you want, you can use a dry brush to fluff his fur but they'll fluff automatically unless there's soap left unrinsed. I do one cat after another while I've got the set up, changing the water for every cat.
A kitten will usually float happily in the warm water of this bath. An older cat who has not been bathed regularly all his life is an anxious customer, and you should wear thick rubber, old, torn dishwashing gloves that you've saved for this, and talk calmly but be fairly quick with the two dunk-scrub-rinse- scrub movements.
EARS! I make poisons for ear mites, as they're endemic! I use sliced green walnuts of the black walnut tree, the summer walnut fruit like the GREEN LAYER around the central, hard nut is very toxic for bugs. I mix it with lemon juice, acid kills mites. I add crushed garlic, tea tree oil, fashion a big Qtip out of a hyacinth stick and half cotton ball, go in gently and swab the mite filled ear with this stuff. KILLS the mites instantly.
YOUNG KITTENS: From the 7th day of life on, I take kittens into the light. put on my glasses and pick off fleas. I do it with a cup of water beside me. On-Kit-fleas are much faster than on-adult fleas because they're drinking all that young blood and fur is dry and thin so they can really scoot. So, here's the trick. I wet my fingers, rub a dollop of water on the tummy, which immobilizes fleas, then pick. Fleas scurry away from light so quickly turn over kitten, rub at those scurrying fleas. Abundant water on your finger stops them in their tracks. Now, pick them off, into cup of liquid that paralyzes them. (1 drop soap does it.) When you put kit on his back, exposing tummy, fleas run to the other side. When you put kit on its stomach, fleas zip back to original side. Flip him on his back and fast, wet the bug-club down before they can scurry. Do this daily. This will keep your adults clean automatically but make the kitten dizzy as hell.
FLEA COMB METHOD: These combs are expensive but they sort of work. Get the finest tines available. Fill sink with hot water. Stand him in a shoebox near sink edge, left hand on him so he doesn't ever jump out then fall. Comb with right, One long stroke over side, Then drop him in the box for safety while you quickly, with left hand, pick the fleas off comb into hot water. Go back to the box before he’s clambered out. Stroke down under his tail to ankles. Clean comb. Then do cheeks, top of head, under neck, then tummy. Fleas travel so keep turning him, combing. Within a year of this, I had no fleas on kittens anymore. I had beat the flea problem!
If you have enclosed yard and front patio, very high fences, lockable gates, feel free to make your cats live outdoors in warm weather. If you have wild dogs, foxes, wolves, coyotes, possums in your area, (possums will actually eat kittens), don't keep any cat litters outdoors, day or night. If you have male cats, don't let them get near the kitties. They will eat any kitten under three weeks of age. They consider kittens a tasty meat.
I keep all mothers/litters in the house first six weeks. If cats are in patio or yard, give adults a door to get inside in a hurry. Dog doors work fine. Leave no kittens outdoors, ever. If an outdoor cat has a litter, keep her inside until they're 3 weeks old, then, in the patio, arrange super market carton boxes so that a multi-wind shielded home is arranged, cover with a canvas to keep boxes from moving, and to insulate as well as shelter from drafts. You will create a floor of stacked newspapers, carpets, towels or rags, with the heating pad underneath the rags if anyone in the litter looks ill. But if there are possums about, cats must be 4 mos old, minimum to escape being eaten. Possums can climb into that fort and just munch their way thru it.
CITY PATIOS: The problem is dogs can crash over fences, come down the sides of property get into back yards. Another problem is neighbors who let their dogs walk without leashes. Those dogs can smell the kittens and will bound into your yard or patio and snap and shake and kill them in one second, so you must have gated patios. Usually dogs will not leap over fences, but don't count on it. A dog can swim through a tall hedge, using leaves and branches for support.
As I once had pitbulls in houses next door, it was necessary to show each cat what's there. Hold him on your fence top and call the dog. Growl at the dog. Make the dog insane. Throw rocks at him. Make him growl so the cat recognizes an angry beast is on the other side of the wall or fence. Dogs will kill even adult cats. NEVER fail to feed your cat or he'll try to sneak past the dog next door to get the kibble.
THE INDOOR CAT FLEA QUESTION: Don't banish babies to outdoors because of flea-fears. Let small babies live inside. So many people are afraid of cats being inside due to fleas, and don't realize how easy it is to get rid of this bug if you know a few tricks. And how hard it is to bring back to life a chomped on kitty.
