Happy Birthday, Duke

Duke, the magnificent cat-beast who jump started my passion about feline nutrition, turned 14 years old this month. He’s eaten nothing but grain-free, vegetable-free raw food for a full eight years now. (Well, okay, he’s stolen some cooked chicken off our plates now and again.) His blooming good health is, to my mind, testimony to the ‘miracles’ that can happen when a carnivore eats like a carnivore. The first six years of his life were, for him, a struggle with cramping, diarrhea, and all of the misery that comes from inflammatory bowel disease. His story is discussed in more detail on my website, so I won’t belabor the details here. I’ll only say that seeing that happy, healthy, and energetic boy-cat running around our house and demanding and eating his meals with enthusiasm and gusto fills me with gratitude that I caught on when I did to feeding cats properly.

I get a lot of emails from people worried about taking the first steps toward raw feeding. I remember that same feeling of trepidation: “What am I doing? Am I going to kill my cat here?” Although I was lucky to have a handful of raw feeding mentors in my corner, it still felt like a risky proposition: to feed my beloved, already sick cat something that didn’t have a reassuring label indicating “nutritional completeness” on it.

Time, and results, shifted everything. My biggest concern now is running out of raw cat food and having to serve something that someone I don’t know has prepared. It’s been years since I’ve visited a pet supply store except to stock up on cat litter. And cringe as I walk by aisles of dry food.

And speaking of that, I made a recent, wonderful excursion with a friend to a local holistic pet supply store. It’s called Pet Sage. I’ve heard great things about this store for years, but since I’ve generally had little need for visiting places like that, I postponed a visit. Besides, I know myself, and I know how cranky I get walking around stores and seeing all kinds of ridiculous things for sale. I was, however, intrigued about a visit there given that the store had, courageously, opted to stop offering many of the dry foods it previously sold.

That’s huge! Honestly, my heart swelled to the size of South Dakota hearing that. And you should see the selection of amazing, truly healthy cat (and dog) foods they sell. What a relief to be able to walk into a store and see fresh food for cats and dogs in freezers rather than aisle after aisle of species-inappropriate meat-flavored cereal.

I left a retail store, for the first time in eight years, buying some food for my own cats. I picked up some Bravo ground rabbit and used it to make up a batch of food at home. To my surprise, since my cats have been distinctly disinterested in rabbit for some time, they dug in.

So? Happy birthday, Duke.

And eight paws up to Pet Sage. May you be the leading edge of a new trend.