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Food? We eat Life's Abundance dry cat food from Trilogy/Healthy Pet. We've been eating this food since like 2001/2002. We have it autoshipped to us. If we eat dry stuff from the grocery store, or even stuff from Petsmart, we get the runs. Ever see three cats with the runs at the same time (let alone five)? Not fun. Mom says never again! And so we stay with LA dry. We have tried an endless variety of wet food, a big teaspoon (or in my case tablespoon) for breakfast and for dinner. We eat the dry all day if we want. We are currently rethinking our wet food selections, presently using Innova Evo. Mom always says there's more cat food around than human food. We also eat pumpkin at least every five or six weeks. It's good for hairballs and upset tummies. If the pumpkin doesn't fix the upset tummy, there's always a jar of beef baby food on hand. That works really well, yummy! Mom just has a hard time finding it in the grocery store aisles cause she has no clue where the babyfood aisles are in any store. Funny, the little babyfood jars are more expensive as the FF Medleys cans. Drink? We do not drink milk. We do not drink tapwater. Well, occasionally one of us slinks into the shower and slurps. But the rule is, distilled water only. We use a Drinkwell fountain, mom loves it, and we like to play with the water spout and pop our paws in the water and make a mess. Ozzzy goes ballistic when mom takes the fountain away to clean it. He will sit and wait until she cleans it and puts it back together. He'll take a slurp, then leave. For some reason it upsets him when she removes the fountain. Mom gets the distilled water by the gallon from Walmart. She adds Oxyfresh Pet Oral Hygiene Solution to every gallon so that helps keep our teeth happy. Vets? We have two, one closeby for shots and basics, another one whom we like very much but a little farther from home. The longer the ride, the more we howl. Mom's philosophy is "trust but verify." Research, make an educated decision on your vet selection and go from there. We do not believe everything we are told, we research, ask questions and make our own decisions on treatment if there's a problem. Thankfully all of our problems have been relatively minor. Ask fellow RagaMuffin breeders and meowmies for help, they're always available with advice and suggestions regarding medical stuff. Mom knows more about my breed and our cats than the vets do, so she always ask lots of questions and does a chest xray and bloodwork before a spay/neuter. Shots & Spaying/Neutering? The assumption here is all baby shots are given to the kitten prior to delivery to us. An ethical breeder will have the shot record well documented, and the breeder will provide a written contract for the kitty. Mom does Rabies shot at 6 months, no sooner, regardless of what the vet says. Mom only does one shot at a time, and she makes sure to stay home and watch us for the rest of the day, just in case. Nowadays the shots are given in the leg, so as to not cause cancer at another location. Thought is, if a cancer appears, the leg can be amputated. Awful thought, but that's better than having the shot between the shoulder blades. Spaying and neutering....as our clan are all indoor kitties, mom prefers to decide herself when we should be fixed. I, Owen The Rowdy, got to stay "whole" until 11 months. Usually she does this at 9/10 months, as she prefers to have us be as mature as possible before we go under the knife. Every vet she's ever had has argued her position and she understands their position, but we're her cats and we get fixed when she says we get fixed. FVRCP shot, we've had to have this shot when we got boarded up in PA but that was years ago, and it was a requirement. Since we don't get boarded anymore (there are too many of us), mom's held off on the FVRCP shot update until recently, cause Oops! was coming to town. So off we go on the hottest day of the summer/August, all four of us, to get our FVRCP shot. Not fun, but the staff sure got a kick out of all of us black and white critters. Litter? After many, many different kinds of litters and pans, we now use Arm & Hammer "multi cat" litter, clay based, and a Walmart baby pool for a litter pan. Works for us. And mom chuckles when three of us are in the 'loo' at the same time! Kodak Moment! She buys it in the 30 and 35 lb boxes and she hates to admit she doesn't change it weekly :) But our routine works for us and it's fun to flip that litter all over the place. No smidgey little litter pans for us, we are too BIG! And it's amazing how well the baby pool fits into the big jacuzzi :) |
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