Do your flea cleaning daily. Use baby kittens as vacuum cleaners. Yes! It's a well known fact that fleas prefer young, sweet, tasty kittens. They will stay off adults. If you comb babies every few hours, you will, be colecting every bug in the house.
Adult fleas lay eggs, so vacuum twice weekly. Put a chip off a moth block inside the vacuum bag. Shake eggs off tablecloths where cats sit, into bath tub, then clean all table cloths in the washer, on hot' setting.'
Flea collars are a very bad idea as these deadly pesticides put a terrible load on your cat's immune system meaning all the really funky diseases can get in the door. Putting poison next to the breathing orifices for 24 hrs a day is toxic on the liver too and may account for rising cat cancers.
To maintain a bug-free cat, between baths, get a flea comb with the FINEST teeth available, only found at pet stores. Comb the animal. I stand cat on the ledge of the sink so fleas fall into soapy water. With two fingers, I slide along tines, pull fleas off comb into hot water so they fall in sink. If outside, they fall in a pan that has l drop detergent in a huge pan of hot water so fleas can't crawl out. When you de-flea a cat in the sunlight, you can see every flea. Their penny brown color leaps out at you. It especially helps if his fur his wet as there's no fluff to hide the bug and he can't move in the wet fur.
To create a non-flea environment, throw salt in the carpets, never diatamacious earth (silica) which destroys the pet's lungs through silicosis or 'black lung' and kills the cat as well as the flea. Vacuum the entire house regularly and put a mothball in the bag or throw the bag OUT, afterwards. Do not use spray poisons or gases as remnants will kill cats, you and your children as well as the fleas and it's serious overkill when you think of how easy it is to work a cat over for fleas and how much fun it is for a loving owner to groom his baby cat. See, fleas are not a real problem. PET OWNERS are and DISEASE is.
Let's look at the serious offenders, the CAT'S MOST FREQUENT DISEASES:Distemper (the common cold run rampant,) and diaharrea.(viral). You must catch these early or they are fatal. For distemper, when the cat first starts having supperation from eyes, before he is lying around listlessly. If the serious diseases get a head start, they are very hard to cure. Immediately start regular tonics that lift the immune system: rosehips in orange juice, chlorophyll juice. Or make a solution by soaking onions in ripe lemon juice & water, strain, serve in eyedropper or teaspoon. Do all three each day. Keep his room warm and get on knees to feel for drafts. Force feed if cat doesn't want to swallow by giving homemade soups. Most of all, keep room warm. If you have your head in the clouds and don't notice the animal is getting ill and the first thing you see is a very sick pet, flailing around on a cold floor, confine him on a heating pad in a high-walled box. Pad is set on low, several towel thickness over it so he won't 'cook.' Keep him hydrated and fed. I often play Chopin or Mozart on the radio, 24 hours a day.
FOR DIAHARREA: as soon as you see a kitten making liquid stool, about the time of weaning, 6 weeks, make toasted rice gruel. Slip thousand percent diluted human antibiotics like penicillin or sulfa pills in the Electrolyte solution ---a sweet and salty liquid that you give between meals which can be orange juice or apple for sugar, or lemon juice with added sugar, or vegetable broth. I add celery juice for the salt required. I also add a few drops soy sauce to each ration of his gruel as it creates body salts.
TO PREPARE GRUEL: Toast brown rice on a thick pan, until some grains pop, all is lightly toasted; grind into a flour in the blenderjar. Sweeten lightly & boil in spring water w. few drops soy sauce or salt, until thick. Store in fridge; reheat as needed. Give by teaspoon. Gruel will 'stop' up the cat. Give no proteins to a cat w. diaharrea. If all this seems too much work to you, in a pinch, Gerbers baby cereals are good. Usually the kitten's own immune system will nail the nasty intestinal bacteria within a few days. If you give antibiotics, be sure to give yogurt to him when he gets well, to restore intestinal bacteria.
