THE HOLISTIC CAT, HOW TO HEAL ANY DISEASE OR PREVENT IT, DIETARY TIPS for the FRUGAL PET OWNER

                                       
                                                        JUNK KIBBLE IS KRYPTONITE!

As an animal lover, health food fan, and a partisan of 'natural, free, homemade and not necessarily store-bought,' I question the assumption that vets know everything worth knowing!

Why do I doubt that we need expensive animal shots/pills, toxic vaccines and manufactured diet products that vets recommend? Why do I feel that we don't always need vet visits for our furry friends? Why do I fail to observe the "NO MEAT RAW" dictum of docs when cats love it so? And I know how to clean poultry meat.

Perhaps it’s a lack of trust in the status quo. Doctors recommend vaccinating human babies and a lot of them die of crib death from it. Capitalism got to do its thing and all the corporations did was learn to Enron (creative bookkeeping) money away from the stockholders, hide it where the sun don't shine, killing the golden goose and the investors along with it. JFK got shot when I was in college; it hit hard. I don't trust the CIA or the Republicans. Sorry. It's also been my personal cat-vet experience that they will try to sucker you for huge bucks, for things you could fix.

When I had minor problems, things I could have fixed in a sec alone at home, this little Hindu Vet in West L.A. tried to tell me that Petunia needed a 300$ surgery! She had a boil. Size of a half egg. Freaked me out. I don't know if you realize this, but let me tell you, CATS cleanse their systems with boils. They are nothing if not billions of years of 'boil handy'. If a tomcat scratches another one, he may get a boil. Petunia had a lung condition and she cleaned her body by making a boil. The cure is easy and the doc should have told me how for free: hot wet compresses, steaming hot towels, but not so hot they burn skin, just comfortably HOT against your own inner wrist, given several times daily for five minutes until a few days later, the boil bursts. At that point, squeeze it clear, then put any calendula petal preparation, even home made from flower petals, washed over the wound so it heals. Some neosporin for germs, no bandage. Ask and I'll give you calendula seed for free. Their petals seal any wound. Never put it on a wound that must drain. It seals holes! Hot towels, you got! Cats have some miraculous property to deal with boil holes without problems! They just seal right up! So I resent that vet telling me I had to have overpriced surgery! What a greedy gadge!

For over three decades, now, I have cared for a large flock of as much as 30 cats and often PRAYED for a vet's help because in such large groups, where viruses are in the bloodstream of unvaccinated mothers,  kittens are mortally ill at times. (A true cattery has all the adults virus free, vaccinated in their infancy, and has linoleum floors you can bleach once a day! one cup bleach to a bucket of water, a mop, cats outside while you do it.) I had four human kids, no husband and no way to get vaccinations for adults. That put kittens in jeopardy occasionally.

But it's an ill wind that blows no good; never being able to afford a vet taught me how to live without one, follow a superb cat-health diet so the tribe doesn't ever need a vet, and taught me how to use a healthfood diet to crank up a cat’s immune system so they could breed disease-resistant kittens.

Ascending to holistic feeder and 'amateur healer' status, like cat ownership itself, was inadvertent. In 1973, a fellow yoga student named Seva (the word means spiritual service on behalf of God,) gave me a pregnant queen she couldn't keep. A wiser pal warned me not to take it, but I shrugged helplessly and into my lap came Fluffy Tiger who soon delivered 6 babies. I had four babies of my own and as a single mother, never had an extra dime for spaying, vaccinations or vets. In those days there were no animal rescue groups paying part of the spay! Now there are and all my cats are spayed but then? Busy with children, I just  waited until babies were two months old and gave the kittens away. That was my form of birth control. As for my elder cats, I fed this whiskered bunch 'convenience' or generic canned food thinking this was OK or it wouldn't be in stores, right? (HO HO HO was I to discover differently soon enough!)

Rents in West L.A. were costly so I never had the extra pennies for 'fixing cats.' I would have WISHED to neuter, but 40$ each would have been $400 the first week so I postponed. Naturally, the queens multiplied into a flock --soon a dozen. We gave away kittens by the basket load but some would grow up with us and be un-adoptable.

At that time, I fed my tribe of cats --the 'itty bitty kitty committee' ---the most inexpensive kibble and canned foods available, often generic brands containing corn and soya. When my tribe sickened on this diet, I didn't attribute it to diet but personal unworthiness. As GUILT was a habit with me,  I continued to feed this junk.

That canned fish and beef "by products" is what I also ignorantly force-fed to sick cats who on such diets, sickened, now with constipation on top of fevers, or with lungs completely closed by mucus. I also fed Gerbers to kittens who weren't nursing (as they had enteritis, (panleukemia) I should have fasted them. Enteritis sick kittens need only some thick rice gruel to bind their bowels, not proteins. They need broth with viricides like tumeric and garlic hidden in it, electrolyte solution. BUT NOT SOLID FOOD.

Not having a vet to advise me, (at that time I wasn't allergic to vets, I simply couldn't afford them) I didn't know from what disease. I didn't know the names of the yellow mucus disease or the smelly diarrhea disease. I just knew that no matter how well I fed my tribe or how well we nursed sick cats, occasionally we lost a kitten at weaning time. My kids would shout 'Mom, get a vet'. They'd heard of cat shots and complained that I was heartless not to give them but with four human children to raise and these huge L.A. rents, I could not afford vaccinations at $30 a piece.

Finally, so as not to get a total bad rep with my kids, I took one sick cat to a vet. The visit cost hundreds of dollars and the animal died anyway. I made a command decision. To spend money on heating my home food for my children and to try to get the kittens through these diseases with holistic remedies.

I should have figured the thing out sooner. My children were on a vegetarian diet, with plenty of raw foods with every meal. They never visited a doctor, I’d told school nurses that I was a 7th Day Adventist and my kids couldn’t have vaccinations, and they all had their tonsils and lively immune systems and there was no fever they couldn't beat. When disease hit my kids, I would feed them rose hips in freshly squeezed (not pasteurized) orange juice and their T-cells would kick in, attack and kill the virus like a leaping panther. Later, they did not get re-occurrences of that particular virus because through that disease experience, they had achieved immunity. My children never saw a doctor or an anti-biotic.  The reason that I never vaccinated a child was that in Los Angeleno holistic circles, it is known that vaccinations are a shock to the body and children given vaccinations have danger of bigtime bad diseases, even crib death even way after the vac-latency period (!) With antibiotics, they continually get re-occurrences of the disease anyway. Did you know that? Even if you take the full sequence of 14 days, that bacteria comes back!

I should have tried to do part of the holistic thing with cats, but for some unknown reason, I never correlated what I knew about human diets to the cats in our house. I always longed for vets and vaccinations and blamed the high mortality rate on the lack of money, vets and shots. And felt guilty.

There is a certain power in the seeker's mind to know it NEEDS truth and to attract or pull in the right teaching force..i.e. the 'miracle.' By chance one night, I tuned into my favorite public radio show, SOMETHING'S HAPPENING, at midnight on KPFK-FM and lo and behold, a HOLISTIC VET! (Public radio is long on gurus, mystics, holistics, medical leftists, radical politics, philosophers like Alan Watts and Baba Ram Das so why not a Holistic GURU VET?)

I took notes and a few days later, took a cat to him. She had bad breath. REALLY bad. He told me that canned catfood was too rich, and her liver was toxic. He talked while I made more notes. This was the beginning of the cat healing knowledge I have today. In the wake of talking to him, I found a holistic cat book at the healthfood store. I couldn't afford to buy it, but I scanned its pages and took notes. I found that it is possible to create immunity to disease through a more natural diet and, when illness strikes, turn to holistic healing methods. Suddenly, the disease stopped in its tracks. Litters lived.

PREVENTION is best, especially nowadays when pet surgery approaches human in cost. Prevention of disease is based on vital foods and no toxic vaccinations.

The animal on a POWER diet may become ill with the 'childhood diseases of the cat world ---the so-called 'killer diseases' but most of your first generation will survive such diseases, the way healthy children survive the measles and chicken pox. That pet will then be immune to this disease, and so will his offspring.

To shun vets and vaccines takes an attitude somewhere between Buddhist forbearance, Taoist acceptance and American sang froid. You may lose some weak kittens, so be prepared. But in the end, this isn't ice cold Darwinian laissez faire. It's a compassionate "We will create the fittest and the fittest will survive."

POWER FOODS:So-called 'health food' products for animals have already started showing up in the marketplace but they're expensive. Don't bother with them. NO FOOD IN A CAN is good enough for your cat. The truth is that the best food use is probably fresh RAW meat or freshly cooked meat with some vegies. Some people say that today raw meat can be full of parasites and bacteria and viruses. In spite of this, the benefits of raw flesh on all-over health outweigh the dangers.

Buy the meat in whole pieces, soak in a sink of water with a cup of vinegar. Or a pan of water with three tbsps of vinegar. Rinse well as bacteria isn't in the meat, it's on it. Slice it fine, serve quickly. Don't keep it around long. If serving frozen, thawed meat which is unstable, use it immediately when thawed. If you cook meat, simmer, (don't fry) keep it slushy like chili, mash in pre-cooked carrots, (herbs like parsley are optional) and top with freshly mashed, uncooked garlic, (viricide, bacteria-cide) as is capsules of grapefruit seed extract, avail. any healthfood store. Add a few drops of olive oil, cod-liver oil, bone-meal and pediatric or pet vitamins.

When your meat is lightly  cooked, throw in some of the raw vegie juices that you just made for yourself, so when you cook for them, juice your own carrot, celery, parsley and such and ADD DASHES to their meat, raw at the end.

If you have money, give raw juices with cream, in a dish, between meals. The cream adds Vitamin A and fatty acids which make the vitamins in vegetables assimilable.

The first rule of maintaining optimum health is: AVOID canned meat made of toxic 'meat-by-products,' Avoid GRAINS which all kibble type foods are made of. Cats aren't meant to eat grain. They don't have ptyalin in their saliva. They digest food with stomach acid, generated for flesh food. Dry kibble dehydrates the animal, ruins its kidneys and is usually filled with unhealthful palm or cottonseed oil. And it's pure starch, inviting DIABETES. So start making your own cat foods from scratch. Read HOMEMADE!

