During the webinar about Sphynx cat HCM, Dr Katie Meurs answered a question about whether a raw diet was of any help to HCM. Dr Meurs pointed out that diet does not have any effect on HCM but did mention her concerns about how a raw diet can introduce bacteria and other nasties if not handled properly. I agree whole heartedly and mention several times in my posts and my Sphynx cat book that you must be very mindful of food handling practices when creating raw food for your cat.
As a reminder I include the following points
Use meats fit for human consumption
Cats in the wild kill and eat their prey within minutes of each other. They do not store food, nor do they scavenge from carcasses. Unlike dogs, cats do not have the gut design and flora to break down spoiled foods; so eating anything that is not fresh will give your cat a nasty tummy or worse.
Buy your cats meat of the same quality and freshness that you would eat yourself.
Bacteria is your enemy
At all times when preparing food you should be avoiding introducing bacteria, or creating an environment where bacteria can grow. This means ensuring that you wash your hands and wear gloves (use powderless food preparation type) so no bacteria you have picked up enters the food. The same for ensuring cutting boards, knives and storage containers are thoroughly cleaned after each use. Also be aware that any used kitchen clothes or dish towels contain bacteria and should not be used on clean utensils.
Keep your cool
As bacteria grows in warm conditions you should be looking at keeping everything as cool as possible during the preparation of a raw diet.
- Make sure where you are preparing is cool
- Bring food out of the fridge only when it is is being cut or going into the grinder
- after cutting into suitable sized pieces put it into the fridge to cool before going into the grinder
- after grinding put the meat back into the fridge to cool before bagging up
- don’t handle the meat too much while bagging. Using a large spoon to ladle into bags will reduce the heat you transfer from your hands to the meat
Friction causes heat, and bacteria loves heat
In the last bullet point there was a lot of moving the meat back to the fridge, but why?
Your refrigerator should be set at a maximum of 3 degrees centigrade. Even at that temperature bacteria can still grow, but much more slowly that room temperature. Your freezer is cold enough to stop bacteria growing but it is impractical to put frozen food through your domestic grinder. If you did though you would notice that the meat would come out thawing quicker than if you left it on a kitchen bench. Why?
Grinding (or cutting) creates heat from the friction of the blade against the meat. I was watching world class chef Heston Blumenthal make sausages on a TV program and he showed that meat coming out of a grinder can increase in temperature to 10 degrees centigrade which is why there are food poisoning outbreaks affecting hamburger mince, sausages and pies made with minced meat. We need to make sure that if we are using a grinder we get the meat back down to under 3 degrees as soon as possible or we are growing a whole garden of bacteria that can cause serious illness for your cat..or indeed you!
Freeze once and only once
As mentioned above, your fridge does not halt the growth of bacteria, so if you are re-freezing and thawing your meat then you are growing large loads of bacteria with each thawing. You are creating a sickness time bomb that can go off at any time. Always buy fresh and only freeze once.
If you follow these simple steps then you will have very little chance of causing any bacterial issues and have a happy and healthy Sphynx cat!
In the last couple of weeks Sphynx cats Lucy and Luna and my partner and I moved house. The house is somewhat familiar to them as we have been coming up here for the last two years on holidays and now it is our permanent domicile. Sphynx cat Pierre stayed with his “mum” my daughter back at our old house. Even though the cats are familiar with this house we did strike a problem which is worth looking out for next time you move.
We had been moved in 5 or so days and Lucy and Luna had settled in well. Luna has been coming her for a year longer than Lucy and loves being here. Lucy has only been here a couple of times in her 1 year of life and also has enjoyed her visits, running around doing kittenish things like attacking the lounge and “hunting” wallabies. In the first 5 days Lucy was happy to do all of those things again. Even so, what could not be seen was the change in stress levels from being out of her normal environment.
Firstly her herpes flared up and her eyes became very red and sore (conjunctivitis) but as her appetite was good and there was no coughing or sneezing we kept an eye on it (no pun intended) and planned to get some drops should it continue into the new week. The weather was very hot for a week and it was hard to tell if she had a temperature , but again eating and drinking were fine so we just monitored.
Then came Thursday afternoon when I was on my computer and Lucy was asleep on her sheepskin (very important to bring things familiar to your Sphynx to the new home) which I had put on the printer beside me on the desk. Also on the printer was my laptop which had a USB stick in the side with a lanyard attached so I don’t lose it (see picture)
I noticed that Lucy was cramped next to the laptop so I slid it towards me with the intention of putting it under the desk. At that moment Lucy, hearing the sliding sound that went something like “ssssssssssssss” woke up. She saw the lanyard moving along the sheepskin and all of her ancient instincts kicked in. She jumped at least a metre in the air and fled the room.
