Maggis had been away for 4 weeks. I finally found her in the forest. She was on a cheerful mood, despite an ugly cut that she had in the arm pit, caused by a stupid collar that we thought she should wear to show that she has a home somewhere. We took her to the vet, who did some stitches. Now she's on antibiotics. She has chosen to stay inside the whole week, although she seems to long for a new adventure.

Do vets use humangut on cats?

{"name":"609567","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/8\/7853e31c8398151445da76c0b03b0087.jpg","w":2592,"h":1952,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/8\/7853e31c8398151445da76c0b03b0087"}

I think she got her front paw stuck in the collar while scratching her ears or something. Then she got the whole paw through the collar so that the collar ran under her arm pit. Then the buckle of the collar got stuck in the arm pit. The buckle itself is a thin metal plate like thing with sharp edges. There had been some bleeding, but it had stopped. But the cut was so deep there was scar developing on both edges. The vet did some magic, cutting away the scar and stitching everything together. Seems there's no pain at all.

Sounds like my sister's cat, except not as bad. She comes in to eat and drink, but otherwise is an outdoor cat. If you don't let her back out she sits there and meows incessantly. We try to keep her in but usually she ends up flying out when the dog is let out...

{"name":"thread_cat.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/3\/53b827d8510aef37a69fa140e3a469cb.jpg","w":444,"h":366,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/3\/53b827d8510aef37a69fa140e3a469cb"}

I wonder if I've posted that before.

I had to have my cat "put down" this time last year. Hard to believe it's been a year already. She was well into her 20s in age though and rapidly declining in health. It was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. I still miss her a great deal.

This pic was taken of her in 2009, I had purchased a new CPU and left the box on the table and when I came back into the room this is what was staring back at me. (ooo, a box!!!)

{"name":"609591","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/4\/448b874bf1b2d1f5d4962891282a6c84.jpg","w":512,"h":512,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/4\/448b874bf1b2d1f5d4962891282a6c84"}

Glad to hear Johan! I know the feeling.

{"name":"Fh0TLiX.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/17d39d7eac27ce4f309dba7087db6648.jpg","w":918,"h":1632,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/17d39d7eac27ce4f309dba7087db6648"}

{"name":"W0WaiSX.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/e\/ceed6eddc601bab42343fa40bb491f72.jpg","w":720,"h":540,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/e\/ceed6eddc601bab42343fa40bb491f72"}

There's never been a cat thread when I've had a cat. Until now. It's almost 1 year old and it's a terror.

{"name":"MuPlgfj.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/f\/5f8e83b74246ed6b87ca77886f2ff572.jpg","w":5312,"h":2988,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/f\/5f8e83b74246ed6b87ca77886f2ff572"}

Don't let his cuteness fool you when he's sleeping. When he's awake he's usually trying to bite your ankles, head, or arms; steal your chair, spam your keyboard, and climb on your computer hardware...

If you don't have a cat then you don't know what you're missing. Keep it that way.

Perhaps this would be a good place to ask about cat food though. The brand recommended by the shelter, store, and vet is expensive and from what I could gather sucks anyway. So I did a little bit of research and choose a different brand that is supposed to have better quality ingredients for basically the same price... Of course, all of this is much more expensive than the cheap stuff so I could save a lot of money by switching him to that.

He was eating "Royal Canin" dry and wet food. We are in the tail-end of switching him to "Nutrience" dry and wet food. Even though it's supposed to be a good brand, most of the dry food still had pretty terrible looking ingredients. The bag that I happened to buy though looks to be the exception with mostly meat (at least, the first ~5 ingredients appear to be actual meat). The interesting thing is that the Nutrience smells much less appealing to me, a human, than the Royal Canin does, which makes me wonder if cat food producers artificially flavor it to appeal to humans instead of cats. I was actually tempted to try the wet Royal Canin food, and even the dry food was somewhat appealing (though not enough to try it). The Nutrience doesn't smell very good to me, but the cat still seems to like it. He may not be quite sold on the dry food yet, but we just started that transition...

So what do you guys feed your cats and why? Did you ever give it any thought? And do you think the quality of food will have long lasting health effects (good or bad)? Or should I just buy the $8/10 kg stuff because he's going to get cancer and cost me $2000 on chemo get shot in a bush either way?

His name is "Lucky". He already had it at the shelter and we decided to keep it.

Sure, but they don't eat plant matter in the process. Their bodies aren't designed to process that... Or so I've read.

Yes, this. It's to induce vomiting.

I only have dogs but the logic is the same. I buy the cheapest dog food I can that has real meat as the primary ingredient. Dogs (and cats) stomachs are absolutely not designed for eating corn as a primary diet. My dogs kept getting sick and I couldn't figure out why. Then I switched to real meat and magically my dogs got better, their fur got shiney, and they were happier and less prone and anger/irritation. It turns out they felt sick so they just wanted to be alone.

Just look at the back of the bag and see the ingredients listing. It's listed in order of by weight. So the top should be meat. Corn is absolutely unacceptable and should be illegal.

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/

Personally, I don't see a reason for wet food. It's expensive and smelly. Dry food is fine, and toss them a couple slices of lunch meat once in awhile and they'll probably like it better.

So long as you provide water for your cat, it will drink it.

Do be prepared to be frustrated though when you continually leave fresh water for your cat yet it still prefers to drink out of puddles, toilets, and any other source of water.

I think it's more likely that bambams was just (un)lucky. Cats' personalities vary enormously. There are some that seek attention without biting or scratching, plenty that really don't seem to want attention (pointless to have in my opinion), and some that are just vicious. My mum and I were lucky enough to have the first kind for a while, about 15 years ago.

Actually one of ours was a bit independent until she got a claw caught in the trellis and I stroked her for a few hours while she was drained of energy. After that, she loved attention. It was early in their life - we had them as kittens.