Dr. Art taught me that canned foods, even the most expensive name brands, will cause a slow toxic liver reaction and food-allergies in the cat which throw its immune system off balance. The only sign is occasional slight mucus in the eye and maybe bad breath but that means the cat has waste products and acids storing in the body and hasn't digested the food well. Give that cat a very simple diet of real meat and vegetables, no canned food or grains. Enough toxic dump sites in his body and he will not survive the usual 'childhood' diseases.

MEAT THAT CATS LOVE:I have found that the best is cheapest. When you give RAW POULTRY, be wary! Do a 1 tsp vinegar for 2 cups water soak for ten minutes to kill the bacteria. Salmonella is in the commercial hatcheries. Buy  raw chicken. I find the 39C an lb frozen LEG quarters a bargain. They come in l0 lb. bags at that price, it's a frequent sale special. Every week one of my local markets has the chicken quarter special. Soak in a sink with a quarter cup vinegar then rinse and cut into pieces. Cook with some brown rice until falling off the bone. No salmonella there! Last half hour, add vegies, oats. Or feed it raw. (If you're rich give them those little birds, capons, raw.)

I buy turkey burger or chicken burger in a frozen, plastic bullet-shaped lb. package found in the store's freezer, 89c an lb. When I'm flush I do. Or in L.A. we have Mexican markets. My barrio market has leg quarters at 39c to 59.c on sale, sometimes they require you buy l0 lbs at a time, not a problem. All super markets have the frozen burger bullets now. Test the brand you buy for salmonella by thawing it and  giving it raw to an adult cat and watching for salmonella induced enteritis. If none, maybe you can give it to kittens, but knowing how susceptible they are to enteritis, I might draw the line at kittens. They are too suceptible to death from diaharrea, although the usual enteritis/death syndrome is viral not salmonella induced.

When kittens are ready for meat, if you're rich, I'd use raw rabbit meat,  as it has no salmonella. I'd buy a half lb, no more, don't spend that kind of money on adults. I'd mince it raw,  wipe a little pressed garlic smudge over it, covering every surface, a little codliver oil and voila! Sushi!

Those turkey burger bullets are inexpensive. That's incentive for use on large groups of adults. There is a full pound of turkey or chicken burger in the plastic tube. The .89C a pound I pay for turkey burger is much cheaper than any canned cat food partly because I cut it with vegetables when I cook it. Carrots are currently found in bags at 40c an lb. I hand weigh all the bags, to find one that is 1 1/4 lb. Do that four times, you get an extra pound of carrots!

Flesh out meat with vegies. You can simmer the vegies with the meat or mash vegies separately add to meat. One caveat. SULPHUR RICH VEGIES! Never cook broccoli long or hard. It has high sulphur same as cauliflower, egg yolks and onions. We never use high heat on sulphur vegies as it gives gas. Use carrots, mallow, ubiquitous everywhere, not costly kale, collards, greens like chicory leaves, endive leaves, maybe your garden romain salad outer leaves, dandelion leaves but not sprayed salads from markets, organic only.

I would give no oxalic acid-containing greens (like spinach) but I give parsley, chard, chicory, FREEBIE MALLOW & dandelion greens and  I grow a lot of that unintentionally. It self seeds. Early in spring, it's delicate and I only take outer leaves as I like the purple flowers in summer. Carrots are wonderful but require MORE TIME than the meat does! So cook them 15 minutes, til soft, THEN add the carrots to raw meat, simmer with the meat, then cut carrots into small pieces. Don't serve in big carroty chunks. If you want, you can use a Braun hand grinder or hand mash. I don't have to cut up greens. Cats loveWHOLE greens cooked with the meat for flavor and aroma! They pull out and eat the greens first, oddly enough. Greens can be STEAMED first, then added to the warmed, partially cooked meat. That’s basically it.

NOTE: All broth that the cat doesn't consume is mixed with grains/potatoes, stale bread, stale cereal and are thrown over the fence onto the curb strip when I see a flock of crows. I call them loudly in their language, 'caw, caw' and they come.

I do not believe in giving cats grain (kibble) or potato. Starches go undigested as saliva in humans has ptyalin, not so in cats. They have no digestive enzymes for starches. They only have stomach acid for meat. Starch leaves mucus behind in the system and the basic philosophic concept behind holistic healing is one that's basically ecological in tilt. Don't allow toxic dumps of mucus to form because that's where disease grabs a hold.

20th Century medicine is ignorant of the fact that body toxicity causes disease not food toxicity or microbes from the air / soil/ floors. Allopathic medicine (what's mostly out there) is better at merchandising: i.e. " dirty disease can at any time get a hold on your nice clean body but our costly medicines come to the rescue every time." These are all post facto remedies. Give me PRE-facto every time. Build a body so it can destroy all microbes!

The beliefs of homeopaths would be terrible merchandising: "Disease only grows where there's toxic build up already in the body, impairing its immune system. Stop eating bad combinations of the wrong food, thusly removing stored toxins and you remove the source of disease." HOLISM would be a terrible tack for a capitalistic, linear society to take because LESS SHELF products would get SOLD that way, hence it absolutely stinks. It's heinous, anti-American heresy to admit that the downside of the body's universe is waste matter, poisons, toxins created by freely merchandised and toxic comestible products IN STORES but that's the horrible holistic truth.

Somewhere within us, a garbage barge loaded to the gills, trawls endlessly, looking for that ultimate dump site, and obviously, this barge is not turned away. A sequence of organs accept it, and in turn are dirtied, then invaded, infected and destroyed. Avoid the garbage pile by feeding the cat what he is meant to eat. RAW or semi raw meat with a little vegetable matter. Low starch vegetables are appealing to cats. They nibble grass in the wild and if you've ever seen a cat demolish a rat, you'll know that raw meat is appealing to them. True, rats are clean little buggers and most farm-grown flesh is animals so impaired by grain-eating that their whole body has to be mega-dosed with ANTI-BIOTICS! The poulty is so infected with salmonella just touching it can kill some adults.  All of which rats are not, but if you RINSE commercial meat carefully in water, so surfaces are clean, you get most of the salmonella off. The problem is with commercial grain-fed beef. They are very very poisoned with antibiotics. Just do a SEARCH on these keywords, "grain-fed beef" and "anti-biotics." on a good search engine. I've been feeding under-cooked farm-grown turkey and chicken for years with no salmonella problems in my cats. Beef may not have salmonella but it is toxic for other reasons.

Which leaves us with the concept of fresh caught fish. If you can get to ocean, that might be a good idea. Not at 6$ a pound, however. The fisherman's sports boats often come in loaded with extra fish, which will be given to pierside cat lovers for free. Steam or parboil strain out the bones. Not one bone can be in the meal. So get a big strainer!

When I cook my poultry, here's what I do. RINSE IT WELL. I mix 2 parts of the semi cooked turkey burger meat with 1/3 part steamed, mashed carrots and add raw garlic as I serve. I use a Braun hand mixer which can turn a pot of lumps into puree in seconds. This is the simple diet secret that brought the flock back to health, back to immunity, and gave their bodies the ability to beat any disease. When I feed canned foods, the diseases immediately start up again. They are most visible in kittens in which all diseases are fatal.

THE SICK CAT:Into every whiskered darling's life a little malaise may fall. When your cat starts to feel unwell, and he gets the usual cat community flus, try to let the disease vaccinate him. That means work very hard to keep the disease from killing him. And for cats, they are so easily fatal, the respiratory infections, 90% of which are viral, the viral enteritis, called distemper,  or the bacterial lung diseases, which (depending on whether it's a virus, a spore or bacterium,) very often do respond to tetracycline, doxycillen and minocycline. I do not hate vets and medicines. I hate that they hold you up for highway robbery. If you can, get your hands on the right medicine, do the medicating that you can do. Do what your holistic vet tells you to do. BUt I would not leave a cat overnight at the vet's. I think he's happier being healed by Mom. SO let the vet examine him, do a smear or culture, but Whiskers goes home to his box!

FASTING OR FOOD? If the cat is old enough, and doesn't want to eat, then, FAST HIM with just broths. I know that the idea of NO FOOD for a few days is hard for humans to take, but animals in the wild can go a week without eating and not blink. I had many skinny vegan human pals who went on forty day fasts several times a year! Scientists have proven that when rats are starved they live longer.

LITE FAST FOR KITTIES- I use a slight variation for kittens who cannot fast as they're growing. I use the blood from slightly cooked fresh beefsteak and I gladly give chicken broth, with many vegetables simmered into it, given with an eyedropper as kittens don't swallow automatically and can aspirate beverages. If I feel a slightly warm head next to my cheek or under my fingers, I immediately go into action. If it's diaharrea (enteritis, paneleukopenia, distemper all three names for this disease,) I segregate the cat. He cannot go in a litter box used by healthy cats, so he must be kept out of common rooms. Place the sick kitten in a large box if it's an older animal, or a smaller box if it's a kitten that might wander off the heating pad. I put several layers of rags or rag-toweling OVER the heating pad, which is set on LOW. You don't want to COOK him. It may feel good to the hand but still be overheating him, so err on the side of caution. His mother will come visit him or you can put her in his mother's litter box occasionally.

If he's lucky, Little Whiskers will be restored to health by you, its second, loving mother, not a vet at some noisy, howling hospital that will freak out your darling, bleary pet. Remember how emotional you get when you're feverish? Imagine being abandoned in some Hellish Hospital of Howls. Puss has no chance of recovering when he's as freaked out and lonely as that place will make him.

Your cat's infection will be healed by love and warmth, by confining him in a box on a heating pad with several layers of toweling on top. If he soils it, pull the toweling, it's only a rag. Rinse in toilet as you did for diapers for your own kids, then set in sun until you have a load of really dirty cat rags, which you'll do in one washing machine load, with bleach and soap.

