Are there any alternatives??

I've been thinking a lot about this recall, and it honestly just breaks my heart when I think of all of the millions of people whose pets have had to suffer because of the stupid mistakes of whatever company that caused the problem.

And then I got to thinking, is our pet food, in general, that we buy at the store safe for our cats? I buy my boy cat the Iams dry food that is for weight control and the girl cat gets whiskas wet food in a pouch. After this pet food fiasco, I'm honestly terrified to feed them anything.

One of my close friends just emailed me today and said her vet gave her some pretty bad test results for her cat. I'd be devastated if I was her! And I started crying when I read this.

You guys, for most of us, our cats (and dogs) are family members, they're not just pets. This whole debacle is so beyond all belief that I am terrified of what I am feeding my cats already, even though they are ok right now.

So my question is, are there any NATURAL alternatives that can't posssibly be poisonous so we can keep our cats healthy? I'm really scared, you guys. I would die without my cats, I really would. I would freak out and probably have to be committed to a mental hospital or something if I knew that the food I tried to feed them made them sick enough to die. Even though I knew it wasn't my fault, I would still go insane.

Yes there are alternatives. One is to decide to do a homecooked diet..but this takes a diet properly composed with appropriate supplements. A well respected vet, Dr. Donald Strombeck has a book called Home- Prepared Dog & Cat Diets: the Healthful Alternative, which you can find on amazon.com.

You can decide to go the raw route(research well first...one excellent site on this topic, written by a vet is www.catinfo.org) and if not into making it yourself, buy from companies that provide frozen or dehydrated (these include Raw Advantage - frozen only, WA state company with a local facility for production and packaging, The Honest Kitchen - dehydrated raw, and there are many others (do a search on "recommended brands, raw" and see what comes up from past threads.), buy from companies (direct or via a retailer) such as Fromm or Evangers who have their own kitchen/packaging facility so they are not subject to their product being contaminated while being produced elsewhere.

For now...I would look for foods that do not contain wheat gluten, and that aren't manufactured by Menu..in another thread there is a list of such foods.