Hubby came home from the grocery store last week with a new treat for our cats...


.


At first there was a mild interest (oh ho hum) from them. But now after a few days, they really like them. And they seem to quell hunger with very little and there is reduced begging for our special treat kibble (Fancy Feast).

Weezie seems to react negatively to Temptations treats//she often gets diarrhea from them, although she really likes them anyway ( we just don't appreciate cat diarrhea
.
)

So I just give a inch or so each day. They are not so smelly to me (humanly designed to be handled without without the ick factor). So the aroma is less and they were at first confused by that.

It is almost time to renew and get some more. If they have the salmon flavor that would be nice.

WalMart's price is 1/2 that of most Amazon sellers for some reason. Hubby found ours at Kroger's. He doesn't recall the price now when I ask him.

Weezie does like them now. I put the opened stick wrapper in a ziploc and it did crinkle when I lured her inside, this week with it.

Weezie also likes Greenies too, but Maya not so much. So a bag of Greenies lasts us a LONGGGGG time around here.

Thanks mrsD.

I am not sure if Greenies is a generic trade-name but the vet sold me some with the same name.

Both Blackberry and Waiwaiaa approve of them - they get them once or twice a week as a treat.

They have to crunch them - good for dental tartar.

Yes, Greenies is a brand here. Weezie likes them, but Maya...eh, not so much.

Today hubby went grocery shopping at our local Kroger's and picked up a pack of salmon flavor Sheba's feline sticks.
This flavor was much more popular than the chicken.

I use a small treat to reward Weezie when she comes inside
when we want/call her. Approaching storms, danger, or her regular
4pm time to come in. I can give just a pinch off a stick now and not really so much to contribute to weight gain. Weezie tends to putting on weight easily. These sticks have Taurine added, which I like for them too. Cats cannot make taurine themselves, and rely on food (mice are high for example), and not all cat treats have taurine in them. Greenies do have taurine but some others do now. Usually in the US there is a warning on treats, saying not designed for volume feeding and that means no taurine in them.

I just hope with time, that no recalls start to show up with these Sheba sticks. Our pet food industry has been plagued with woes and recalls and pet deaths, the past 10 years or so.

Maya's main fave treat however remains shrimp. One of our past cats like whipped cream. (we called it chooka, as that is what she responded to-- the shaking of the aerosol can.
I even hid ground up medications, in it when necessary!
Oreo must have been given this in her birth home..We didn't teach her that. She pulled a dish over to herself the first Thanksgiving she was with us as a 12 wk old kitten. That was her way of telling us she wanted some! LOL

Thanks mrsD - the Greenies here (which are made locally) do have some taurine in them - I did not know that cats can not make their own.

I can relate to Maya and shrimps. I get them for myself over Christmas and my birthday (events which are exactly a week apart) and Spike and Susie appreciated those which I could spare.

It will be interesting to see if Blackberry and Waiwaiaa are the same
.
.

I'd give it a try if it is not a hardship for you (availability etc).
(the shrimp treat for your cats...if they like it that is)

We had a large black cat who passed in late 2010. Her name was Sheba. She developed a skin condition... the vet called it cat acne on her face. Only offered treatment was prednisone.
She also had a mystery illness the vet couldn't pin down, but she went into a semiconscious coma for 3 days. I had to feed her a sugar solution (Pedialyte) orally by syringe.

I was doing a major Omega-3 intervention myself, and during that I found a link to IAMs pet food. I went there and discovered that the corn ingredients in premium pet foods here was
very bad for cats. I switched Sheba to Eukanuba Omega-3 kibble and all her skin problems vanished. Sheba was BTW also crazy
for human quality shrimp, So we gave her 2 a day. I bought them in a frozen bag, and they were precooked and I just defrosted them and I chop them up into small bits when I give/gave it. Sheba's health really turned around from the previous Vet Food called Science Diet back then and she lived to be 23 yrs old! Science Diet in US at one point was sold by vets as a therapeutic solution. I found it was primarily corn then and that was a huge problem for us. Now finally Science Diet has been reformulated, but we switched to IAMs then because of their research to remove corn from their pet foods.
Today I have switched to Blue Buffalo Wilderness kibble as it is grain free. Today there are even Purina foods that have removed corn...but that took 2 decades to happen!

We had 3 cats back then, and I found that a food treat for each (and they had their own preferences and didn't eat each other's) any tension between them, was nil because I sort of trained them to behave, by only giving a treat when they were "good".

Maya demonstrated her preference for shrimp as a kitten, a shy feral kitten, when we adopted her, and she sniffed out shrimp in my Chinese take out. So she took Sheba's place in that way. I don't give Maya them every day, like Sheba demanded of us, but she does get them every week.

I once did look up food contents and taurine. It turns out shrimp had quite a bit!

.


I have to wonder when we adopt cats. Only two of our cats begged for shrimp... We know for sure that Maya was feral and taken from a wild barn cat colony. So that suggests to me that she might have a congenital higher need for taurine. Cats who are deficient in taurine have nervous system disorders. I can't see barn cats being fed a premium cat food. And if mice are lacking, then a taurine deficiency may be present in the mother cat and the kittens affected.
They will die when this nutrient is missing.

This is the reason that pet owners are warned to not feed dog foods to cats. (there is no warning in the reverse ..and dogs can safely eat cat food which is enriched with taurine.) This is also why cat owners are told to not feed human foods to cats in significant amounts. I believe shrimp in moderation is okay however.

I myself take 1000mg of taurine a day, as there is some evidence that we lose our taurine metabolism/synthesis with age.
I have noticed a dramatic drop in tinnitus as a result, and less pain and brain fog that I tend to have now as I am approaching 70 with my PN and arthritis pain.

Taurine is not expensive and is very helpful for some people with chronic pain.
Here is an interesting article for humans:

.

Thanks mrsD, you have given me a lot to think about.

I has a not dissimilar experience with my first generation cats (Nicky and Pippa) as yours with Sheba. Not knowing any better, I fed them highly processed stuff from cans. They both got untreatable renal failure quite young. I don't know if their food was causative but doubt that it helped. Lesson learned; avoid highly processed foods for both cats and people.

That is interesting about your omega-3 intervention. I eat fresh salmon three or four times a week mainly because it is a healthy food, including (obviously) being a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. I might try Blackberry and Waiwaiaa out on a bit of it, as a treat, and see how they go.

Thanks a lot for your taurine links = the evidence looks convincing to me. I have moderate and annoying tinnitus in one ear and some osteoarthritic pain in one shoulder - I will try it out as a supplement and see what happens.

today we tested out the Tuna flavor...
.


So the flavors stack out this way for us:

#1 is the tuna flavor I break off 4 small bits and this one earned a "gimme more" response from Weezie.

#2 is salmon (eagerly taken but no seconds request from either)

#3 a luke warm response to the chicken one.

That is interesting.

My two are big on chicken and accept tuna.

On the other hand, salmon triggers a "What is this stuff?" response from both
.