Always test to see if you have sufficient layers of toweling because those pads even on LOW are really too hot for mammals. You don't want to 'cook' the cat. But never leave a cat outside or free roaming in a room. He will flop on the floor where there are drafts you can't feel and become freezing cold. Purr-ball must be confined in a box with tall, sheltering sides and a box large enough to offer him bathroom facilities in one corner if he can drag himself to that corner. It must contain rags that you can change and wash frequently if he soils floor of box or himself.

Give a feverish puss LIGHT MEALS, never fasting him entirely unless he's an adult and a fat adult at that. Eye-Dropper in raw vegetable juices for some meals, but for diaharrea, I make rice gruel. Gruel is a starch so it's eaten alone. Later, the clear broth or soup. Sitll later, anti virus herbs, yes herbs which kill viruses. Grapefruit seed extract, Garlic, chlorella, given in electrolyte solution,  a total of l0 liquid meals a day.

You give also give pureed food 3 times a day minimum. You will also find or make some herbal healing additives. This is a lot of work, so plan on some family member staying home all day with him for a week or two. He will need bed rest, warmth, a perfect feeding regimen, all the things that work on us humans when they become ill, so this is great practice for someone who wants to eventually heal humans.

In healing humans or cats, if there is a lot of mucus, you fast them to get rid of it. If a cat is fasted, he immediately flows with mucus, too, has difficulty breathing. If puss sounds mucusy, asthmatic, do what you'd do for a human. STEAM HIS LUNGS! Wrap kitty in a towel with a cowl hood, hold him over a steaming pot or basin and let him inhale the steam for 5 minutes. Put menthol paste, Vicks, Eucalyptus leaves or onions in the water for added expectorant power. I smash onion pieces under his nose so the fumes are inhaled. Do this many times a day. He may wiggle but it won't scar his psyche. Then rub his adam's apple and he will cough up what is expectorated. Cats cannot cough without a finger rub on throat and trachea.

Our most affectionate cat Miranda Mumzur, went through this hassle as a kitten, several times daily and survived this mucusy asthma, living to be a mother. But for life, when she ate canned food or kibble, she got instant mucus. I had to keep her on real raw meat and vegies for life.

For the sick cat or kitten, there can be other meals beside chicken soup and blood. Give a sick cat rose hips from real roses. Take the red fruit, cut, throw seeds into garden to grow. Leave fruit soaking in fridge in 3 tbsp orange juice overnight. Next day, give to cat.

WHAT IF MY CAT IS ILL? Take all canned foods from a sick adult cat.  If the cat will eat, only give genuine meat raw or lightly steamed with greens then ground up into green and red burger. If there is constipation, you do not give more food, you banish solids, and put sick cat (or human for that matter) on a juice or broth fast.

CAT NOT EATING? When the cat has no appetite, gets violent at the sight of food, when his bowels are not moving and when he's exuding mucus, or projectile vomiting due to enteritis, you cannot feed him. Fast him. Juices and soups only. Puss must be fed by eyedropper as he probably won't chew, and cats can spit out. Do not hurry the eyedroppering or flood his throat or he'll aspirate the soup or electrolyte solution and drown.

Don't do water fasts for kittens. Kittens would quickly starve to death. You need to give him 'light' broth meals. When his appetite comes back, give real raw food, no meat-by-products.

You can make a constipated cat's bowels move with a little 'green raw juice' between meals. Use bland juices like collards, romaine, and even parsley in small amounts. Stay away from mustardy greens like certain spicy kales, or oxalic acid- containing leaves like spinach, chard. Feed 3 or 4 light meals of genuine meat as opposed to canned cat foods. I like Gerbers chicken, turkey or beef. (I don't let any veal or lamb in my house as these are babies and there is much suffering involved in their being penned for slaughter.)

If a mother is no longer nursing a kitten, I will dilute Gerbers meat with a little raw, green juice to make a digestible soup or dilute the meat with their carrot, stringbean or broccoli product. THIS is costly!

There really is no occasion to water-fast an animal, especially a kitten who is growing and needs nutrients. Fasting works on humans but not animals. They are too fragile. When I tried total fasting, I lost them all. But thinned out nutrients work well.

Light meals means no toxic cat food or gland meats, no fatty food like chicken with skin. It doesn't mean 'no nutrition.' If there is diahharea, you would feed brown rice gruel (or mush) mixed with Gerbers meats, vegies and acidophilis powder, just until the cat's bowels tighten up and no liquid stools persist. Ground up rice will 'bind' the bowels. To vary, give a yogurt meal but it has to be real yogurt, that bleeds when cut. Give clean-source raw meat in pureed vegetable, Gerbers meats mixed with low-starch vegies like Gerber's carrots or string beans and some rice mush. Usually l jar meat needs 1/2 jar of vegetables added to it.

Raw egg yolks from FREE RUNNING farm chickens marked on the box CAGE FREE are great foods, mixed with Gerbers stringbeans or carrots as eggs by themselves are too acid reaction, rich and constipating for a sick puss.

Steam and mash fresh vegies or mince raw chicken or turkey, washing carefully to remove salmonella. I thank God that In L.A. we get a l-lb plastic 'bullet' shaped frozen turkey burger for .70c at the biggest super market chain. The same tube is $1.29 at all other chains. I give raw meat to animals that are ill. For an animal with some mucus emanation from eyes, mucus free avocado is a good protein. Haas Avocado which is high protein, (the black, bumpy avocados) is the richest of all. Along with pale green part, use the greenest part, just under the skin. NEVER give a hard avocado. Never give overripe avocados. They can hurt Mr. Whiskers and even kill a dog. To make GUACA-MEOW, add a few drops of our BIOFLAVONOID COCKTAIL (recipe below) instead of lemon and some TOFU mashed in well. Forget the tomatoes, cilantro onions and hot sauce that makes YOU love avocado.

A sick cat doesn't want to chew or swallow and will sometimes fight you, so this has to be done very 'tactfully,' to prevent a fight. Stroke the furball, soothing, talking to him, showing him family members, walk him around, showing him his favorite sites. Sit where he most likes to be with you, holding him in the crock of your arm, watching t.v. maybe. Talk to him. Tell him how much you love him and want him to get well. Then, casually, help him assume the 'position.' On top of a rag, lying in Sphinx position, head up. Have that food all ready and pre-prepared right by your elbow. If it's a kitten, use a Gerber's baby spoon (available in super markets) with small, rubber bowl. The left hand goes over his head so that your left thumb and first finger can open top jaw. Use the SPOON TIP to open bottom jaw. Spoon- force-feed but gently. It's pasty, smooth food so it will slide down easily without his chewing. Eyedropper broths or yolks, cautious he's not aspirating.

Praise Puss after each bite. Continue until an entire meal is given. If his resistance becomes 'freaked out,' let him win. Walk him around again, try again later. If he eats his meal, put spoon down, resume your socializing on a very slow, relaxed manner as a reward. Spoon-feed thick soups (recipe below) or tofu-mole, or raw egg yolk (never raw egg white, it's not good for body of anyone!) mixtures. Do not cook yolks for sick animals. Their nutritive power is immense when uncooked. Between meals, give "Magic Rose Hip in Juice". (One of the most powerful foods on the planet is the red bolus of the rose, which becomes truly ripe months after the rose drops its petals. I have had great success in healing the so called fatal diseases by putting a cat on juices boosted by home-made SUPER high Vit C Rose Hips (which I find in the neighborhood on rose bushes).

These boluses are washed well, to remove poison spray, then sliced very thinly into citrus juice. It must be ripe citrus juice. Most commercial lemons, limes and oranges are picked green and are a disaster, much too acidic. Soak for a few hours, so the energy of the red rose hip goes into juice. Then Add a squeeze of fresh raw garlic equal to what would fit on tip of your pinkie. VERY LITTLE or your cat will do a backflip. (The bolus' central seeds are thrown in a pot in the greenhouse to root rose trees for your garden. ) 5 rose boluses are enough for 2-tbsp. juice. I leave this Rose Hip mix in a covered teacup in the fridge to saturate. It's good after a few hours, even better after 24 hours. Throw away after several days and have a new one ready.) When you serve, it's alright for the juice to be chilled as that way kittie feels the liquid when it hits his tongue and the swallowing reflex is activated. An eye dropper is a good way to give it, or a teaspoon, taking care not to slosh so much down his throat that he inhales into lungs which will cause him to get pneumonia and die of something other than the illness he has. Getting food or liquids into lungs is very, very dangerous, so always feed slowly, paying great attention to the cat's swallowing reflex, by noting WHEN he is inhaling and shoving food in AFTER the inhale is over.

VIRUSES-Immune system building is important for viral infections. Only the body's antibodies can beat a virus. I give a sick cat several teaspoons a day of ROSE HIP fruit drink which is just what I would do for a sick child, too. Mammals with fevers dehydrate. It is very important for feverish animals to be given spring water or vegie broth every few hours, day and night. Be watchful for the sunken eye that means only an I.V. could rehydrate). By watching well cats' bowel movements, it'll never ever get to that!

COUGH REFLEX-If you hear that wet breathing and realize a cat has mucus in the lungs, you want to create expectoration. Cats cannot cough. They can hack but use hacking to eliminate FOOD from stomach. They have no lung cleaning system as we do with coughing. So you must rub his trachea, adam's apple and chest. Get him into a comfy socializing position on a towel in your lap. Rub from just under the neck to that place an inch down, where there's an indentation, over his collar bone, provoking a fit of  coughing.

HERBS FOR COUGHS: TO SUPPRESS COUGH- wild cherry bark, thyme leaf, licorice root, skunk cabbage, petasites, elecampane, yerba santa, grindelia, bloodroot, sundew, radish juice. WHY SUPPRESS A COUGH? Technically, cats cannot cough. I help them by rubbing the hole under adam's apple, rubbing the esophagus, providing them with an itch that makes them cough. Then when I'm not around those herbs can work on his not having the impossible urge to make an impossible cough. That itch.