Naturally I followed her and gave her big cuddles telling her not to be so silly that it was nothing to worry about. I tried to carry her back into the room and she resisted going, something she never does apart from going near a running shower or vacuum cleaner that’s turned on. I put her on the ground and let her go off for a sleep elsewhere. It was after that she started to really act in a bizarre manner.
Firstly she wouldn’t cross any doorway without leaping in the air. Then any cable she spotted, electrical cable computer cable and the like was to be approached like it was alive and dangerous. She would reach out a paw from the furthest she could reach and tentatively pat it to make sure it was not dangerous. Lastly any sound that was vaguely “ssssssss” like would have her bolting from the room. Instead of getting over her fright, she actually got worse, and everything seemed to frighten her. I was concerned she was losing her eyesight because of her increasing anxiety. The vet wasn’t open till Monday and I made an appointment, I rang the nearest emergency vet (2 hours drive away) and talked to them about it. Being “country” vets they didn’t seem overly concerned and said to monitor..which I did, obsessively.
Most of the next 3 days had her sitting in the middle of the floor in a small unhappy ball, being super vigilant for anything that was threatening. Nothing we could do would seem to alleviate her fears.
Come Saturday afternoon she threw up, a long snake of a vomit that looked to be all the food she had ingested that day. It’s the first time that she has even vomited and this added to my worry that she was very sick. The weather was still very hot and I chose to give her a cooling (not cool or hot water, but tepid) bath to see if her symptoms were because she had an elevated temperature. Amazingly, after the bath she became more responsive and less fearful.
I took her outside to play in the cooler night air (when I say cool it was still about 30c) and she became more curious and looked for flying insects to try to catch. She has continued to improve and the vet appointment I booked for Monday afternoon was cancelled as she was almost back to normal.
I suspect she was feeling unwell from the stress of the move and combined with her natural anxiety for a new place ended up with her freaking out. Make sure you are super vigilant when you move house for any kind of weird behaviour from your Sphynx that could signal something similar.
Ever wondered why the information about the Sphynx cat breed on the internet seems the same? That’s because a lot of sites are built on information that they cut and paste from other people’s sites. It may be deliberate, or because of ignorance but it does not do the breed any good if the information is incorrect, dated or stolen.
Let’s look at an example that I came across when someone left a comment on this site. I always like to check out where people are linking to in their comments to make sure they aren’t a kitten farm or spammers. When I checked out their site I thought the wording seemed familiar, so I put a sentence into Google to see whether I had seen it before, below are the sites that came up with that exact sentence in them.
36 different sites ..
Needless to say I won’t be approving the comment and give a backlink to a site that is either practicing copyright infringement, or is part of a blog farm trying to get better results on their Google rankings.
Be very careful about where you get your Sphynx cat information from. You can always send me an email if you are concerned about whether what you are reading is legitimate or not.
Kat Von D has announced via her Facebook that she will be picking up her new Sphynx kitten Piaf in a couple of weeks. She put some cute pictures up of her new baby who appears to be chocolate (?).
I am concerned that she talks about her kitten being a “few weeks old” yet is picking it up so soon. I hope Kat is a little like me when I say “the other day” I can mean up to 3 months ago. Taking home an immature kitten is risky and not in the best interests of that kitten.
Piaf is named after Edith Piaf the French singer probably best known for Non, je ne regrette rien which was at the core of the recent movie Inception.
Piaf is a little boy and is from the same breeder in Clovis California, Bella Remembered.
Sphynx Cat Blog wishes Kat all the best with Piaf, goodness knows she has had a rough trot recently!
Time for Sphynx Cat Breeders to update their breeder listings at the Sphynx Cat Breeder Directory. There have been a lot of messages left there by prospective buyers, possibly under your free listing, and you are not going to know unless you are visiting daily or upgrade your subscription.
The yearly package is the best value allowing URL clickable links, pictures and you are featured on the front page of the site.
The average visitor looks at 5 breeder pages and stays for around 5 minutes. These people are serious in their search for a Sphynx kitten breeder. Broken up by area the most visitors come from the USA/Canada, followed by Europe then Australia.
Some breeders have missed sales already, hate to see more do so because they forgot to upgrade.
Sphynx People Say…