Beyond Redemption

So I haven’t posted anything here in ages, but a few things happened. The first is that my cousin is on the road to recovery. He was seriously injured in an attack and had to have surgery. That happened last week, and while recovery will take over a year, he’s going to be okay and that’s what matters.

Two, 2 days ago my cat got really ill. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but it was the worst night ever. I cried so much -I thought he was dying. I had never seen him like this before. His symptoms were:

1. No appetite -he stopped eating and drinking completely.

2. Lethargic and weak – simple jumps from the couch to the floor had him landing with a hard slam.

3. He was breathing every heavily and noisily. Almost like a ‘growl’ with each breath.

4. He wobbled whenever he stood and walked in such a shaky way I thought he’d fall each time he tried.

5. He kept hiding -something cats tend to do when they’re extremely sick and/or dying.

Like I said, it was a brutal, teary night for me. We went to the vet the next day and he had blood tests. He was negative for all the serious stuff, but tested positive for severe dehydration. So they gave him an IV and wanted to do another test that cost even more money (2 blood tests and an IV was $100), yet the vet kept telling me that she ‘didn’t know what was wrong’. I started feeling bullshitted, so I blew the test off.

We discussed food and I told her he was a tuna cat. It was dry food exclusively before, but he kept throwing it up (I have a story about that in a minute), so I turned to tuna. She said there were supplements in cat food that he could use and I should switch. She also said wet food was best for adult cats (he’s 6) because of the water content.

I ended up taking him home and he was acting a bit better since he’d gotten fluids in him. I bought several cans of Meow Mix (wet) and over the last 48 hours he slowly started eating again and acting more normal. He’s now walking right, making his jumps, and is pretty much back to his old self. Though, I’ll be monitoring him closely for a while. It turns out that the extra, very expensive, ‘maybe’ test wasn’t needed; I simply had to change his food.

Now, about that. I used to feed him only dry food, and he was fine, but lately he’d been throwing it up. I changed brands (at least I thought I had), but it was still happening. That’s when I abandoned dry food for tuna. Well, during my food research 2 days ago, I found a slew of complaints on the Consumer Affairs site about Purina pet foods.

Wanna guess what I’d been feeding my cat? >.>
And worse, I kept getting different foods, failing to notice that they were all made by the same people.

According to numerous complaints all over America, and even Canada, their food is infested with worms, larva, maggots, “nests”, and other insects. Some people complained about finding worms all over the cupboards where they keep the food. Some animals have had their organs shut down and had to be put to sleep. It’s absolutely disgusting and I’m amazed by the lack of coverage on this. It happens in both cat and dog food, but the latter seems to be reported more.

If you use Purina, do your pet a favor and check their food bags thoroughly, or play it completely safe by not buying anything made by them. That many people in so many different states can’t be wrong.

On the pulp-fiction front, I’m working on chapters, but I want to shout out the people who took a minute to review Pandora. I appreciate it, especially given the kind of story it is. Unlike those who come, read, and never say shit, you guys actually showed some love, so I’ll remember you when things around here change for good. <3 I’m out.