Now, for that big problem, IMMUNE SYSTEM DEFICIENCY. One in 6 American cats has one of the two deadly feline leukemias, says the IDEXX Corporation of Portland who surveyed 1,500 vets in the USA. 7.4% had Feline Immune deficiency virus, or FIV and 13.3 % had Feline Leukemia, or FELV. Both cause impairment of the immune system, says Alice Wolf, a vet researcher at Texas A&M University. I've heard that cats can live fairly long lives with feline AIDS disease, especially if not exposed to another sick cat. Vets do expensive testing to see if your cat has AIDS. If it does, they recommend putting it down. Another reason not to go to a standard, allopathic vet. I've had immune system compromised animals live to ten, not the usual twenty, and they did not infect other cats.
I raised one cat from birth, when she was abandoned by her mother. I fed her cow's milk, which ruined her liver. I found out as when this, my most favorite cat of my entire life, Peaches, became listless and weak, I took her to meet Dr Art, the holistic vet. He told me she has a toxic liver, obvious with her bad breath and rotten teeth, but unusual for a year old cat. At that time, I was still feeding canned foods. But I stopped instantly. And never gave canned foods to any cat, ever again.
On another occasion, a Queen had a huge ball under her skin, the size of a tangerine. I didn't know what it was, so I took her to a vet. The vet told me he would have to operate as it was a boil. The operation would cost $300. As soon as I knew what it was, a simple BOIL, or a big pimple, really, I took her home, used hot compresses for a few days until it was about to burst. Then, while I held a hot towel on the boil one afternoon, pus shot out. I pressed her skin, expelling it all, then sprayed calendula on it, (I make my own, keep it in fridge) which closed the wound. The wound drained clear and healed and she lived for years after.
Boils in cats are as easy to treat as a splinter in a human. One uses wet-heat poultices (herb tea soaked into a washcloth and used as a steaming compress). After a few hours or maybe a day or two of that, this boil will explode so keep cat confined away from furniture and rugs. Best is to anticipate the proper degree of thinness of the boil's skin and do a last steam as it's ready to blow, facing boil down onto newspaper. Boils absolutely do not require surgery. That vet exaggerated in order to get 300$ which I obviously didn't give him. So add hot poultices to your methods. It may take several days of 20-minute hot soaks but suddenly the cat will get this urge to scratch and the boil will be ready to burst. Let it drain and medicate. The gash always heals easily, and I have learned. You don't need to bandage it. These holes seal themselves automatically especally if you use calendula tea or calendula spray available at HFS, on wound. Calendula SHUTS the wound by magic.
When Walter, one of my cats went in the neighbor's yard, he was confronted with a pitbull who had already killed Good Golly Miss Molly. Walter tried to flee over the fence but his tail was shredded. I didn't realize until a day later. The smell of rot was horrific. We amputated, with pruning shears but forgot to pull back and leave extra skin. Three inches from his butt, he had a cross section of tail an inch wide, like a silver dollar, all bare raw, red meat and bone. We should have pulled back a lot of skin before we amputated to have something to work with. But lo, there is one magic herb that will GROW skin. We used calendula spray daily, with a little Neosporin on top, as calendula makes any wound close, and in a week, the skin had grown over the stump. Of course, we bandaged after spraying and changed bandage daily but there never was a hint of infection. And now his name is Stumpy and he's a happy little guy.
Immune System Deficiency is the serious threat to my cat tribe. It's genetic, inherited, environmental and prevalent. During the late 80's, I became aware that many cats grew to adult hood but had no ability to survive disease. Many survived a year or two but in my huge tribe of 30 cats, there were a lot of illnesses ping-ponging around so they couldn't have long lives. Later, when I began to feed frozen turkey burger with collards, all diseases stopped in my other cats and I realized an immune system cat could live ten years. Some of them lost the AIDS and became healthy again.
Twenty five years ago when I started keeping cats, I had four children. As a single mother, I couldn't afford to have any animal vaccinated, or to have any animal's blood lab tested and diagnosed, so I'm not certain what all they had. I know that whatever virus it was --it exploded into action, killing many kittens, at weaning time, when a cat will become most susceptible to opportunistic infections. In survivors, a localized infection sometimes settles in a specific body part, like the ear or eye or lung, causing life long organ infection, complete with pus exudes.
