Pet Food Recall and Going Au Naturale

Fortunately, my furry children have not suffered the effects of the tainted pet food. We do feed our cats Eukanuba dry food and on one occasion a few weeks back, we gave them canned Eukanuba food as a treat. My brain is filled with too many pieces of useless information for me to remember exactly the type of food I purchased. But as I said, fortunately, we did not have to deal with poisoned food. Instead, we dealt with a blocked kitty.

As we have learned today, it appears rat poison might have been the culprit for the deaths of people's beloved pets. Initial reports indicate there are trace levels of aminopterin (rat poison) in the food. At this point, they are unable to confirm if this is the only contaminant. It appears the poison might have been in the wheat gluten contained in the pet food.

For a list of foods that were contaminated, please check here.

What I did not know about this was that all of these different pet foods come essentially from the same manufacturer. Call me naive, but I assumed each food manufacturer actually made their food. I thought Iams made Iams, Nutro made Nutro, and Eukanuba made Eukanuba. Perhaps they obtain the raw ingredients from Menu Foods and then they formulate the food into their own tasty morsels my critters enjoy gobbling up so much. Either way, it seems to be an odd practice.

My husband and I tend to eat as much organic and natural foods as possible. We do not eat meat and we refrain (usually) from eating processed food. Now I wonder: should I be doing the same with my critters? Certainly, I want them to be healthy and free of unnecessary chemicals; however, my creatures love their Eukanuba. Shrimpycat lifts her nose up to anything but this delectable goodness. Mr. Stinny really has no choice other than his pee pee food (Hill's Prescription S/D and Purina U/R). Finnegan, oh Finnegan. If he has the smallest taste of any food other than Iams Lamb and Rice, he experiences our favorite dogbursts. Finally, Donald and Lilly will eat nearly anything so they could be persuaded to slip on some Birkenstocks, roll in some patchouli, and dig into some groovy natural food.

I know when we have two-legged children, we will want to refrain from the processed neon-colored food that lines the grocery shelves and draws children in with their favorite cartoon du jour. As I'm sure you have realized, we love our non-human children tremendously. And of course, we do what is best for them. So now I am thinking, perhaps now is the time to begin "walk the talk" by switching them over to natural food so they too can reap the benefits of our natural hippy lifestyle.

Peace.