Hi pals, Phannie has made the journey to her new forever home! Thank you to everyone who helped make this trip possible! Mom is so happy she was able to provide one last gift for her dear friend Leigh. She misses her friend but knows this final gift likely had her friend smiling from heaven! Here is a pic of Leigh with Phannie. She adored her!
Leigh with Phannie - July 2017
Beth has already fallen in love with Phannie! She has adjusted wonderfully to Beth’s home in Oregon and to her kids.
Beth with Phannie
The first thing she did when let out of the carrier at Beth's home is look for her food! Mom put it out on the floor since she wasn't sure where her food bowl would be kept for her.
Mom said Phannie traveled like a champ! She didn’t commit any of the 3 Ps. No pee, poop or puke in the car! She would meow for a little bit when first in the car until settling down for a nap. She was pretty good in the hotel room too. Although she did meow some, she enjoyed being out of the car for a bit.
Mom let her out of her carrier while at rest stops. Here it looks like she is checking out what's on the dash but actually she is trying to get to her treats!
Quick break in Utah. Mom kept Phannie in the carrier but she enjoyed the fresh air and seeing the birds and animals along the way.
Here's a few pics from each day in the hotels mom and Phannie stayed in along the way. She enjoyed running around and playing after long days in the car!
It is with a heavy heart that we must say that Nermie didn’t make the trip to Oregon. Mom learned a few days before she was scheduled to pick up the cats that Nermie had actually been missing from her friend Leigh’s house. The cats weren’t being checked on as often as mom was told they were. This breaks mom’s heart. Mom spent time over at Leigh’s looking for Nermie before starting the journey to OR and will continue to look for Nermie. Others in the neighborhood will continue to look for her as well. Please say positive thoughts for Nermie that she is found safe.
Hi there! Mom has a new love at Wayside and his name is Sunny. Sunny is a very handsome red and white male tabby who is timid when he first meets new people. Sunny came to Wayside from a hoarding situation. Like many cats that come from a hoarding situation, Sunny is shy and will need time to adjust to his new family.
Given time you will learn Sunny is an active 4 year old kitty that loves to play and enjoys attention.
He likes being pet and even gives head butts.
Visit http://www.waysidewaifs.org/ to learn more about Sunny. Or better yet, come on out to Wayside and meet Sunny in person.
I like that mom's getting out to Wayside more frequently again and helping other kitties find their forever homes. Although I'm not a Wayside alumni, sisfur Mia is. Wayside does a lot to help kitties and woofies find their forever family!
Uh Oh, mom found this article about free-feeding and she wants to share it! We are free-feeding kitties, but maybe not after mom read this article. Read for yourselves and tell us what you think in the comments below.
Free feeding could mean weight gain and possibly diabetes.
I brought Cheshire and Dervie in for their checkups the other day. The brothers are big boys. For the past year, I’ve been trying to get their weight down by putting less food out.
Alas, both boys had gained weight. Apparently, portion control doesn’t work for cats. Cheshire, our former runt, had morphed into a striped barrel with short legs, and we couldn’t figure out how it had happened.
My veterinarian could. Cheshire was a grazer, he said.
The Lowdown on Grazing
For cats, grazing is basically nibbling at their food off and on all day. It’s not exactly normal to them.
“The types of animals that graze are herbivores: goats, cows, horses, sheep and so on,” remarks writer JaneA Kelley. “They graze because their bodies are built to chew, digest, regurgitate, chew again and digest again…. Cats, on the other hand, are carnivores. Their stomachs are not designed for grazing.”
At first, free feeding — another term for grazing — seems like the best answer. If you work all day or have to be away for any length of time, there’s an ever-ready bowl of dry food available, and your feline will be fine until you get home.
It also makes life a little easier in a household with more than one cat. Most of my pet-sitting clients have more than one cat. Some of the cats get canned food, some of them don’t, but all of them have some kibble nearby. At one home, each of the five cats has her own bowl of dry food.
Getting a never-ending bowl of food is “like a human moving his recliner to a Las Vegas buffet.”
The problem with free feeding, explains Dr. Thomas Morganti, DVM, of the Avon Veterinary Clinic in Connecticut, is that every time your cat goes for that kibble, there’s an insulin spike. The pancreas can’t handle the long-term overload, and eventually you’re looking at a cat with diabetes.
Dr. Debora Lichtenberg, VMD, has explained here at Pets Adviser that offering all-day dry food is especially problematic: “Cats conditioned to the never-ending dry buffet are at risk for developing obesity, urinary problems and kidney failure, to name just a few of the top feline health risks of a dry food diet. It would be like a human moving his recliner to a Las Vegas buffet.”
That said, it really doesn’t matter what you feed your buddy: It’s the frequent feeding, not the type of food, that appears to be the problem.
This video from Jackson Galaxy helps explain the differences in feeding for cats:
Meal Feeding
Meal feeding is the solution, says the Cat Hospital of Chicago. “Start by picking up the food when you leave for the day,” the hospital advises, “and putting it down when you return. The cat(s) start to realize that the food will not always be available.”
With meal feeding, each cat receives “a measured portion of food, usually two or more times a day. He or she eats the food immediately in a meal fashion, as opposed to grazing on food all day. Each cat has his or her own dish, and sometimes his or her own eating area.”
A Counter Story
In February 2014, UPI published an article that seemed to contradict all this. “Fat cats can slim by ‘grazing’ their kibble all day,” claimed the headline.
At the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Science (ACES), researcher Kelly Swanson and his assistants found that upping “the frequency of meals fed per day, as well as offering meals that contained added dietary water, promoted more physical activity among cats.”
The felines in the four study groups all received the same amount of food; the only variable was thenumber of meals. Activity apparently increased two hours before each meal. “If they know they are going to get fed, that’s when they are really active, if they can anticipate it,” Swanson commented.
The point is, the cats were getting meals. Grazing had nothing to do with it. So, the headline turned out to be totally misleading.
Other Solutions
Cheshire. By: Mette Meyer
Put your cat’s dry food in “a rolling puzzle ball so he has to work for his meals,” says Kelley. “But just don’t load up a huge bowl of kibble and go about your merry way.”
Play with your cat. He’ll get a light workout, and you’ll have some quality bonding time.
No “extreme” diets. News flash: They don’t work for anybody. In fact, they can “produce serious abnormalities that may jeopardize the cat’s life,” according to The Cornell Book of Cats.
I’m taking a moderate approach. The food bowls go down early in the morning and stay down for a few hours; they reappear in the late afternoon, then disappear at bedtime.
Cheshire’s still looking anxious, but I assure him it’s worth it. Stay tuned for the before and after pictures.
Do you let your cat graze all day? In the comments below, tell us if you plan to change your cat’s feeding ritual. Why or why not? Also, if you enjoyed this article, you’ll love Pets Adviser’s email newsletter. It’s free to sign up, and you’ll be among the first to get alerts about major pet food recalls. New subscribers get instant access to our 40-page ebook — which has “secrets every cat and dog lover should know.” Learn more here.
So... what do you think? Should kitties be allowed to graze (free-feeders)? or should they have scheduled feeding times? Mom works full-time and volunteers quite a bit on top of work so she thinks she will probably stick with free-feeding since it would be hard to be consistent with a feeding schedule. We kitties are happy about that! What do you kitties think? Will your humans allow you to free-feed or do they feed you on a schedule?
WHEN A CAT GOES CRAZY FOR FOOD