Vets maintain that cat diseases cannot be transmitted to humans but I disagree. I got mycoplasma pneumonia instantly when a cat sneezed into my eye. Never get within sneezing distance of a sick cat. Don't kiss a cat that has teary eyes, indicating a head cold. But worst is the lung disease, a mycoplasma spore carries it. In HUMANS a droplet of cat saliva gives an instant, very sore throat, l0 days of ghastly fever and a month of lung phlegm. Minocycline easily cures it but who can get it? NO ONE as not human doctors, not animal doctors, realize that is the sole cure for mycoplasma. And this bacteria can cause rheumatism. Don't put your hands to your eyes or nose after handling a cat or get too close to their breath. Wash hands and dispose of all kleenexes, cotton balls used on them.
Viruses are different from Mycoplasma. They LIVE for a considerable time on dishes so don't use human dishes for sick cats. And obviously, don't invite clawings or admittance of their body fluids into cuts on your hands. Your lymph glands will swell up like a football for a week. I had it happen, and it's scary. I hear humans even die of catscratch fever sometimes.
There is a great deal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Epstein Barre appearing now in humans, mystery viruses of lengthy duration that damage the human immune system. No one knows if pets are the Typhoid Marys, the guilty culprits, the carriers. They may well be.
I know I have been sneezed upon by cats and had my throat glands swell up within the hour, and stay swollen, keeping me violently feverish for l0 days. On the first occasion, it segued into a very phlegmy lung infection, which was nothing like any human disease I'd ever had in my life, but which was identical to the cat syndrome with the same unusual odor. Research proved it was mycoplasma pneumonia. Do a search on those words. On later occasions, my immune system learned to beat it, but it always took SEVERAL days of fever, sore throats, aching bones, listlessness which to me means that when it shows up in Puss, you will have to expect a l0-day regimen of heating pads, feedings and the one that's easiest to forget, l0 small, liquid meals a day.
A side bar about this disease. Subsequent to my getting ill the first time, Naturopathic Doctors detected a mystery virus in my thyroid, which caused my thyroid to become enlarged, over-secrete, giving me fast heartbeat and insomnia. These are the exact symptoms cats get from this virus. I was scanned for only one virus, Toxoplasmosis, and there was none present so that's not what the virus was. I couldn't do scans on all the viruses possible so I worked on my own immune system with healthfood, raw juices between meals, and avoidance of my favorite dietary abuses: coffee and chocolate. The swollen thyroid abated but returns if I indulge in poor diet. What that tells me is that the virus is now resident in my thyroid. A friend who downloads alternative healing information from the internet found mention of Mycoplasma rampant in the animal kingdom as the cause of those phelgmy lung infections. In humans it is called walking phenumonia. Mycoplasma might be what I got from my cats. Mycoplasma bacteria is also the suspected agent in Gulf War Syndrome so it's no little gentle Hong Kong Flu. It will put you off your feet for ten days, enough time for the Iraqis to win the war, they thought.
At times I wish I'd never been given that first pregnant female cat, and I actually do not recommend that any family go LOOKING for animals. On the other hand, having cats has forced me to become a holistic healer and spend hours 'care-taking,' which I suppose, it could be argued, develops one spiritually. Bhakti Yoga, the Indians call that, yoking with God through devotion.
And, if I had a third hand, I'd say that during lonely times, cats are great companions although loneliness has a lot to recommend it too. Loneliness might attract one a HUMAN companion which would be the best pet of all; Someone to share some rent, food & vet bills which no cat I EVER saw would do. Having pets is work and sorrow. In tropical California my female cats have babies year round and half the kittens will wither through the mycoplasma lung disease or the eye mucus virus.
During the first years I had cats, I was too poor to neuter them. Finally, it became absolutely necessary. I borrowed the money and fixed only my females. That worked. My boys are hot toms but I keep them so filled with trytophan rich turkey burger that hot dreams are all they have.
During the years that I had huge cat tribes, certain kittens, upon weaning, got either the diaharrea disease, or the fever and phlegm lung disease. I lost a lot of them, and that made me grieve, but as my methods became sharper, more of them survived and finally, as disease survivors began to breed with one another, both parents having aquired antibodies, all of the kittens survived.
