silverthorne

Part One: The Dream
Started with a really bizarre but nice dream that left me with a big old giant 'WTF'?

I met up with Kon. Yes, that Kon. The ex boyfriend that got killed in 1994 during a convenience store robbery.

He looked good (He'd lost weight and shaved the beard off that he'd been growing before he died). For some reason, I'd gone to pick him up from a train station...that looked suspiciously like an airport. There were lots of country back-road and trees. And it was grey, because it was raining. But it was a nice grey, if that make sense.

Anyway, we wound up in a cabin, because although the rain was nice, it was also apparently part of a big nasty storm system we decided to wait out rather than drive in. We talked a lot about how our lives had been going (oddly enough, one of his comments was 'I spent more money on engagements than I ever should have' which was...yeah, 'huh'?) and just generally caught up, Which is a weird thing to be doing when you have fourteen years of life on the other person. It ended with a nice snuggle and...well, yeah, one of those really nice long kisses we used to share.

...I'm still wondering where the heck my brain thought it was.

Part Two: The cats

I didn't get a repeat miracle of 'oh, hey, everyone is on the bed! Yay!' or even Foot braving the Dreaded Ula to come wake me up for kitty breakfast time, but right now, we're playing 'venture into uncharted territory'. Otherwise known as 'oh hey, I'm going to go into the other room and see what the other cat has been doing to it.'.

So far, this has resulted in little more than two cats out of sight in one room together with no fighting, from what I can tell.

Part Three: One of those things I figured out while getting coffee

A lot of folks are a HUGE fan of the whole 'feed your dog/cat raw' thing. Which, okay, fine, if you have the money to spend (especially in this economy), more power to you. People have all sorts of opinions why food 'a' is better than food 'b'. As long as the animal is healthy and you can afford what you're doing, cool. No skin off my nose. Although the ones that are absolutely rabid about it to the point of psychotic snootiness with a side order of 'well, you must be really dumb not to agree with me!' kinda piss me off. Hit you over the head with my pallet-jack piss me off. Yeah, that kind of pissed off.

Anyway, I don't feed raw. Aside from the cost, it also gives me the same kind of pause doing something like, oh, say, joining Jenny Craig and letting someone else do all the thinking for you while you're trying to lose weight would. Mind you, not the same issue, there, but still the same kind of hesitancy on my part. With the Jenny Craig (and other diets/diet programs/funny food diets/premade meal diets, etc) my problem is this: it doesn't teach you how to make your own meals in a healthy manner. I mean great, it's all planned out for you and stuff, but what happens when you end the program and are left to your own culinary devices? Some people would research it, of course. Some though? Many in fact? Would go back to same old same old afterward. And we all know where that leads.

Anyway, back onto the subject at hand, which is raw feeding.

I get the concept: It's healthier for the animal because it 'mimics how they would eat in the wild'.

Except...not really
No, wait, hear me out before you say 'research it, fool!'

Here's where I balk.

1) Price. It's a great concept if you have the resources to spend that much more money on food. With rising economy costs though, only the well paid will have that luxury soon.

2) Availability/quality. Unless you happen to be lucky enough to live next door to a slaughterhouse, any meat you get, whether for you or your pet, 'organic' or not, is either going to have chemicals of some sort in it that weren't there naturally, or the freshness (which can dictate things like how much bacteria is in the meat) will be questionable.

And even if you are that lucky...well, yeah. It's either a slaughter house, in which case if part of the reason you're doing it is for ethics, you're kinda screwed, and if it's a local resource, well, they may not always have it available for whatever reason. Which..can make life difficult.

3) 'That's how they were built to eat/how they would eat out in nature'. Well, okay, I see where you're going here, and I get the logic. Two things though. Well, three.

First, what you're feeding is a domesticated animal, not the wild ancestors of your pet. That means thousands of years of man-made meals has altered your pets digestive process a bit. Yes, they can still 'eat natural' (strays do it all the time because they have no other choice but that or human waste), but they're bodies are really no longer ideally adapted to that.

Second. What you're calling 'natural feeding' and what the animal really would be eating on its own are two different things. Except for large breed canines, cow still isn't on the menu. Neither is domestic chicken. Fish? Maybe if there's a lucky catch, but for the most part, unless we're talking tigers here, fish is not usually on the menu either. What is? Venison--if you're big enough. Wild birds, including the songbird variety. Mice and other rodents. Bugs. Sometimes other predators if you're big and hungry enough. You get the idea. Chances of finding any of that (well, okay, venison is not so hard if you're willing to pay the big bucks for it) in a store? Alive? (Remember, in the wild, they catch and kill it first--provided they don't botch the job, that is, which is 65-95% of the time). Yeah. Good luck.

Third. Animal parts. From what I can tell, raw feeders feed their animals...the best part (at least from the human POV) of the animal. Breasts. Rumps. Liver. Which is fine. But you're glossing over something. Most wild animals, unless forced to abandon their kill? eat the whole damned thing. Yes, even the 'gross' parts like intestines, heart, brain, fat, stomach, bone marrow. Sometimes part of the hide...and even feet and beaks on birds if they can chew it. You know--the parts that go into the 'substandard meal' that is added to the pet food you can buy at the store. The same stuff that people often site as a reason they went raw in the first place. So, again, not exactly 'as nature intended'.

Fourth. I have the same issue that I have with meat for human consumption--you and your pet can still get sick from it. Look ot the news for this; it happens often enough. The difference is--humans are more likely to do something about it when it's them getting sick. Animals can't tell you (other than by barfing, getting diarrhea, and being lethargic) they're sick, and some won't be willing to show you they don't feel good (99.9% of cats, for example, because that's how they're wired), and even then, you might not figure it out until it's too late. And yes, this is with the whole pet food recalls that have happened in recent years being kept in mind--I'm not saying that can't happen with premade stuff, but it should be a warning anyway. Any food source can risk your animal that way. And they have a lot less resistance and time when it happens, no matter what the source is. The only difference I can think of, is that raw food is more likely to house parasites in addition to the bacteria and other pathogens found in store bought food.

Fifth. Like humans, science in care of domestic animals is constantly changing, and that includes in how pet foods are made, what goes into them, and so forth. I know a lot of people extol softer coats, clean teeth, etc in raw fed animals--but since they're conscientious enough to be doing that, I'm also willing to bet that the other advantages are just as likely a result of regular grooming practices and scheduled vet visits on the part of the owner, rather than the change in diet. After all, my cats have/had soft, shiny coats, good teeth, decent (for a cat) smelling shit and skin, and they get dry food (kibble) and canned food. And always have, along with all the brushing, vet visits (when my ex wasn't blocking me financially, at any rate), nail clippings, etc. And my cats have lived to very old ages (20 or so), and were very healthy and active for most of that time (when they both got sick, it was within the last month or so of each of their lives). So, even then, to my eye, the raw verses premade debate is pretty much a preference thing rather than a 'fact'.

Anyway...so there's me and my logic. If you feed raw, and I upset you, it wasn't my intention. Mostly, I'm just expressing why I don't believe it's a necessity.