TO DEAL WITH THE FLU-Lomatium, St. John's wort, Hyssop, Lemon balm, Thuja leaf, Echinacea. ELDERBERRY and Zinc,

TO CLEAR LUNGS-chickweed, lobelia/muellin, radish juice, white onion juice, cayenne, garlic, lemon. Shoulder stands work for humans, so if cat will allow you to do it, get him upside down.

FOR MUCUS-chamomile, peppermint, hyssop, ginger, cinnamon, golden seal, eyebright, ederflower, plantain, marshmallow, comfrey. Give strongly brewed chickweed tea with lemon, cayenne, garlic and onions squeezed in, as this breaks mucus up. Between meals, eyedropper a sick cat' mouth slowly with herbal 'specifics' i.e. for lung mucus, chickweed and mullein tea. Don't give a mucusy cat any rice gruel. That's just for the diarrhea set. Eye droppers are safer than spoons which throw so much into the throat they inhale it.

TO KILL VIRUS- Research viricidal herbs at healthfood store book stand.  Garlic in small amts, grapefruit seed extract are the best. Lomatium, St John's Wort, Hyssop, Lemon Balm, Thuja (tea tree oil, very toxic, so only a droplet!) Echinacea. Licorice Root. Garlic. ELDERBERRY fruit but I don't know about giving that to cats. Maybe grind it into water, eyedropper it in. These are very easy to grow from bushes. Rose Hip is a fantastic immune booster. Cut the red hips into water, let sit for a few days. Eyedropper the water.

THE COUGHING CAT! Well, there's no such thing. Cats cannot cough on their own like dogs. (One reason that you can NOT feed liquids easily to a wobbly cat without drowning him.) When you have a cat with lung mucus and want that cat to cough, you must create an itch so strong that the cough response is stimulated. I rub their throat, their adam’s apple area, when you find the point that makes them cough. It's on the traechea. That cough will help empty lungs of mucus. Humans know how to spit mucus out when they cough; cats unfortunately don't, but swallowing mucu is still better than having it in the lungs where it can suffocate Puss. Lung disease can become a killer for a cat if you don't do all you can to get toxins out of diet, medicate with tetracycline or minocycline. I always send out an email to a hundred people. Got any not used up ampicillin, tetracycline or minocycline? Send to me. Save it next time you get a prescription. Will work for old Rxs.

Do the hooded towel herb steam inhaling 3 times a day with eucalptus, onions. Rub onion juice on cat's nose beforehand or squeeze slices with a hand held over steaming eucalpytus leaves in boiling water. As cats leap about unexpectedly, TOWEL-contain the entire cat, so he won’t flip the hot pot. Better yet, sink the pot in the kitchen sink, hold him over the ledge, legs away from pot/sink, cuz one kick and boiling water hits YOU and the KIDS! Burn stay in hospital thousands more than a vet would cost! Another person may have to hold the HEAD COVERING towel. Asthmatic cats respond to steam/herbs very well.

In addition, give sick cats three, substantial, vegetable/meat/ garlic SOUP meals at her normal meal time. Sick cats must continue to eat while they fight off the virus or bacteria and there are certain vitamins or foods that enhance the immune system (like ascorbate, garlic, rose hips.) Practice on yourself when you're ill, to find out what these are.

SOUP RECIPE:BUY: FISH heads, Chicken with bones, parsley, carrots, celery, onion. Simmer meat, cracked bones for 1 hour. Add vegies only for the last l0 minutes. Remove bones, blend or puree. Add lemon, garlic, bioflavenoids at the last minute. These you don't heat. Skim off fat. They don't need that, now. AND THROW ALL BONES deep deep down in compost pile. Cats can die of bones.

When I first discovered 'healthfood' and New age healing techniques, PREVENTION OF DISEASE THROUGH DIET and FASTING were what I did for myself. At first sign of a sore throat, I quit all foods: meat, dairy, grains. I drank raw juices made on a juicer, ate vegetables only if I was starving. Took EMERGENC-powder in citrus juice,always raw. If any STEAK AND POTATO hunger persisted, I added butter to the vegetables. That always worked and banished hunger. I took various herb capsules that were tonic and specific for what ailed me, horseradish for my liver, for instance. Emergen-C for inflammations or infections.

At first recognition of a virus, I would take nature-lax pills to empty bowel of all food from the day before, I'd keep very warm, wrapped up and rest l00% of the time and lo and behold, my immune system would kick in and that sore throat would go away. I had created the antibodies required.

Over the years, as I no longer created toxic waste dumps in my body, and had re-educated my tastes to enjoy savory VEGETARIAN proteins like nuts, avocados, vegie burgers, hummous, (a garbanzo dip, and ask for recipes) all disease ceased. The annual flu didn't come to my door. It's now twenty years I'm without a cold or flu! I feel it's the same for cats.

To avoid making our body a garbage dump, and attracting disease, learn to select POWER foods, use them mostly raw, and properly COMBINE, i.e. to eat proteins with salads, to eat proteins "dry"--- (no cokes, no milk) so food digests better. Don't mix acid digestion proteins with starches which require alkaline digestion. Eat grains with salad. No sour with flour. No sugar with meat. And no pasteurized dairy at all.

As animals don't eat a great variety of foods combining is not an issue for them. I did find that grains are not suitable for cats. Having no ptyalin enzyme in their saliva to digest starches, they simply turn grain into undigested mucus. I do not give kibbles at all. I give only market-purchased fresh or frozen raw meat, warmed, partially cooked, but mostly raw.

THE KIBBLE QUESTION: Many people feel grain is not natural to cats. I am one of them although I cook oats or rice with meats to extend. Just watch for mucus in cat's eye as that shows he doesn't tolerate grain meals and all that mucus can  become an ACAPULCO breeding spot for some future illness or germ!. same as it does for humans who eat grains. My only grain is bible bread so no colds in 20 yrs. Ask me about this, (astrology@earthlink.net) Some cat experts recommend kibble be given but mixed with meat, and made mushy and wet, to avoid stressing kidneys and causing FUS. But I notice that grain causes mucus in immune compromised cats, immediately. Eyes start to water, mucus appears at the nose and asthmatics get snuffly. So I don't use it. I keep it around for feeding wild cats when I drive around the neighborhood though.

If you want to feed kibble and note that commercial kibbles are costly and often contain heart-damaging lard, cottonseed oils, make your own with any organic whole grain flour (just let soak in dough stage for 2 hours on back of stove to dissipate the phytic acid.) Best way is to sprout your wheat kernels or other grains in water for a day or two, then food process until it's a fine flour. Then proceed the way you make your OWN crackers. Add olive or other natural oil, a natural mineral rich vegie broth then roll into a large cracker. Bake at low temperature; always under 325 so nasty acids don’t develop in the food, then crumble. Store air tight and dry, and slightly cool so it won't get rancid. Add to expensive meat/vegetable mixtures, but keep the whole thing mushy when served. If mucus develops in the cat's nose or eyes, discontinue starches and kibbles.

Not that meat is the perfect food. It can be a killer. The holistic vet, Dr. Art, told me that many cat health problems come from acid saliva which comes from an overloaded liver and a too rich diet. Change the diet he says. Banish skin and organs from chicken meals. And obviously, no tinned meats from Kal-Kan and Friskies. They're made of meat-by-products. This isn't real meat. Commercial pet food is really nothing but ground up 'offal' an accurate sound for what it is: bovine lips and hooves, chicken beaks and nails, cock combs and claws mixed with the rendered, dead fat from bodies of animals killed at the pound. This creepy graveyard brew will cause an immediate, invisible allergic reaction in your pet, an immediate drop of immune system integrity. That in turn invites viruses which are really opportunistic and secondary to the basic insulted allergic condition.

There's a reason FIV and FeLV are so frequent in animals today. They are CAUSED by that costly American diet of tinned meat by products. This diet will eventually damage the animals that consume it. If you love your furball, you'll give her real meat, cooked lightly in pure water, at low temperature, until part of it is no longer red, but much of it is pink and fairly raw. (Some sources say you shouldn't give RAW flesh unless you somehow KNOW there are no parasites in it but YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT.) So cook the meat at very low temperature, which leaves enzymes in the meat but kills parasite life, add some grated cooked vegetables (beet/carrot, greens/broccoli) mixed in with garlic at the end. If you drink celery or carrot juice, and frequently make it, add a shot to the plate of cat food for live enzyme activity is magic.

Always give bottled spring water, never faucet water, and always leave plenty of water on the floor in the cat's dish and change it daily as it gets dirty fast. A BRITTA water purifier is nice. You pour faucet water through it, and clean water results!

SHOULD AN ADULT CAT LIVE OUTDOORS in the YARD? Most cat fanciers say no. They can roam, get hurt, leap any fence, attract dogs, get stuck in a l00 foot tree, walk in parvovirus fecal matter that dogs left around and get enteritis. As we are not watchful for this disease, as we are NOT quick to recognize the very first symptoms of enteritis, (fever, no appetite, diaharea,), we lose all cats who have it. If we are watchful for the symptoms, we can cure the animal.

Cats evolved in Africa, a clement part of the world, though they were brought to colder areas of Europe as ratters. But if they are ferals and your state is chilly?  A friend in West MASSACHUSETTS has wild cats outdoors. She turns her patio benches upside down in winter, puts in a heating pad, throws a heavy duty power line to house for this. She lines the furniture on top of heating pad and beneath, with towels, wraps the entire affair in plastic, leaving a cat body sized doorway and the ferals live there all winter, playing on snow in daylight. She feeds them several times a day. She is now trapping and neutering, then releasing, to stop the endless babymaking.. What this tells me is that in any state, as Massachusetts is the coldest we have, you can certainly leave feral cats out in winter if you build an insulated house and line it with soft towels. Their body heat will warm the room. The Siberian tribes have a trick. Their home is a tent which is made of deer skin, like an igloo and inside it is a small room they crawl into for sleeping. Also deer skin walls. Their body heat can change temp in that smaller room. An analogue for cats in a chilly house would be a box with walls. Out doors, an old dog house with a curtain thrown over the door.

