Hello cat people! This thread involves food but is more about potential health issues than nutrition so I put it here - apologies if it is in the wrong place.
So I had an unopened ~6kg bag of dry food stored in my garage and when it came time to open it, I noticed that something had been there before me as there was a tiny hole nibbled into the bottom corner. Most likely culprit is a mouse or rat (I'm guessing a rat) and there is no evidence that the animal managed to actually get INTO the bag - it was only a tiny hole just big enough for the thing to have removed a piece of kibble at a time (the food is earthborn primitive feline so its pretty small pieces too). I emptied the whole bag into containers and currently am not feeding it to my cats (they're just having their wet food at the moment but I would prefer to leave them some dry food to snack on when I'm out of the house...).
My vet said she wouldn't be too concerned but would probably throw out the last 2cm or so of food from the bottom of the bag (which is impossible because I went and emptied the whole thing into containers so its all mixed in together now - when I described this she just said she wouldn't be too worried). I'm in Australia so rodents here don't have rabies, hantavirus etc, if that makes any difference....
I AM slightly concerned however just because my cats have recently had a bit of diarrhea (thought to have originated from one of my naughty cats getting into the garbage before christmas and pulling out some people-food that she and her buddy then proceeded to feast on) which I have treated, under instruction from my vet, by removing all food except for one source (ie one brand of wet food) and feeding them just that until it gets better. That worked after a couple of days, but then when I went back to their normal food routine a few days later (a rotation of a couple of different kinds of wet food with the dry food left out), "the runs" returns -_-. So I tried restricting their diet again and this time, I'm adding back the other brand of wet food but not the dry food and everything seems fine so far (has only been a day or so), so I think the culprit may be the dry food (but that doesn't necessarily mean it is because it's contaminated - I will admit i didn't add it back into their diets gradually and it is pretty rich for a dry food, so maybe it is just upsetting their tummies..). I will say that the diarrhea clears up pretty quickly when I restrict the diet, to me that seems more characteristic of some kind of intolerance/upset than food poisoning which I imagine would continue and probably require medication...
That was all a bit long but here is the tl;dr - a rodent has gotten into an unopened bag of cat food and I suspect that food has been contributing to diarrhea (but don't know if the latter is related to the former, since I guess I wasn't very careful with gradual dietary re-introductions and the food may just be a bit rich and causing upset).
And here is the question - does the wisdom of the internet think that a rodent chewing through a bag would contaminate the food and should I throw it out? I live in Australia and as far as I know we don't have as many of the scary rodent-borne viruses around here.... obviously I'd rather not throw out an almost unused bag of food but of course I won't feed it to my cats if it is dangerous for their health. Option b is to assume the food is too rich, maybe mix it in with a less rich dry food (such as Black Hawk) and try to introduce it back more slowly.
So I had an unopened ~6kg bag of dry food stored in my garage and when it came time to open it, I noticed that something had been there before me as there was a tiny hole nibbled into the bottom corner. Most likely culprit is a mouse or rat (I'm guessing a rat) and there is no evidence that the animal managed to actually get INTO the bag - it was only a tiny hole just big enough for the thing to have removed a piece of kibble at a time (the food is earthborn primitive feline so its pretty small pieces too). I emptied the whole bag into containers and currently am not feeding it to my cats (they're just having their wet food at the moment but I would prefer to leave them some dry food to snack on when I'm out of the house...).
My vet said she wouldn't be too concerned but would probably throw out the last 2cm or so of food from the bottom of the bag (which is impossible because I went and emptied the whole thing into containers so its all mixed in together now - when I described this she just said she wouldn't be too worried). I'm in Australia so rodents here don't have rabies, hantavirus etc, if that makes any difference....
I AM slightly concerned however just because my cats have recently had a bit of diarrhea (thought to have originated from one of my naughty cats getting into the garbage before christmas and pulling out some people-food that she and her buddy then proceeded to feast on) which I have treated, under instruction from my vet, by removing all food except for one source (ie one brand of wet food) and feeding them just that until it gets better. That worked after a couple of days, but then when I went back to their normal food routine a few days later (a rotation of a couple of different kinds of wet food with the dry food left out), "the runs" returns -_-. So I tried restricting their diet again and this time, I'm adding back the other brand of wet food but not the dry food and everything seems fine so far (has only been a day or so), so I think the culprit may be the dry food (but that doesn't necessarily mean it is because it's contaminated - I will admit i didn't add it back into their diets gradually and it is pretty rich for a dry food, so maybe it is just upsetting their tummies..). I will say that the diarrhea clears up pretty quickly when I restrict the diet, to me that seems more characteristic of some kind of intolerance/upset than food poisoning which I imagine would continue and probably require medication...
That was all a bit long but here is the tl;dr - a rodent has gotten into an unopened bag of cat food and I suspect that food has been contributing to diarrhea (but don't know if the latter is related to the former, since I guess I wasn't very careful with gradual dietary re-introductions and the food may just be a bit rich and causing upset).
And here is the question - does the wisdom of the internet think that a rodent chewing through a bag would contaminate the food and should I throw it out? I live in Australia and as far as I know we don't have as many of the scary rodent-borne viruses around here.... obviously I'd rather not throw out an almost unused bag of food but of course I won't feed it to my cats if it is dangerous for their health. Option b is to assume the food is too rich, maybe mix it in with a less rich dry food (such as Black Hawk) and try to introduce it back more slowly.
