Missing cat

[Jonathan Kamens]

Hi,

Our skinny old calico cat (mostly white, brown and orange patches) has been missing for a couple of days :-(. She has no collar (when she used to wear it, she'd lose it all the time, so we eventually gave up). Please let me know if you know anything about her whereabouts.

Thanks,

Jonathan Kamens

[Don Lubin]

You might include your address in such a notice.

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[Jonathan Kamens]

A couple people have pointed out that I wasn't specific about location and that photos would be useful.

We live in Brighton Center near the CVS (Foster St. & Washington St.). I doubt our cat is active enough to stray far from there, but I suppose anything is possible.

Here are some high-res photos:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m9hxl3q6p6r6b76/ndRwg-Zy32

And here's a low-res one for email:



Thanks for any help you can provide.

Regards,

Jonathan Kamens

[Eva Webster]

Jonathan -- as someone with a major soft spot for cats, I wish I was writing with the news that I know where your cat is – for her sake (but of course I also sympathize with the anguish that humans feel following disappearance of a pet).  I hope you already have, or will find her.

I have two indoor-outdoor cats; they spend quite a bit of time outside, but no more than a few hours at a time; then they become anxious to get back, and start banging on various windows they can reach, asking to be let in.  They know it’s their home because of food, safety, soft places to sleep in, and lots of frequently expressed love they receive (and reciprocate) here.

I assume that was also the case with your calico cat -- so it’s extremely unlikely that she would simply decide to look for greener pastures elsewhere (unless she was perhaps suffering from a feline equivalent of dementia — a personality change due to age or some undiagnosed illness).

Unfortunately, being mostly white is not an advantage for cats in terms of survival outside, because they can’t camouflage easily, and there are foxes, raccoons, hawks, and possibly occasionally coyotes around here.  Even so, if she never returns — I hope you won’t blame yourself and conclude that she should have been kept inside at all times.

Cats need the outdoors to have natural, full lives with lots of interesting smells and visual stimulation — so if the owner has a yard, it’s a blessing for the cat to be able to go out.  To my mind, it’s better for a cat to live a free, exciting (even if possibly shorter) life, than a very long and boring one, essentially in captivity (though the latter is certainly better than being in a shelter, or put to sleep).

The main reason I’m writing is that I noticed that your cat had/has brownish stains below her eyes.  This condition is due to a bacterial eye infection (dogs, especially small ones, get it to).  It’s related to a nutritional deficiency.  Some (most?) brands of pet food just don’t include enough essential live enzymes, and otherwise are not nutritionally well-balanced; it impacts the animals’ immune system.  The pets can’t tell us that the food is poor quality.  We also pay the price by having to foot higher vet bills.

My first big cat-love was a very smart, regal looking Russian Blue with bright gold/green eyes (I rescued him from some pitiful situation back in New Jersey where I lived in the late 1980s, right when my husband and I got married -- we would joke that the cat was our first-born).

He ended up dying, 14 years later, of a cancer in his abdomen. To be precise, he was euthanized because of the cancer, and as someone who held him in my arms when it happened, it was devastating in the extreme -- both to me and my husband -- but I actually became deeply depressed following that tragedy (perhaps because it was reminiscent of my mother’s death of cancer years earlier).

It’s been many years, but I will never shed the feeling that we may have unwittingly contributed to his illness by feeding him Friskies cat food — a cheap supermarket brand that includes things like commercially grown (i.e. full of pesticides) corn or rice -- I can’t recall at this point which.  (Some rice, not just from China, but also from southern United States includes arsenic from pesticides that humans applied to the fields when cotton was grown there some decades ago — the arsenic is still in the soil to this day — and it’s a carcinogen. I started buying organic rice when I learned that.)

Grains of course are not a food that cats are supposed to eat (it causes unhealthy weight gain too ); their digestive system is not able to handle the starch (unless it’s already broken down by digestive enzymes in a mouse’s stomach!).

I even remember telling my husband (before the cat got sick) how much money we were “saving” by buying Friskies over some other more expensive brands  (oh, it’s also such a joyful name — Friskies -- those marketers know how to make you buy things).

And then my precious Grey-bie (short for Grey Baby) became heartbreakingly  ill -- and it was at a time when there were reports in the media that some pet food ingredients imported from China were contaminated with melamine -- so I suspected it as possible cause, but could not prove it (the cancer was diagnosed some 8 months after a sudden, violent bout of digestive indisposition).

So I believe there was a connection to what he ate -- and it was a lesson I never forgot. I swore that with all other cats we would ever have, I will never ever try to save money on what I feed them, and I will not buy any cat food that contains grains.

We have been buying a grain-free brand called “Core Wellness” that includes some live enzymes (so the food is not sterile) that are essential to proper digestion.  It’s probably one of the most expensive brands, but our cats are doing superbly well on it — both physically and mentally (they act happy!) — and we haven’t had any reason to take them to the vet for any kind of ailment for several years now.  I’d rather spend money on high quality food than vets (or doctors!).

There may be some other brands of grain-free cat food that may be as good as Core Wellness” and less expensive  -- I don’t know.  But I just wanted to share my story with other cat owners out there to make everyone aware of the benefits (to the cat AND the owners) when we feed them high quality food.  I wish someone had told me those things years ago when Grey Baby first came to my life.

Jonathan, if your cat does not return, don’t wait too long to get a new one (preferably from a shelter). As they say, maybe with slight exaggeration, a house is not a home without a cat.

Eva

[Fred Hapgood]

When the city plants new trees they typically tie them down using two
wooden sticks on either side. The sticks are attached to the tree with
fabric strips ending in a loop that encircles the main stem. The
function of these two braces is to give the roots of the tree time to
set and keep it vertical, a period that might take a few months or so at
most, depending on rain.

However, the city never seems to remove the braces or their ties. This
has two downsides -- young trees need to be able to move freely in
response to wind. Inhibiting that reaction weakens the central stem.
And, in the worst case, the tree grows until the loops throttle the
central stem, killing the tree.

I have recently run into a number of trees (in the area of Washington &
Commonwealth Ave in Brighton) that looked as though they were months
away from being choked to death.

If you see a tree in anything like this condition, please cut the loops
that are tied around the trunk. .

Fred




http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
http://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/