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PROBLEMS WITH THE SKIN - Dr Art told me that the most frequent disease of American dogs and cats is skin tumors. Kidney problems next. Both are due to skin no longer functioning as eliminatory organ. Remember, skin is a 3rd kidney. Poor skin means horrid smelling urine, all from a diet of l00% meat which puts a strain on entire animal's health. Add vegies to the meat, and 'loofa ' your pets' skin, also massage the skin, get circulation into the whole thick layer of it. Skin is almost 1/3rd of an inch thick. And get rid of that top layer of dried, old skin with a regular, good brushing. So get an OLD, strong bristle hair brush and reserve it for Fluffy or Butch.

Use camphor, peppermint, eucalyptus, fennel, spearmint on the cat's skin. Make strong teas of these leaves if you can find them, put brush in it, brush backwards into her fur. Use witchhazel and Lipton's tea on hot spots especially those near her ears. If you have lavender or nasturtium in the garden, rub these upon his fur.

If you see spots where the hair is falling out, puss has MANGE, a form of liver disease, that weakens the body so parasites can get into skin. We must treat liver at same time as we try to kill the invisible bugs on the skin. FOR CLEANSING ANIMAL's LIVER: Add 5 mg zinc and 1/2 tsp real crushed garlic to food. Add l0,000 units of Vitamin A to daily food. GET RID OF FOODS that are toxic like commercial cat foods.' FEED ONLY A PURE real meat DIET: Give no milk or milk product to cat. Best food: real raw meat, like little capons, turkey burger or chicken cooked with carrot/collards, blended or crushed into meat. Cook vegies separately, mash, add to slightly cooked turkey burger. NO Table food, no salt. Use Plantain, or calendula, a common garden weed and flower, massaged into the skin once a day, also golden seal and lavender. Make tea out of these herbs, bathe it on skin. Open capsule of goldenseal, pour 1/2 cup boiling water over it, let it sit covered until it brews. Keep all teas in fridge between use. STICK cotton ball in tea, but cotton ball can't go back into tea. You need to pour tea on cotton ball, use a clean cotton or the disease gets in the tea. Get some NATURAL FLEA shampoo with citronella. Wash cat daily. After shampoo sponge on the lemon rinse.

LEMON RINSE.Slice l lemon thin, including skin, pour into heat proof glass jar, pour l pint boiling water over it, cover, let stand over night, then keep in fridge. Sponge onto cat several times a day. COMMERCIAL MANGE medicine is highly toxic, insults the liver which gives you a problem. But, if you take a few drops of mange medicine, mix it in the goldenseal tea or lemon rinse and sponge it on, you might made the parasite decide to give up, die, move or all three. Give your pet exercise and massage so there's optimum circulation in the skin, otherwise the kidneys are overloaded and the kidneys slowly die.

BOILS: In the first decade of catmommy-ing, I didn't neuter my males so they often came home with big, sore fight gashes as they'd taken their LUMPS. Those big lumps look serious but they're not. They can grow very suddenly on a cat (often from a scratch or wound) and they aren't tumors; they're a boil or lump of white blood cells left over from an internal gland infection. Cats are so good at evacuating poisons that even lungs or lymph glands can dump their load through the skin, create huge boils which break open, drain messily yet heal perfectly well. Doesn't happen as often with humans, though in toxic Middle Ages in Europe it did.. but on cats, expect boils. Easy to cure. Just apply hot compresses, or mullein poultice until lump grows bigger. The skin will become hairless and shiny, a sign that it is about to burst. Get cat over newspapers. Press, it will rupture, pus will depart the cat. Take cotton balls and squeeze the remaining lump clean, let it drain clear. Calendula petals smashed to paste, then applied to a gauze, applied locally will heal it shut. Antibiotic ointment, the "over the counter" kind, NEOSPORIN, is fine too, so I SMUSH my petals IN A SMUDGE of neosporin.. Calendula flower is amazing in its ability to heal any hole on an animal's skin. You may think you need stitches but try this stuff. It's a common flower but products made of it are available at any healthfood store. My favorite is the atomizer spray but you can make your own you know. Ask me for seeds to this miracle flower, a biennial.

KIDNEY DISFUNCTION can be fatal!  The jammed up kidney happens to all animals (particuarly males) on high fish/ protein dried feed, twice the protein level of tinned, cooked meats,and worst, tuna and fish and it is especially detrimental (*try fatal) to cats. I NEVER use kibble, but if you're gone all day, occasionally, it's ok, to leave a snack around.

BALANCE the richness of meat and cut down on it's high uric acids by adding grated carrots (raw or cooked) to meat. Avocado and Tofu can be used. (NOTE: But make certain avocados are not overly ripe; they can kill an animal when they begin to get soft, or smell sour.)

NOTE: Homemade vegetable garden additives will be much more laden with vitamins than the artificial lab vitamins put in commercial kibbles and cat foods.

RECIPES FOR YOUR FURBALL

REGULAR MEALS- Cook the meat, Cook soft vegies with it at the end, Carrots take longer, so you start them BEFORE you cook meat. Mash together. Season wi. raw garlic. (See HOMEMADE file.)

'T.V. DINNERS':When you travel, your roomie may not want to cook so leave her a stack of TV dinners. These frozen meals have to be fully cooked. When your local supermarket has a sale, load up. Boil l0 lbs of chicken, lamb, gland meat, sweetbreads, turkey or beef, mixing them as you wish. Discard the broth. It's all uric acid and not much use. (I live in a crow region. My bakery has 30 l oaves a week giveaway stale bread, which I freeze, drop into broth, throw onto sidewalk strip for crows.) Cool the meat, puree or hand blend, mix in a third mashed vegies, wrap in l lb. patties, freeze. The roomie thaws it on a shelf as a cat will find it, open the foil, maybe eat the foil. My plates are stacked behind closed doors. That works for me.

CHICKEN DINNER- Cook 4 chickens at a time, cool. SKIM off all fat which is congealed at top of cassarole. Put in a jar in fridge, useful for frying cat burgers on a skillet.) Pull off fatty skin, discard. Pull dangerous bones out, leaving in the calcium bone-KNOBS and as much marrow as you can, mash with vegies, or blend vegies into puree, stir in meat. Freeze in foil for t.v. dinners.

SERVING- HAVE PET SITTER thaw l in the morning, either sealed in dish cabinet or thaw in fridge, that takes 8 hrs Or nuke and pour this meat/vegie mixture over kibble, if your cats handle grains well, (mine don't) stir and serve. Le Petit Pet Gourmet will love his TV dinner.

COOKING FRESH DAILY- I find it just as easy to thaw out two bullets of frozen turkey burger, cook it up with carrots, mash the carrot part with an hand masher before adding to crumbly meat. I never owned a Micro-wave, so what do I know from convenience? I cook for adult humans and I  cook from scratch for cats, twice a day and never think it's too much work.

HERBS AS MEDICINE- Dr Art spoke of healing specific diseases with herbal extracts. If animal is incontinent or has pain over kidney area when massaged, one brews a tea of plantain, parsley, fennel, carrot (any part), celery, comfrey, ginseng, mint, oregano, thyme, PLUS, and most important, all kinds of diuretics like cornsilk, uva ursi, and give by teaspoon. Puss probably won't drink it in her water dish but put it there anyway and prevent her getting garden or toilet water.

For animals with kidney problems, who have pain when massaged there, cut down on protein by extending meat with vegetarian proteins: tofu, greens, carrots, cauliflower, beets or other non oxalic-acid vegies and avoid dry kibble and high ash tuna or fish. How to make these foods appetizing to pet? MIX with some meat, give aroma with onions, olive oil, and garlic.Dr. Art went on to talk about:

FATAL CAT VIRUSES: BABY CATS grown in a group GET a most often fatal, foul-smelling DIAHARREA called viral ENTERITIS. Panleukemia. In dogs it's called parvovirus. No medicine can knock out any virus at this point in time. So you have to get immune system in good shape, block the bowel with thick gruels to stave off the animal evacuating itself to death, tearing up the intestines, causing blood loss and you must simultaneously do assiduous electrolyte replacement.

This disease can come from cats walking where dogs eliminate, out on curb strip or in street, or from the adult cats, possibly the mother because they were not given vaccinations against it when they were young. It is nearly always fatal. And as you do not notice its first symptoms, (runny stools, fever, lack of appetite) by the time you do see cat's ill, it is a fast killer. Be very watchful for the first sign, runny stool and immediately start the healing remedies. If you see vomiting, no appetite, diaharrea, it's well pronounced already. If you feel fever, (it will be Diphasic fever, two peaks), know that the second one takes the kitten and get busy. They get so ill with Enteritis that they can then get upper respiratory diseases, (the fatal headcold). They get these two diseases around the time the mother starts to wean them when they lose their mother's milk-carried antibodies. That's at the 5 week point.

MOST IMPORTANT WITH BABY CATS is to feel them daily for fever. Cheek to cheek. You must check for fever as a baby can be sick a long time before he gets listless, loses appetite and before you stumble on a wet bowel movement. FEVER is the first symptom. Your hand is too thick-skinned to be a good gauge. You can stick a finger under cat's armpit, hold it there. If it starts to feel hot, go in closer to the face and place its nose against your cheek. If that feels warm, you must immediately watch its bowel movement to see that it is firm. FEVER with a solid movement is bacterial, you can nail it with ampicillin or tetracycline. Fever with RUNNY movements indicate a virus. NO MEDICINE works. Death is stocking the kitty unless you go on ENTERITIS REGIMEN. TO KILL the virus, feed raw garlic. It doesn't take much but it takes consistency! Mix fresh, real garlic pressed with a press, into the rice gruel. Wait 90 minutes, for it to digest and pass out of stomach. THEN, add your ELECTROLYTE liquid. That passes into intestine in 20 minutes. At which point, back to thick rice pablum. If the cat shows appetite for meat when other cats are getting fed, let her eat. Read FILE ON DIET. It will tell you how to prepare the special 'sick kitty' diet.

