Canuck PetAll about Canadian Pets

I have been trying to find a food that all my cats like, will eat (some food they just like to play with) and do well on. Between my little princess who is just a fussy eater when it comes to catfood, and nervous about eating in general to another who throws up many foods, this is not an easy task. I have a senior and a growing 1 year old, an overweight and an underweight but heaven help me if someone gets a different food than another ones does.

Rather than spend a fortune buying and returning bags of food they will hate, I contacted the companies of the foods I was interested in and asked them for samples, which they were all happy to provide. Yesterday I came home from meeting the SmartCanuck ladies to find a ripped open package from Holistic Blend Pet Foods including several samples of their foods as well as a cute save my pets in case of fire sign – we have one here and I was wondering where to get a new one as we are planning on moving so YAY. Anyway, back on track, the older cats have been fed Holistic Blend before, but we stopped when dealing with diabetes and obesity issues with another cat, Scully, who has now passed. So I was hoping they would not have changed the formula much and the newer cats would like it (which they did, another YAY). But one of them likes the new Grain Free All Life Stages so much he decided that I was taking too long to get home and feed it to them that he would help himself. (I say he because chances are it was Quincy, but my princess would never, ever rip apart mail – it is just so un-princess-like and the others are boys so…). He had left some in the little packet so I gave some to the others as treats and they really seem to like it.

Then today, a second package came in from WellPet – this time nicely secured in a bubble envelope where it wasn’t so easy for the brat to open it – but my thoughts on last night’s package thief was confirmed. I opened the package and looked at the contents, leaving it on the table beside the recliner. It should be safe there, they like to sit on the back of the recliner but not the seat of it. Well I was wrong, because I got out of the shower to this:

Once again, he had chosen the Grain Free Formula (in this case, this is called CORE) and he wasn’t giving this one up for the world, he actually growled at me for trying to take it. I swear he thinks he is a dog.

I sent the picture into WellPet in response to the email they sent me saying they would send me samples, I am sure it is nice to get something back rather than the usual complaints customer service have to deal.

They also sent me samples of Indoor Health (yellow bag) and Complete Health (blue bag) which the cats all seem to like but not enough to open the bags themselves this time.

Visit the links for more information on each of the foods (all high quality cat foods that are healthier for your pet than supermarket brands, although usually only sold in pet food stores)

Laurie’s response to the “One Billion Birds” often touted by anti-TNR people has been featured on a new blog, which is a great read, albeit very new but is going in a great direction, VoxFelina

Peter Wolf of VoxFelina hopes to do mini studies in each of his blog posts:

This blog is intended to be a repository of research notes, news stories, correspondences, and associated commentary focused on a range of issues related to “the plight” of feral cats in general, and trap-neuter-return (TNR) in particular. The blog format offers two significant benefits for this project: (1) by limiting the scope of each post, I’m able to zoom in on the details—critical for understanding deeply the complexities of the topic, and (2) the hypertext and tags permit linking and cross-referencing impossible in the print domain.

As the blog evolves, its focus will likely shift somewhat—or perhaps dramatically, into territory entirely unforeseen at this early date. Surely, such an endeavor would benefit from more extensive planning, yet there’s an urgency behind it that compels me to get started with what I’ve got, and figure out the rest as I go.

The impetus for Vox Felina was a series of events (the details of which will be the subject of numerous posts) that revealed (1) the lack of rigorous research related to the efficacy and impact of TNR, (2) the flawed science promoted by many TNR opponents, (3) the unbalanced—often dishonest—nature of the feral cat/TNR debate, and (4) the disastrous consequences of these circumstances.

There are legitimate issues to be debated regarding the efficacy, environmental impact, and morality of TNR. But attempts at an honest, productive debate are hampered—if not derailed entirely—by the dubious claims so often put forward by TNR opponents. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I’m very interested in asking better questions—the sort of questions that might stimulate a more conscientious debate of this important issue. And in any event, I feel compelled to speak out on behalf of the cats.

I decided that a wordpress theme worked well for SaveSamoa as the rescue stories can be easily updated by those with less HTML knowledge.  So after much cut and pasting of rescue stories, the site looks great.  I had some issues with the 404 redirect and the admin page but its working great now after some tweaks.

I have already posted Autumn’s rescue story with details of her socialisation

There are over 100 stories posted on the site, so have fun reading them, you can use the dropdown menu to choose the most heartwarming stories, and the stories of the others involved in the site, all of whom frequent TheCatSite.com also.

If you have a spare hour, read Dunkin and  Starlight’s story by Mary Anne of Kitten-Rescue.com and Feral Cat Behavior, they really are heartwarming stories showing the difference one person can make

Stray Pet Advocacy is now live after a quick redesign using a great layout from Symisun

StrayPetAdvocacy is one of the websites I mentioned in a recent post about working with Laurie from TheCatSite.com.  We spent the last few days updating the links and pages and adding a little content, removing the really out of date stuff.  There is still much updating to be done to make the site more relevant to new laws and studies but it freshened it up so we can link from the other sites to relevant pages.

Now to start working on SaveSamoa which will be a lot more work given all of the great rescue stories posted on it.  I am hoping to get some new stories, and add the stories of my own rescues, hopefully we can start to get new stories on a regular basis, so if you have a good rescue story, email me and let me know or email the story directly to the address on the site.

Laurie from TheCatSite.com recently posted looking for some help on a project – a new website discussing the merits of the studies which say that cats are a nuisance due to their predatory nature and therefore arguing against the widescale trap-neuter-return  programs we both advocate.

Many of these ’studies’ extrapolate data from less than 10 cats in a localised area, so it should be quite a project, it seems to have snowballed a bit and I am going to redesign her existing websites and update the content a bit to make them more up to date looking.

SaveSamoa and StrayPetAdvocacy have lots of great information on them, so hopefully the updates will increase traffic to them and keep visitors on the sites