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Good Standing
The Muti-Cat Household:
What do you do when you bring a new cat or kitten into the home of another cat? It can be a stressful meeting for both. Generally, it is easier for a kitten to be introduced to an adult, rather than introducing two adults. An adult that has lived with other cats may have an easier time adjusting than if it has always been a solitary pet. In any case, it is very important to introduce them to each other very slowly. A quick introduction and the ensuing fighting may set the tone of their relationship for life.
Some of the most important items to remember are to make sure you do not allow the cats to have a face-to-face encounter at first and give lots of love and attention to the resident cat to keep it from being jealous of the new cat. Here are some good rules to follow for introduction:
Whether you have an adult cat or a kitten, it will be nervous moving into a new environment. It is suggested to enclose it in a bedroom or other room with a litter box, food and water. Remember not to put the food and water near the litter-box, as cats don't like to do their business where they eat. You should have something in the room that has the scent of the other cat on it.
As the new kitty is looking comfortable, switch places with the resident cat. Put the resident cat into the room where the other cat was located and let the new kitty explore the rest of the house and smell the new scents. If you have a kitten, make sure it knows where it can find food and the litter box. You may want to place it back in the enclosed room after a few hours. Again, during this process, exchange items that may have the scent of the other cat on it so they get used to each other's scent.
After a few days, open the door to the room a bit so that the cats can now see each other but they can't yet make full contact. Once they seem to be tolerating this kind of contact, open the door a bit wider and allow more contact. If things don't go well and they start fighting, go back to separate rooms and just realize that you have to go a little slower. If you are having problems at this stage, you may want to get two of the 36-inch high plastic mesh baby gates and put them across the door, one on top of the other. This will allow the two cats to see and smell each other quite well but not allow full contact.
Once the cats start being comfortable, try feeding them on opposite sides of the room and then return them to their separate rooms. After a few days of this they should be ready to share living space. If they seem to be having problems at this point, separate them when you aren't home to supervise.
Some of the most important tips are to make sure they both get plenty of attention during this process and let them set their own pace. There is no hard and fast rule as to how long this process may take, adjust it to meet your own observations on how your cats are doing. It could take one to two weeks or even two to three months.
Source of Information: The Web
Food labels 101
Take our crash course on finding a good food
By Jean Hofve, DVM
Packaged pet food is a great convenience, but how do you know you're getting a good quality product? The best way is to learn how to read the labels, but if you're like most people, you probably find the terminology more than a little confusing, if not downright indecipherable. For example, how does "meat" differ from "meat meal"? And what the heck is "animal digest"? Which ingredients are healthy choices, and which should you avoid?
Ingredient names are defined by law in most regions, based on definitions accepted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Association of American Food Control Officials (AAFCO). While not all areas have legally adopted these definitions, all national pet food companies follow them. Here's a look at some of the most common pet food label terms, and what they actually mean.
MEAT is "the clean flesh derived from slaughtered mammals, and is limited to that part of the striate muscle which is skeletal or that which is found in the tongue, in the diaphragm, in the heart, or in the esophagus . . ."
Meat is a fresh product, and the term is limited to cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Choose a food that specifies the meat, like "beef", or "lamb". If the label just says "meat", if may contain a mixture of species.
POULTRY is "the clean combination of flesh and skin with or without accompanying bone, derived from the parts or whole carcasses of poultry or a combination thereof, exclusive of feathers, heads, feet, and entrails."
Unlike meat, poultry may include bone. The chicken used in pet foods is typically "backs and frames" left over from processing broiler chickens into breasts, legs, and wings for human consumption. "Backs and frames" include the spine and ribs with whatever meat is attached. It may also include the bone and skin left over from processing "boneless skinless" chicken parts.
MEAT MEAL is "the rendered product from mammal tissues, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach, and rumen contents except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably . . ."
Meat meal, like all animal meal products, is rendered"cooked to remove the fat and moisture"leaving a dry powder that is nearly 100% protein. Note that "added" blood, hair, horn, hoof, etc., is not permitted, but there is no requirement for the removal of such contaminants as may naturally be present. Bone may comprise a considerable proportion of this product.
POULTRY MEAL is "the dry rendered product from a combination of clean flesh and skin with or without accompanying bone, derived from the parts of whole carcasses of poultry or a combination thereof, exclusive of feathers, heads, feet, and entrails." This definition is consistent with the definitions of poultry and meat meal.
MEAT BY-PRODUCTS "is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low-temperature fatty tissue and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth, and hooves."
Basically, by-products are "parts that aren't meat." They are fresh, not rendered. Some pet food companies specify the by-products they will accept, such as kidneys, liver, and lungs. Either way, by-products are best avoided.
POULTRY BY-PRODUCTS consists of "non-rendered, clean parts of carcasses of slaughtered poultry such as heads, feet, viscera, free from fecal content and foreign matter . . ." This recently revised definition states that fecal content must be removed. The old definition did not have this requirement.
POULTRY BY-PRODUCT MEAL is "the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines, exclusive of feathers . . ."
Poultry by-product meals are very common is poor quality dry foods. Most poultry in the U.S. is processed at "captive" renderers, meaning that the slaughterhouse and rendering facility are privately owned and located together. "Mega" chicken growers and processors, such as Tyson and Foster Farms, are the primary sources of chicken meat, meal, by-products, and by-product meal for big pet food makers.