The two serious diseases in the cat world, the real killers, are enteritis and upper respiratory disease, which are not hard to tell apart. With colds, bronchitis or mycoplasma pneumonia, Puss gets fever, raspy breathing, lung congestion along with foul-mucus, suppurating eyes, swollen lymph glands, a bad odor from mouth /lungs and in the room. Mycoplasma is often the cause. This kind of pneumonia is highly contagious to humans by air born saliva-spattering. And that occurs when you least expect! You can wash your hands, keep your head away from his little cat mouth and breath, but if a mycoplasma pneumonia patient sneezes, and a droplet gets on your eye, lip or nose, you are going to get the worst penumonia you ever had. Read this file MYCOPLASMA! And as pets can sneeze on your children, keep them away from a pet with pneumonia.Wash your hands. Don't prepare food for humans if you were handling a sick cat. Use antibacterial soap. Don't eat with dirty hands,  use a fork. THIS ONE IS CONTAGIOUS IN THE EXTREME.

You couldn't die of mycoplasma, but you'd lose two precious weeks. Any other pet that gets respiratory or diarrhea diseases COULD die. SO quarantnie. Keep other pets away, lock the room every time you enter or leave. Also wash the floors in the area itself. So you don't have to wash the entire house, quarantine the sick cat, wash hands with anti-bacterial soap, pet food dishes spoons, eyedroppers get a soak with 1/4 cup bleach in the sink water.

I am not certain that it isn't best to keep all adults (except Mother and kittens ) out of the house. Second best: at first sign of any disease in a tribe, throw healthy adult cats (no fever, no listless appetite) out into the yard, seal the house. Keep the sick ones inside. Keep the healthy mother and her sick babies inside.

At first sign of disease, suspect the litter box. Wash all cat boxes out, bleach very nearly full strength, rinse; sun them if extras are on hand, if not I will rig disposable cat boxes out of 99c store cardboard boxes, lining them with foil, then newspapers. I give the house cats these new fresh cat boxes. The outside cats will use the garden.

The weaning period of kittens is dangerously vulnerable. When mother's milk dries up, that's when the milk-conferred immunity also departs. Cow or goat milk does not have cat antibodies! So, keep mothers stressfree, well fed; try to keep over feeding the mother and get her to take her children into 8 weeks of nursing and of magic milk. It's possible. But not if you gang feed because many adult cats will beat Mom to the gobble. So, feed all the other adults outside, feed dear Mama who's nursing her double rations and do it inside.

That milk is protection for the babies. Even if you fed the kitten the best Gerbers meats, there is no antibody in it. When you take a 5 week baby off milk and start feeding it meat, you are asking for trouble. DOUBLE FEED MOTHER and use her for kitten sustenance and you have a chance of getting a kitten to an age where it can beat the dreaded panleukemia (viral enteritis or  distemper it goes by all three.) Or beat respiratory infections, which can be mycoplasma pneumonia, which hits humans hard.

Because all cats destroy furniture and mess carpets, the surest way to keep a safe cattery is to try to keep cats in the part of house with linoleum. At times I was lucky enough to have a sealed off linoleum breakfast room and kitchen with a lot of furniture for perching on top of. The cats didn't have to get under foot in the kitchen. They can use a window to get into a large, fenced garden. In summer the windows were open; in Winter they were sealed but the cat could go out the back porch door which has a 'cat door' in it.

Year round provide blankets, towels on the floor, a carpet, and a lot of cartons and baskets lined with towels. In the doghouse outside, fluffy toweling. If cats come into living room, cover all furniture with Mexican rugs or sheets removing them only for guests. All cat laundry gets washed regularly with bleach in the soap cycle.

TO CLEAN AREA: Cats are sent into the garden. Shut doors. Floors get swabbed in hot water, soap with a half cup bleach minimum, added to the bucket of water. This will remove germs. If not, other, later litters can be affected. Always remove all pets while bleaching a room and for several hours afterwards. The fumes will give them compromised immune systems and lung infections. Just what they'll do to you if you clean a shower, for instance.

TO CLEAN CAT- If a sick cat has soiled his own buttocks, drop bottom into warm sink of water, soap the fur, pick it clean, take cat out, have the toweling ready to daub him dry then have the HAIR DRYER to blow dry all ready. I turn from sink to top of dryer/washer, can do a cat's behind in minutes. Then back to his box and heating pad, much praise, more hot chicken soup. Room is heated, draft free. If you start early on enteritis, the cat has a fighting chance. He likes his sweet smelling coat back. They can smell their back end! Don't think NOT!

THE CAT BOX QUESTION: Cat litter boxes contain microbes and spread disease onto kitty's paws, and paws go in mouths. Boxes must be bleach-cleaned weekly and waste-cleaned daily, by picking up waste with a plastic bag over your hand. Throw waste into a larger plastic bag. If too many cats use a box, it gets knee deep in moisture. Discard it all. Best would be to get 'cat doors' installed, allowing cat free access to yard. Avoid cat boxes entirely. Cat boxes really are primitive and spread disease among multiple animals.

In Winter time, we all must use cat boxes full of sand or litter as cats will not go out on a cold night. As I have never found the extra money in my wallet for expensive plastic cat boxes and liners, I like disposable cat boxes made from juice carton-bottoms from supermarket displays. I line them with foil or plastic so there's no soaking the linoleum, then a newspaper, then fill with 1" cat sand. We use them for 2 days then dispose of the whole thing. One son gave me four cat boxes as a gift. This number allows me to SUN TWO for a week while I USE two, then interchange. Wash the dirty one after it's dumped, sun it for a few days.

Kittens have their own, smaller boxes because I don't want them in contact with diseases from the adult box. I make their box by razor cutting a small door in a very small box, lining with foil, newspaper then sand. Many diseases are litter-born so don't let kittens get near an adult litter box. Don't let adults use the kitty litter box and they will try to.

Unless you are really prepared to clean litter boxes regularly, best is to train cats to go outside in the yard and let them use the flower beds. But cats are practical creatures. They cannot be bothered to go outside when the weather is chilly. Kittens can't be bothered, period. It is important to train kittens early about boxes, by making them available. Every time a kitten finds a new place to go, I plop a litter box lined with newspapers there. Kittens don't get sand in their litter boxes first week of toilet training. For two reasons. One is, they chew sand. The second is, SAND means 'TOILET' to older cats, and would encourage older cats to use the boxes I meant for kittens. So I only give kittens newspapers at first. I put the kitten section of house FAR from the cat box section. NONETHELESS, kitties are so smart, they find the adult cat box anyway!

DISEASES! Kittens with the diaharrea (distemper or enteritis) or with MYCOPLASMA/ Upper respiratory disease, and/or the lung/eye mucus disease have a high mortality rate. It takes kittens 2-5 days to die and you suffer and lose sleep every step of the way. When kittens reach 5 weeks of age and mother is trying not to give them milk, you must start DOUBLE FEEDING MOM, watching the babies with a hawk eye for signs of loss of appetite. Any fever, listless appetite, nausea, vomiting or diaharrea, you are having a visit from the viral bad fairy. You have to realize you have diaharrea (the smell is best indicator for me, it doesn't smell like usual evacuation. ) Juveniles and Adults can live longer but they will all die if you don't catch it early. FEELING cats who are not eating for signs of fever is the best way. But even feverish cats eat at first, so the loss of appetite is really the second symptom. Fever is first. Touch the body; spot they are ill and instantly start the cure phase.

HOW TO FEED AN ENTERITIS AFFLICTED CAT- The cure for enteritis or diarrhea involves rice mush (rice gruel) with acidophilis powder, cayenne, garlic, grapefruit seed extract, tiny tiny amts of Vit C ascorbate  in it. After he eats, wait 2 hrs, then give the water as electrolyte solution.

(GRUEL or MUSH RECIPE GIVEN BELOW.) If a sick cat is getting trampled you can place the ill member of litter in a separate basket with a heating pad set on low UNDER several layers of newspaper, then several layers of toweling. Boxes are good as they prevent drafts. You have NO IDEA how many drafts are on floors that you never feel!

Kittens are 'given to the mother for friendship, not feedings. FELINE ENTERITIS makes all appetite depart. They will not nurse.  Fever also makes any animal prone to being cold. It exhausts them, gives them chills. Sick cats of any age should have a heating pad placed in their quarantine area, set on 'low,' with many towel layers of thick fabric firmly stretched over it to avoid overheating them. Make certain room is draught (draft) proof. Get down on floor and see what cold swirling air hides there. Blanket your windows and cracks under doors. Most draughts come UNDER doors. TOWEL the cracks up. If there is FELINE ENTERITIS I also lock all adults out of the house. Mothers and sick kitttens are inside house, ALONE.

ONE MORE THING, when kittens are cured, put them outside, too, for a few hours while you use bleach/water on all floors. CARPETS have no reason to be in a cattery! You can't bleach them!

DIET FOR  DIARRHEA- This is something that hits kittens and adults. Once they survive it, they're vaccinated for life which is hopeful. So be CERTAIN that YOU CAN and DO SPOT a feverish cat by feeling the heat, so touch everyone's face daily. Be certain you don't OVERLOOK a listless, no appetite cat. Do not fail to look at the cat in his litter box and to see if his bowels are loose. YOU HAVE HANDS. You have EYES.   USE THEM.

Cats are rarely absent from meal call. IF you see one without appetite, that is a serious symptom. The feverish brow is a clue.  THE quality of the BOWEL MOVEMENT is important. The fact that a baby will not nurse with their mother. Learn what normal body temperature feels like when you hold a kitten to your cheek. You are going to have to diagnose fevers from a cheek, so start practicing.

You want to start helping the patient at the first sign of his having no appetite and fever. Wait and it's too late. Death is in the room if they are already barfing and flowing from the bowel. ALTHOUGH the diaharrea cat does not want to eat, you must try to get thick brown rice GRUEL down tiny spoonful by spoonful to STOP UP THE BOWEL.

