Expat Cat Food

An Expat Cats journey to healthy eating

Disclaimer: The post below was written by a guest blogger, a feline guest blogger, so some food related details might not be appropriate for human consumption.

*Enters Oscar the Expat Cat*

Hi everybody, welcome to World Blog Surf Day! In case you wonder what on earth that is, it is a series of blog posts that got published all on the same day and that all have a common theme. Most of them are written by humans, this one is written by me – Oscar the Expat Cat! Mommy has taken all the photos, so please respect her copyright also!
This time the organizer for World Blog Surf Day was Sher from Czech Off the Beaten Path, please give her a roaring round of applause for all her hard work! Thank you

As I heard that the theme is FOOD, I asked Mommy if I could write the post, please, pretty, please! Because I love food, glorious food AND I am an experienced blogger, I have written one blog post before! Mommy said yes, under a few conditions: I don’t refer to her and Daddy as ‘my human slaves’, I take care with my speling and she has to approve the post first to make sure that I use only family friendly language. Phfff, as if I ever would be rude…

(c) S.Yates

See the photo at the left? That is me, do you think I look family-unfriendly? Mommy said also, if I do a good job this time, I might, just might, get my very own blog! I would love to be a pro-blogger! What do you think? Please leave a comment and tell Mommy and Daddy that I NEED an own blog!

But I get distracted, back to food, glorious, food:

Where we lived before, in England, I we had a garden, with a lot of yummy things living in it. Things like mice, baby rabbits, birds… So despite getting tinned/ canned food, I always had also something fresh and natural to chew on. As we moved to Prague, we moved to a flat and as I refuse, absolutely refuse, to wear a harness, I became a ‘flat cat’. And then the food fun started… My human slaves Mommy and Daddy bought me all kinds of new and exciting cat food to try out, and I ate it all. Did I tell you that unlike other cats, I am an omnivore (I had to look that one up, hehehe)? I eat everything, including freshly baked bread, but that is another story. So now, here in the Czech Republic, I only got tinned/ canned food. And it didn’t agree with me, I liked it, but my body didn’t like it, does that make any sense? I got all kinds of nasty problems, but the worst was itchy skin, in fact my skin was sooo itchy that I didn’t sleep anymore and bit my fur/ skin the whole time until it was all sores and bloody. I looked a right mess, I can tell you.
So they brought me to the vet, YIKES! I don’t know what is worst, driving in a car to a vet visit or having so itchy skin that you can’t sleep. And not being able to sleep is pretty serious for cats, I tell ya! The vet said I had a real bad combination of problems, caused by stress from the move, food, allergies and perhaps even mites! Yikes again, somebody was living on me! GET OFF!
She, the vet, dropped something called Stronghold on my neck and prescribed me really boring, bland, tasteless anti-allergic food for 10 days! Only one flavour, boooring! So whilst I was living on the anti-allergic stuff, Mommy dived into a research for the best cat food/ nutrition. She spend hours and hours researching the topic. I was really thankful, because it showed that she cares about me! Mommy is German, so she is very methodic and thorough. First she researched cat nutrition and food in general. She said to me: You are what you eat. Now that confused me a bit at first. I used to eat mice, baby rabbits and birds, amongst other things, but I am a cat, not a mouse, a baby rabbit and surely not a bird – I don’t have wings! Then she explained further: Whatever we eat, gets digested and used as building material for our own bodies, so if we eat good, healthy things, we will have good, healthy material to built up our own body which in return will be also healthy and not itchy. If we eat things that are not good for us, our bodies have only low quality building material at their disposition and our fur might itch. Seems logical, not?
So she did some further research into what a cat should eat or better said, what cats do eat in nature. And came across a book title saying: Cat would buy mice. I was nodding like crazy as she told me that, yes, absolutely! Mommy, just buy me fresh, tasty lively mice, please. I can live on them, no problem at all. But Mommy and Daddy were somehow reluctant to have me chasing living mice in the flat and eating them. I can’t understand why? So they did the next best thing: They bought fresh meat for me! Even rabbit, yeah! The two photos below show how my food looks now, the first shows the food before it is cut up (chicken necks, rabbit meat and rabbit liver in that load) and the second when it is all cut up and filled up in little portions.

Raw Cat Food (c) S.Yates

Mommy buys it and than mixes it and freezes it in portions she de-freezes before feeding it to me, so that I have a bit of everything in my bowl. And I LUV IT, I really do. And my fur is now so shiny and healthy you wouldn’t believe it. At the very end of this blog post is a close-up Mommy did of my fur. She calls it minky fur, because it is as thick, shiny and precious as a mink coat now.
So now I like Czech food, you can buy a lot of different meat in Prague, I normally get chicken necks (the bones are good for my teeth and for my own bones), chicken hearts, rabbit liver and rabbit meat. Sometimes I also get pork or beef meat and chicken gizzard (my least favourite one). Mommy looks that I get a really varied diet. And all raw obviously, or have you ever seen a cat cooking the mice s/he just caught? One very, very important thing:

Never, ever give your pets cooked bones, especially not chicken bones, they get brittle when heated and can pierce our intestine and kill us! Seriously, bones only raw, never heated!

But I also get something else, not only meat. Can you guess from the photo below what it is?

(c) S.Yates

Did you find it out? It is grass, special cat grass, because also if cats live to 99.99999% from meat, they need also a tiny bit greenery. The same amount roughly that a mouse has in its stomach when we eat it Yummy, mice, I do miss them a bit… So Mommy, germinates and grows special grass for cats for me, isn’t she a good slave human? And I also get special cat treats, my favourite ones are called ‘cheese rollies’ and a bit of special milk for cats. Oh, and don’t tell it Mommy and Daddy, but if they are not watching, I jump on the kitchen bench and pre-clean the dishes for them. You know, I am a good cat, always eager to help, and I like the taste of human food, even if I am not supposed to eat it! So, now you know all I can tell you about ‘Expat Cat Food’! Hope you enjoyed my contribution to World Blog Surf Day / WBSD!

Before I tell you where the next blog post is located, a few words about our very own twitter reporter in her own words:

“Anastasia Ashman is an American cultural producer based in Istanbul, and is a creator of Expat Harem, the anthology by foreign women about modern Turkey. Her Tweetstream focuses on women, travel and history and she shares resources for writers/travelers, expats, Turkophiles & culturati of all stripes.”

You can read her tweets here, her twitter name is Thandelike and she is twittering the whole time very busily about all these great food posts that are popping up all over the internet! If you want to see it, follow her tweets and pay special attention to #wbsd, our very own World Blog Surf Day hashtag!

Oscar the Expat Cat (c) S.Yates

I just remember, Twitter is a little birdie, hm, yummy, I think I just hop over and re-tweet it a bit at the end, this all about food, right? And you can now all go to Chaplain to read the next WBSD post, have fun! And in case you missed a blog, here is the whole list of blogs that participate in World Blog Surf Day: Blog List.

Have fun and thank you for reading my post,

Oscar the Expat Cat

PS Before you go, please leave a comment and tell Mommy if I did a good job or not and if I deserve an own blog, pleeeaaasssseeee!

PPS I actually have my very own section in our sparkling new Amazon Store, it is called ‘Oscar’s recommendations’ *hint*hint*! All books mentioned on this blog, and a few more can be found there…

Minky Fur (c) S.Yates