Fabulous Friday with Olivia!

Hi everyone out there ... from everyone in here!  (Yep, it's true ... all five of us, and Cosmo, are here together writing to you, but I, Olivia, am doing the actual typing.  See?) 

Hmm ... what shall I blog about today? 

Mom's taking the day off of work so we're all here together, and it's been great so far!  The door to our new "catio" has been open all morning and it's such a beautiful day that we didn't even really want to come in for breakfast.  But then Tucker, who is a way better snooperviser than even we cats could ever be, let slip that breakfast was one of our favorites:  chicken gizzards and hearts!  Mmm, chicken gizzards - so chewy and delicious, and great for keeping teeth and gums healthy!  And succulent hearts - rich with the taurine so critical to feline good health.  So we had to come in and eat, and Tanner, especially, enjoyed his.  See him licking his lips?

Mmm ... swell breakfast, Mom, thanks!  I love being a raw-fed cat.

Mom's been working a little, but mostly she's been paying attention to us, which, let's face it, is exactly how we like it. Right now, she's gearing up for a spa day for the pups, and is brewing up a special mixture of green and chamomile tea on the stove.  After it boils, it has to cool down and then sit for two hours, and it will be an after bath rinse for the pups.  Mom really likes being able to use things on us that are natural and non-toxic, and she's gotten a lot of great tips from Dr. Karen Becker on how to do this.  And in fact, the tea rinse suggestion is one that she got from one of Dr. Karen's videos!

Here's the tea Mom is brewing up right now:   

While it brews, and while I blog, Mom is doing sort of a spa day herself.  She sprayed some fruity-smelling stuff in her hair to condition it and then she put this weird-looking green stuff all over her face.  She says it is a cucumber mask and that it's good for her skin, but I don't know.  If I didn't know better, I'd think she was dressing up for Halloween.  But THAT particular holiday is over for another year, thank goodness! 

Mom actually had a gift certificate to a very fancy spa that she could have used on her day off from work today, but she said she'd rather put the green goop on her face herself and stay home and play with us. Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is exactly as it should be! 

And later, she said she might go out to Home Depot or somewhere and get us a bird feeder and some bird seed to hang out back so that we have plenty of birds to watch.  That sounds great!  And if C. will ever come back here and put the roof on, we'll be able to maybe get Mom to put a cat door in so that we can go out to our catio whenever we want and not have to have Mom out there snoopervising watching us every second!

Purrs, everyone!

Worried Wednesday

Hey, everybody!  It's me, Tucker!  And this is my worried face:

And the reason why I'm wearing my worried face today is because I'm concerned about the pet food industry.  People love their furblings a lot, and the pet food people know this, so they're always trying to come up with new products to sell to people in exchange for those green papers like the ones Mom keeps in her wallet or sometimes you can get them if you zip that little square plastic thing through the machine.  I'm not really sure how that works.  But anyway, new products enter the pet food market all the time.  The problem with that, Mom says, is that only a very few of them are good for us furblings.  The rest of them the companies that make them get people to buy them by putting cute animals in commercials and having their Moms or Dads say how much they like the products and how good they are for them.  And Mom also said that the Moms and Dads in those advertisements aren't even real?!!!!!!!!  I mean, they're real people, but they're not the real Moms or Dads of the animals in the commercials!  Can you believe that?  I couldn't ... I was shocked!

But anyway - there are some really good pet food companies out there that really care about the furblings.  Unfortunately, most of them only care about getting as much of your Mom or Dad's green papers as they can.  I don't know what they do with them once they have 'em, but anyway, that's what they want.  So Mom says that if people have furblings, they need to be really careful about  the products that they buy, and learn how to read labels, and also research the companies that make the products, because sometimes even if the label looks good, you have to check and see who is actually making the food, cause most of the time it's not the same company whose name is on the package.  Mom says that's what happened back in 2007 when all the furblings got sick and died from the Menu Foods recalls - one company (Menu Foods) was responsible for putting together all sorts of different brands of foods.  So all the foods that were made in that plant (which was a whole bunch) were contaminated and a whole lot of furblings got really sick and even died!   

So all you furbling Moms and Dads ... be really careful about the foods and stuff you buy for them.  And try to keep up to date on the recalls that happen.  Here's one website that you can check:

Pet Food Recalls

I can tell you that one recent recall really made me put my worried face on ... because my Uncle Riley AND Cousin Cosmo used to eat that food, and that's the Blue Buffalo recall.  Blue Buffalo recall  So no more Blue Buffalo for my Uncle Riley or Cousin Cosmo! 

But the other day my worried face really kicked into high gear when I heard about this: 

Red Plastic In California Naturals Biscuits

Fellow furblings, this is SUPER scary!  California Naturals is part of the Natura Foods family - which was a wonderful, family-owned company.  Note I said "was."  Because they recently sold out to Proctor & Gamble, and Mom and her other "foodie" friends were pretty sure it wouldn't be long before weird things started happening that could be dangerous to the furblings.  And sure enough, it's already starting to happen.

Now, don't get me wrong ... there are still some good companies out there who make nutritious, safe food for us.  But I'm still glad, and Mom is, too, that all of us here (canines and felines) are now Raw Fed

Well, friends, that's it for me ... it's my day off from work, so I think I'll catch a nap now and rest up for tomorrow.