Beside mother's feedings, *(if any) the attempt to heal distempered animals will involve oral feedings at 3 hr intervals. It will involve a thick slugey GRUEL, like a paste almost, made of roasted rice, ground to powder. SEE THESE *RECIPES. (click on this, it's a live link,) GRUEL is instant PLUG UP. It's like putting a cork in the cat. One moment his bowels are being ripped out of him by acid and viruses and he's bleeding from the rectum, the next, the viruses are frozen there, going oops! Garlic is assailing them, grapefruit seed extract, their billion thick colonies are dying and the cat's getting his strength back.

Between meals a soup or broth made of celery for natural salt and carrots/onions for natural sugar. And give them electroylyte solution like pedialyte.

Mix gruel paste with egg yolks, pureed meat, or Gerbers chicken for substance and boiled cracked-bone broth for calcium. Add parsley, thyme, oregano, grapefruit seed extract in capsules, or liquid, garlic and grapefruit seed extract which are viricides, disease healers and squeeze some raw garlic in at the end. Puree or strain and give every two hours with a rubber baby spoon or eyedropper. Take care food isn't aspirated. Food can't be solid, must be mushy-wet as feverish cats 'dry up' their food and become constipated. They get 'stopped up' with solid foods, then die from constipation. So give electrolyte water (pedialyte) every hour or give Rose Hips in juice between meals. No milk is given a mucusy cat as milk produces mucus.

For cats with colds, one can experiment with raw chlorophyll juices, freshly extracted from parsley, celery, with a little carrot in it as well. But kittens with enteritis can't have juice of any kind.

DIET FOR FELINE ENTERITIS- This is always the first disease to hit kittens around weaning time. Loose bowel kittens who are NOT NURSING, who are barfing their last meal, mother's milk of course, who can't keep that meal down, who may be evacuating liquidy stools, must instantly have thick brown rice gruel to stop them up and an electrolyte solution to replenish body's fluids, (i.e. a vegie broth made of celery for natural salt, onions and carrots for sugar. Put some ROSE HIP cocktail in, too.

GRUEL-The main food for a loose bowel cat is gruel. The idea is to 'stop' the cat up. Use basmati/or brown rice to make it, give it with  spoon or if babe is tiny, dropper fed. Rice gruel is the healing food par excellence for diaharrea in animal or human.

GRUEL RECIPE:Toast or parch your brown rice on a thick skillet. Not too hot or it will get brown. Turn it golden. Some grains will pop like popcorn. Cool grain. Grind in your coffee grinder. I have a tiny MOLINEX. I wipe out all coffee, from lid and base.. Maybe a blender or food processor could turn it into fine powder but the coffee grinder is superb! One could Use a strainer to sift out the larger crumbs. I don't. Take the fine flour that results, drop into boiling spring water, as if you were making mush. Add pinch salt and little honey to replace what body has lost. Boil slowly for 3-5 minutes, til thick. Keep extra mush covered in fridge, heat when needed, thinning with more spring water as required. I add raw pressed garlic a viricide in mini amounts, grapefruit seed extract a viricide also -- and chlorella, known to be good for dysentery.

GRUEL ADDITIVES: At serving time, I add raw garlic, from garlic press, just a tiny bit, a/ 18th of a tsp, a pinch of red cayenne powder, a little cod liver oil from a capsule and a little ascorbate. (Vit c powder.) I always have ascorbate in the house. Any healthfood store has it. I keep it for when I serve kids grape or fruit punch soft drinks, I add a tsp to every glass! Any headcold in a kid, they get ascorbate in their drink. Some feel cats can make their own ascorbate and it's too sour. Then go with grapefruit seed extract, a VIRICIDE. Avail any healthfood store.

Dr. Art recommended goat's milk yogurt which you can make yourself with a qt. of goat milk and some culture from a container of plain yogurt and which puts the right kind of bacteria inside the cat to fight the WRONG kind which is making him ill. Cow's milk based yogurt would be fine if that's all you've got. But I use acidophilis powder, now available in capsules at the healthfood store, always kept on ice by the way, breaking one open on each serving of mush.

There are other things to do for diaharrea. One source suggests hot astringent enemas. A mixture of geranium, ginger root, mint, strawberry leaves, comfrey, magnolia bark made into a tea, eyedroppered warm up the rectum of animal and orally, too, (but with a different eyedropper!)

GIVE LIQUIDS BY MOUTH  only if cat is conscious enough to swallow. Be careful as if he's groggy, he'll breathe in any food or liquids and die of suffocation or pneumonia. In sick cats, the swallowing reflex sometimes disappears. Make certain food is hot or cold so that he feels it in her mouth. If it's body temperature it will be inhaled into his lungs.

FOR ADULT CATS: You can FAST older pets, fatter pets, but when animal has diaharrea and is fasting already, in a sense, because there's no food absorption from diaharrrea, his body is being STRIPPED of minerals, sugars, salts. Give an electrolyte replacing solution such as pedialyte or if no money for that, sweetened salted vegie broth. That's what we do for any mammal with diaharrea. Children in third world countries always get diaharrea! ERT! ERT! (Electrolyte replacement therapy!) is necessary. Sweet/salty/minerally.

Give fresh, raw Chlorophyll juice, diluted for minerals, high energy. Juice is made up of parsley, watercress, kale, comfrey, romaine, and other gentle greens that have none of the highly laxative oxalic acid found in spinach/chard, a few tsps in their bowl of food. It is always dangerous to make a pet drink things. They aren't intellectuals they don't know a human is safe. They're young, so they're panicky and  THEY BREATHE IN THEIR LIQUIDS. They don't do it when they lick up their liquids, but when you hold them and put liquid in their mouth, they don't get it. They are inhaling!

Kittie's immune system can attack and beat the enteritis virus if we can plug her bowels and prevent her dehydrating while she's ill. When puss starts to recover, she can have thicker soups and solids. 2 tbsp of vegetables and Gerbers pureed meat and carrots mixed might be a meal. If you KNOW there is NO salmonella in your egg yolks, raw yolks with warm milk might be good for a cat that was half way recovered. Meat/egg by themselves are too rich for a really sick cat. For them it's better to feed vegetable/meat and bone broth. Simmer meat/vegies in pure water 1/2 hr, low temp. Cool and give by eyedropper or murine bottle. Someone must feed sick puss at night, so shifts must be arranged in the family with feedings at 3 a.m. and at dawn.

FIVE REASONS WHY NOT VETS? 1.) Sick Animals could not get such loving care at a vets. They  leave them in cages to die.  2.) the strangers would alarm them, give them the 'blues.' 3.) no vet ever heard of any of these holistic remedies! 4.) Vets give antibiotics, vaccinations and other horrors that kill even healthy cats, how much more Mr Sick Whiskers!! 5.) HUGE FEES! And Vets charge you even if animal dies, so why should they bother to learn to do things right? They got the Vet degree and you don't. Yeah, right. How do you spell SUCKER? An animal is just that. He's not going to discover the cure for Cancer. He's not going to give you grandchildren, not really. SAVE your money so your kids can have shoes.

In the last analysis, you're probably going to have your best swack at healing them, at HOME where five family members can take turns with the meals every two hours. The 3 a.m. feeding is the hard one. Give it to someone who's not an insomniac, the type that can go back to sleep after an earthquake. Or to the kid who wants to watch rock videos all night and can skip school one day.

If cash is tight, you can always cure your cat without a vet. Spend your cash on the human members. A vet costs 50$ a visit, minimum, hundreds for boarding. An animal, for all we love her, is still an animal. If the budget for humans is tight, perhaps an animal shouldn't be ON it.

EYE PROBLEMS:Many otherwise healthy kittens get drippy eyes. Clean eyes with mild boric acid or mild lemon water solution on a cotton ball. Failing to find that in medicine chest, use hot water some lemon juice in it. (Put 1/2 tsp boric acid powder in l cup boiling water. Keep in jar. Pour onto cotton ball so jar doesn't get infected.) Golden Seal, Yellow Dock, Eye-bright herb tea, VERY diluted lemon juice (.005%) or codliver oil can also be used to clean eyes to prevent bacterial infections from starting in this 'culture.' If the drip turns into conjunctivitis, use Neosporin ointment original formula only, topically. That means OPEN EYE, PUT A wad inside, close eye and rub i a circle. Dose ROSE HIP COCKTAIL, by mouth. (slice red rosehips into OJ, leave covered, overnight) When one kitten didn't respond to Neosporin, I used CALENDULA spray, available at the Healthfood store. It worked miracles for me when nothing else would. I sprayed it into the eye, then rubbed the Neosporin over it. This flower has amazing healing properties. I could tell you about the time the pitbull nipped off my cat's tail how it healed that wound and skin grew over entire stump because calendula will seal any wound!

The EYE INFECTION SYMPTOMS that go with mycoplasma pneuonia, a spore not virus, not germ --can blind baby cats. You want to get some tetracycline or minocycline and cure the kittie from within. I FIND the eye infection responds well to some NEOSPORIN original formula. When I catch the eye disease, I smear a wad into the eye orbit, close lid, ROLL the eye and go watch TV. Stuff feels fine. It's great applied on the inside of the cat's lid. CLOSE his eye for him and roll the goop around inside there.Make certain the Neosporin has no lidocaine or numbing agents. Get 'original formula'. The 28 gram tube costs the same as a 2 gram tube the vet sells. Another incident of VET RIP OFF that turns me off the tribe. When I caught the conjunctivitus from cats, I used the neosporin trick and instantly cured it in me. And realized the stuff felt GOOD. No problem with its use!

Dr. Art said that a boric acid wash, eyebright tea, mild lemon juice in distilled water could be used in the eyes of a cat. Iodine in very very mild solution also works, while codliver oil, NEOSPORIN or other 'over-the-counter,' triple antibiotic ointments are placed under lid, then with eyes closed, rubbed thoroughly into eye socket.

PARASITES. Dr. Art told me that even a holistic vet likes a DRONSIT pill or shot for tape worms but I expelled a tape worm once, years ago in Mexico, after a snack of pumpkin seeds. So give this age old remedy a try. During Halloween period, (a few days after, to get low cost fruit,) get all the pumpkins you can, Cut open, boil and freeze meat for soup. Dry all the seeds, and store dry. You will need them rest of year.