MEAT AND BONE MEAL (MBM) is "the rendered product from mammal tissues, including bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach, and rumen contents . . ."
MBM is a convenient catch-all term for whatever offal and refuse happens to be rendered that day. This is where the worst stories about pet food come from. Many renderers accept for processing such items as road kill, euthanized pets from shelters and veterinary clinics, downers and animals who died on the farm, during transport, or at the slaughterhouse, cut-away cancerous tissue, fetuses, out-of-date supermarket meats, restaurant waste, and other unappetizing ingredients. Needless to say, the presence of MBM on a label is a signal that the food is of inferior quality.
ANIMAL DIGEST is "material which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue. The animal tissues used shall be exclusive of hair, horns, teeth, hooves, and feathers, except in such trace amounts as might occur unavoidably . ." Animal digest comes in a liquid or powder form that is typically sprayed onto finished kibbles to add flavour. It is found primarily in low quality foods.
CORN MEAL AND CORN GLUTEN MEAL are high-protein residues of processed corn, and are used as high-calorie fillers and substitutes for animal protein sources in cheap pet foods; they should be avoided.
Is it really "complete and balanced"?
A food may be labelled as "complete and balanced" if it meets the standards set by AAFCO in one of two ways:
1. Nutrient profiles set the required amounts of protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and so forth. A manufacturer can formulate a food based on the amount of each nutrient in each ingredient, or chemically test the finished food. However, keep in mind that poorly formulated foods can meet these standards, yet not provide adequate nutrition to support an animal's long-term health.
2. Feeding tests are the "gold standard" because they require the food to be fed to live animals over a period of time. However, the "family" rule allows products that are "similar" to a lead product (one that actually was fed to live animals) to carry the identical label designation. There is now way of knowing if a particular food is one that was actually tested, or a "distant relative" that wasn't.
Check out the Guaranteed Analysis
The Guaranteed Analysis tells you how much water and "crude" protein, fat and fiber are in the food. These amounts are arrived at by chemical testing, and are useful for comparing different foods. If you're comparing canned to dry, however, you have to subtract the moisture percentage on the label from 100% to get the total "dry matter". Then divide the ingredient in question by the dry matter to get the actual ingredient content. For example, a dry food with 10% moisture and 30% protein contains 33% protein (30/100-10), while a canned food containing 78% moisture and 10% protein actually contains 45% protein (10/100-78), on a dry matter basis.
Pet food labels are a rich source of information for those who know how to read them. While they don't tell you everything about the food, they do provide guidelines for comparison shopping. Most importantly, they help you make sure you're getting a high quality product that will keep your beloved companion in good health.
Look out for "number one"
Some poor quality dry foods proclaim that a meat, such as fresh chicken, is "the #1 ingredient". This is just a clever bit of marketing. Ingredients are listed by weight; chicken is 70% water and thus quite heavy, so a very small amount of chicken will put it at the top of the list. In actuality, the food usually is based on the cheaper, more concentrated ingredients, such as by-product meal or corn gluten meal.
Know the rules-they may surprise you!
Every pet food has a name, whether it's "Lamb and Rice Dinner," "Beef for Dogs," or "Tuna Flavour Dinner." But what do these labels actually mean? Believe it or not, there are specific regulations for naming pet foods, so it's helpful to know the "rules."
95% Rule: "Chicken for Dogs" must contain at least 95% chicken (excluding water). "Fish and Giblets for Cats," meanwhile, will be 95% fish and giblets combined, but there must be more fish than giblets, since fish appears first on the label.
25% Rule: "Fish Dinner" or "Beef Dinner" must contain 25% fish or beef. If more than one ingredient is named, the two together must comprise 25% of the total, although the second ingredient may be as low as 3%. This means that "Lamb and Rice Dinner" may actually contain a greater quantity of other ingredients, such as chicken and corn.
"With" Rule: If the word "with" appears in the label (e.g. "Fish Dinner with Giblets"), the second ingredient must comprise 3% of the food. An ingredient labelled as a "flavour," such as "Beef Flavour Dinner," doesn't have to contain any beef at all, just something that gives the food a beef flavour.
Health and Care
Bengals and Abyssinians are active cats that can live well into their late teens or even their twenties.
The First Vet Visit
A Veterinarian visit should be done within the first seven days unless other arrangements have been made and put down in writing. It is very important that this visit to your Veterinarian take place. Not only does it assure your new kitten/cat's health is in order, it will eliminate any concerns that you may have or perhaps something not noticed while in my care. New home situations can and most likely will cause stress and that can affect a new kitten/cat's health the same as it does yours or mine.
Veterinarian medicine is much more specialized today, from the Homeopathic Vet to the conventional. Naturally this specialization will also give way to differing opinions on topics such as vaccines. Vaccinations are extremely controversial today. Vaccines are meant to boost the natural immune system aiding in handling exposure to disease.
I am often asked if it is necessary to give a rabies vaccine. If your cat or kitten is playing with a visitor and happens to break the skin, it would be very important to have proof of vaccination. So yes, from the point of liability it is important to have your rabies vaccines up to date. However, I am not a firm believer in the yearly boosters being administered. Check with your Vet to see what options are available to you when it comes to vaccination protocol.
