CAT HEALTH =^-^=

My cat has an abdominal problem and has been on prescription food for many years. I pay around £18 for a bag of dry food and it lasts around 4-6 weeks. It may sound a lot of money but not a bit is wasted. She dives into it every time she comes home as though she has never tasted it before. I am sure that the company will do "ordinary" dry food- if you are interested please let me know and I can be more specific.

I think that dry food is better in summer- no flies or smells. Also I have found that there is less likelihood of the cat sniffing it and walking away, leaving the food to rot.

Food cooked from scratch? I used to give my cat fish, liver or meat perhaps mixed with crunchy stuff.

My elderly cat (age 13 years) started wheezing badly a few years ago and the vet suggested a change of diet to a good brand of biscuits (eg I...). I decided to try some tinned sardines (well drained of oil/water) and now my cat and her younger housemate (not friend) both have a tinned sardine each at lunchtime everyday. If I set foot in the kitchen after 11 am they are under my feet until they are fed, usually about noon. I feel the tinned sardines have no additives and I buy them in spring water or olive/sunflower oil and drain them well. I buy 20 tins at a discount food store(L...) where they are 37 pence a tin as the large supermarkets charge at least 40 pence.

Worth a try?

Our cat will do anything to nick the dog's food. It's also dry complete food which she has in the mornings but she obviously thinks she's scoring points. She has tinned cat food from Aldi in the evenings and loves it.

She likes tuna so I sometimes buy a tin of Tesco economy as a treat and when I've boiled a chicken carcase for stock she goes mad for some of the scrapings.

I think cats are fussier than dogs.

My cat will be 6 in March. Used to give her Whiskas dry food but it made her sick, so now I have to shell out for Royal Canin Gastro-Enteritis which I get on subscription from Amazon which brings the cost down a little.

I also give her a treat every bedtime, usually 4 raw chicken hearts chopped up, but occasionally vary that with some raw fish (white fillets from Iceland are cheap), again about a dozen cubes.

She loves both and wolfs them down so I don't have to worry about flies or anything. Every time I go to the vet he comments on how good her coat is and how well she is

Only one of the three cats who came to New Zealand with me remains – Dingbat died, aged 17, and Frutiger died just before last Christmas, aged 18. Bodoni is now quite frail but if she survives another ten days, we shall be celebrating her nineteenth birthday – perhaps with a candle in a sardine. I have just fed them all with a mixture of canned cat food and dried biscuits – middle price range – and they have done pretty well on it.

We have also hand-reared an abandoned kitten since last November when she was about ten days old. I am glad to say that four-hourly feeds of expensive kitten milk through a syringe are now a dim and distant memory. She has been eating special kitten food but now happily shoves her face into Bodoni's bowls of breakfast and supper so she will move on to the same regime.

Hi absent
What's your kitten called? What colouring? Does she take her cue from Bodini? Are your cats allowed to roam?

I mentioned cat health for a good reason. We bought a cat litter and didn't scan the small print at the bottom of the back of the litter bag. £300-£400 later we wished we had as
our female Coonie developed a growth at the rear of her mouth. We all
thought it cancerous when we saw it. Our heart were in our mouths when the vet said, "^make the most of her while you have her^" amidst her treatment. It wasn't cancer. It's about a year since the vet noticed it. Now it's almost gone.

Does your kitten copy the behaviour of your older cat? Amazing how fast kittens are: Suppose it's because I was much younger when we had a kitten last . . .hmm.

One of mine is like a baby and has to be fed every four hours - she's got a very sensitive tum and if she eats it too quickly brings it all straight back up! I feed them both on wet food (Felix but not the one with big lumps which make her sick) and they have biscuits at bed time. The boy who is 8 or 9 would sell his soul for these and would prefer dry food but also likes his bowl of food. They also have 'sweeties' out of their jar - cat treats. We really are ruled by them!

Absent my son also took their two cats out to NZ with them when they emigrated 2.5 years ago. They love the life and spend all day under the house chasing lizards or sunning themselves in the garden. It did cost them more to transport them than their own airfare but they would never have left them behind and we would do the same