I'm getting better and better at springing into action when a cat first looks funny and that's the whole trick to helping one survive. SPEEDY RECOGNITION of illness is important. You cannot be in denial. 'Oh, he's not feeling well, maybe he'll get better.' CAT DISEASES are all killers. You have to NAIL THEM IMMEDIATELY with heating pads, raw vegetable juices w. lemon, raw meats, soups, avocado as a meal and the magic Rose Hips juice. You give light power foods and don't try to fast a kitten. They are growing at too ferocious a rate but if you feed broth every 2 hrs, they fight the disease at the same time as they grow. I give chlorophyll juices to convalescing kittens mixed with mashed avocado------making certain this fruit is never overripe, in which case avocados can be deadly.
Mullein leaves from the healthfood store, boiled into tea with onions are suited for lung expectoration in cases of those fevers and that lingering phlegmy-lung cats get. Fast the phlegmy lung in adult cats and do not resume l00% meat right away. Just as for humans, meat is overly acidic in reaction. Milk is worse ---dangerously mucus producing. Use meat as a flavoring for other vegie/tofu mixtures, when you resume solids.
You must feed kittens soup many times a day. For wee ones, a true fast is not a good idea. They are growing rapidly, even when ill. Grind all food and serve with the tiny, rubber covered spoon sold in super markets by baby food companies. You can fast older cats all day, but give one meal a day at bedtime. When he recovers, 3 small meals of 'food-lite' is a good idea: mashed carrots w. avocados, finely pureed with meat blood /broth and marrow. Tear apart a chicken, crush bones with a hammer, simmer with vegies. Always use protein foods that are pureed & don't involve husks, fat or indigestible skins. Gerbers babyfood-meats stirred half and half with Gerbers pureed carrots or stringbeans is excellent.
More and more I became like an ancient witch, sitting up nights with a candle, reading ancient cobwebby tomes on the power of foods and herbs, my lair strung with fragrant, drying buds, boluses and branches. By day I strolled the herb shelf at the healthfood store buying herb tea leaves by the ounce, storing them tightly wrapped in foil, then in an old 40's flour canister which I kept in the freezer, so they'd stay potent. Like a modern, techno-witch armed with puree/blend machines, eyedroppers and freezers, I watched my cats fatten and multiply as their person-mother wandered the ancient avenues of shamanism, brewing tisanes by the full moon.
At night we wandered in the garden, Peaches, Moon, Mousie, Starbuck, Annie, Good Golly Miss Molly, Siamo, Megan, Petunia, Kiss-Kiss, Walter Pidgeon, Bernie Birnbaum and his son Walter Birnbaum, Blanquito, Tizzy, Ethiopia, Bito and Binky, Rufus, Bandit, Natasha Snowflake, Jack, Tangarine, David, Precious, Emily, Carmen Cha Cha Cha, Ruby and Rebecca, and Harry Krishna, the Russian blue with seven fingers. We'd lift our heads, look up at the midnight sky and realize that the immense potency of those fiery stars overhead was exploding out of the tiniest atoms of the vegetables that grew beneath our feet.
I'd pick armloads of them: carrots and broccoli, steam it in the kitchen, add rosehip and peach leaf elixirs, pomegranate bark and garlic. They'd hear the blender whizzing and I'd get out the eyedropper and come after them ---and hear this explosion of paws as they'd all stampede under the bed and huddle together, their emerald eyes balefully glowing at me.
Cat aversion to human force and will is the final impasse for which the final holistic trick is ---take them firmly, as if they were helpless human babies, but be glad they have this scruff on the back of their neck for grabbing, which human babies don't. Grab their scruff as you cram this stuff down their throats, talk lovingly and peacefully about what good you're doing to them. Stuff their little fanged orifices with holistic goodies that God intended for human life and shun the canned goop that vets and multinational corporations tell you is good for them, and which continues to line somebody's pockets just as it lines and poisons your cat's gut. Any and all cui bonums must end with the owner, and the pet. Good luck with your furry friends. They were sent here for a reason. And it's not only that they are 'eye candy', it has a lot to do with how they will develop you as a resourceful, hard-working, caring human being.
HOW TO FIND A LOST CAT
PRODUCTS AND LITERATURE ON HOLISTIC ANIMALS: The Natural Pet Magazine --PO Box 22899 Milbourne FL 32902,
The Holistic CAT magazine, "Tiger Tribe" 1407 E College St. Iowa City (319 351-6698. Went broke. Old issues on EBAY.
For a great website on poisons in commercial catfood, go to and for a holistic book, read "Reigning Cats and Dogs," by Pat McKay 800-368-5057,
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