For all kinds of Worms, try Green hulls of the black walnut. The active ingredient is not in the ripe black nut, -- no it's in the big, green nut in summer, not when it's dried and black in autumn. You know black walnut tree. TALL, lacy leaves, not big pie like leaves in the plain california walnut. THE BLACK WALNUT is one you cannot open with anything but a bulldozer. That one! SLICE the fruit walls into alcohol, like brandy, let steep for a week, strain and bottle. Garlic squeezed into all meals, stirred in well, is a fabulous worm killer.

NOW, need your bug killer? Get those pumpkin seeds ground up in water, in blender, then soaked in that water overnight, then strained and give that liquid to the cat many times a day, given in food or raw, strained and by eyedropper or teaspoon on an empty stomach. Piperazine is the active ingredient in pumpkins seeds and is extracted by BIG CORPORATIONS and you buy it over the counter pet storse, most worming products have it. Thatwill do the job, too if you want to spend 7$. I prefer pumpkins as I also get soup all year. Ask me for recipe. Astrology@earthlink.net. What ever you use, you must mark it on a calendar and repeat it l5 days later to get the hatched baby worms which you couldn't GET when they were eggs. I am always checking stools with a magnifier and flash light to see when I must repeat. . Pomegranate root bark is another worm killer and we all know someone with a pomegranate tree. But they are not going to let you grab roots out of there, are they? So plant your own. If you have artemesia plant, wormwood, you can find out which part is useful from herb books at healthfood store.

MITES IN EARS -Use a Q-TIP with a little extra cotton on it, as QTIP is too small for adult cats. HYACINTH STICK with cotton wrapped is better. I clean out inner ears.  FOR ME Q TIPS ARE NOT BIG ENOUGH. THEY ARE under half what I NEED! I make my own Q-tips with sturdy malia tree twigs, or any tree, but I have MELIA, want seeds? purple flowers, very fragrant, I am astrology at earthlink dot net, OR get hyacinth sticks, used by florists, at HOME DEPOT in garden dept, dirt cheap, used for staking hyacinth blooms... and I wrap cheap sale cotton balls on its tip. MAKE MY OWN PESTICIDE out of tea tree oil, black walnut, UNRIPE LEMONS or LIMES (folks always give me bags of fruit, these idiots didn't let the fruit fall off tree when dead ripe, so they are sour citrus, useful for RINSE CYCLE FOR CLOTHING -- 1/2 cup juice strained....) I use these sour lemons for the few drops of sour power I use in eye wash on animals or EAR CLEANING PESTICIDES....

If you suspect mites or little bugs to live inside a cat's ears, use this home made brew of black walnut tincture from healthfood store or from your own unripe, green walnuts, has to be the black walnut variety...a vermifuge, use tea tree oil, NEEM oil if you can get it at INDIAN GROCERY STORE, use fresh squeezed garlic and super sour lemon juice (not ripe fruit,) or vinegar, mix this brew, dip in the Q-tip. I do many many swabbings of same ear, changing sticks. I pull the dirty cotton balls off, rinse sticks, save in an open jar on kitchen counter.

HOME MADE EYE WASH is a few drops fresh lemon in a tbsp of water. Cotton balls. For me, I use an "EYECUP". Now, you may buy powdered boric acid for the eyes, (diluting it in water for eyewash), you can use it dry to dust interior of ears doing so few times a week or daily. I FIND THAT My homemade brew kills mites immediately. Once I got a mite CLEANING MY CAT'S EARS.  It was a SOUND like water in my ear, a permanent LOUD SOUND! Also a sensation like having been in a pool, having water in my ear. ALL DAY LONG. It puzzled me. NO POOL ANYWHERE near. So I figure, maybe,just maybe it's a mite. I put the q tip with pesticide mix in my own ear, that NOISE was gone in one second! It wasn't water in the ear. It was mites!

So, Dab cotton swab in the boric powder, dust into ear, going deep without gouging. This absolutely KILLS those bugs and that black waste material will not be there any longer. Just the normal orange wax, in small amts. I find the more vermifuges you use, and black walnut nuts picked green is the best, the faster those ear bugs die. I have read that the black walnut is best picked when outer husk is green, like in AUGUST, their flesh cut into alcohol to make a tincture. Do not wait til fruit is black and withered in Autumn. The SKIN OF THE NUT not the meat ---has a vermifuge potency for cats and humans! If anybody has worms, plant a black walnut tree. Squirrels here did it for me. Just before neighbor spent 500$ to tear down his tree,  my tree's mother, squirrels carried dozens of nuts over here. COME IN JANUARY, FREE TREES ALL!

ANOTHER PLANET that kills bugs, is ARTEMESIA ABSYNTHIA. I once HAD ONE for a few years. Cuttings replicate like mad. ANY CUTTING works. WORMWOOD it's called. Kills human bowel parasites too.

CONSTIPATION IN KITTIES-Constipation in kitties isn't necessarily true constipation but can be from intestines doubling back into themselves closing passages and is quite mortal. Give kittens a large box they can crawl around in, so even when SMALL, they get plenty of exercise. Don't let cats lie on each other. Give the mother cat room. Do not give constipating civilized cooked foods to a very young baby cat. When a kitten leaves the nest, starts running around house, initiate meals of pureed meats mixed with vegetables or Gerbers vegies and meats mixed. The little bit of carrot in the cooked meat prevents its being constipating. I use 1/3 of a jar of carrot to 2/3ds of a jar of meat. I don't mix them, feed, then save. What I put out as a portion doesn't go back into fridge with cat spit or dirty spoon germs on it. Next time I mix a batch, spoon is clean, jars go back in fridge second time, relatively un-entered with microbes.

Give a good diet from the start. Watch the kitten's EYES for exudes after feeding. If day after you gave kitten kibble, there is mucus, that cat cannot handle corn! If a kitten shows symptoms of a hard, distended stomach, is constipated, and you suspect intestinal 'doubling up,' massage may help return intestines to place. Surgery is the only other alternative, and it would cost a ransom, so massage your heart out.

KIDNEY DISEASE is the Achilles Heel of all OLDER CATS: PREVENTION: Low fish (Ash) diet. Give no dry kibbles and cut way down on FISH. The salt in cans of human fish will kill a cat. Why does every generic, canned slim price catfood on the market have fish as its sole ingredient? Why isn't the ash content written on packages of cat kibble??? Because consumers don't scream at petfood producers. If you love animals, start writing angry letters. Meanwhile, load up on sale cuts of steak, sale chicken, (I can find 5 lb bags of drums or leg quarters for .29c or .39 c an lb quite frequently); sale lamb is not possible. Pork is dangerous. In the old days I did not give pink meat to my pets or family as parasites are endemic in meat but the illnesses kept coming. So finally I said, parasites are not as mortal as disease and I went with the raw meat, with no bad results. Of course, I always smudge food with raw garlic after it's cooked, which kills parasites. Half the time I gave their meat and fish raw, half the time cooked.

With all meats, remove fat, toss away, freeze the meat in 1-day ration size packages. Go fishing; save junk fish or bait fish. Always de-bone fish. Fish bones are more lethal than modern chicken bones. What you might do is simmer, cool, large amounts of fish, then STRAIN, add boiled pureed carrots, vegies, then package in foil or plastic, freeze in small cubes. Microwave before serving. Be certain to get all fish bones out of final product as one tiny bone can kill a pet.

The DISEASES which Vet sees most often are:

DISEASE      SYMPTOM          CAUSE                          CURE

1.SKIN                visible                   weak kidneys                    water/brushing

2. Heart            shortness of breath         fat/sedentary             exercise

3. KIDNEY        incontinence               overload o'protein          VEGIES! kidney herbs

4. FLEAS,            scratching                    bugs                        flea-comb/bathe hand-pick

FUS- Feline Uremic Syndrome. Kidney disease. Hits cats bigtime if they eat fish and kibble. You can fight back. All healthfood stores offer kidney herbs. DIURETICS restore sick kidneys. The problem with using them is that you must restore minerals which are washed out. Corn silk, uva ursi, peach tree leaves also work. Brew a tbsp of herb into a pot of almost boiling water. Turn off flame, let brew. Give in drinking water.

FLEAS!This last is the problem that bothers pet owners most. To fix, buy a few Essential oils like citronella, pennyroyal, (NEVER directly on skin, just on fur) cedarleaf, teatree, eucalyptus. Or make by boiling leaves, cooling, pouring off the fragrant oils which rise to top of water. Fingered through coat, placed on all four paws, and different pulse spots on the body, they will actually repel fleas. Or use 'erigeron', Canadian fleabane on the cat's coat or get 'Wooly and Wild' spray (available at 800-368-5057.)

THINGS FOR CAT TO TAKE INTERNALLY FOR FLEAS: mash a garlic clove and Vitamin B-1 tablet into every pet meal for a week and then occasionally from time to time to see if you can knock any baby worms out.. I use dried garlic powder added after food is cooked as it's so easy to use. 99c store has a huge bag of it, 99c. FLEA REMEDIES FOR YOU: If you are bitten, put itchy ankle under hot water faucet 5 seconds, as it removes itch.

I find that my kittens attract l0 times the fleas as adults so I use them as vacuum cleaners for my house. Once a day I bathe the kitten. (I only do this in hot weather, i.e. flea season). A kitten bath is different from an adult bath. You pre-fill sink with body temp water with one drop of detergent in it. You slide him in up to the ears but not allowing water in ears. Hold him there if he's ok with that, until fleas come to the tummy, throat. They will, as they move immediately to the highest point of kitten's body. Pick the buggers off, discarding in the 'pond' of water, but near edge so they can't crawl back onto Fluffy. Then, wrap Mr. Fluff now Mr. gumball, in teatowel, carry him out into the sun where your reading glasses and another bowl of detergent drop in water bowl await. Pick off the fleas. I don't let them go. I click between thumbs or put them in that bowl. The fleas can't move because they're wet, fur is wet. It's like shooting ducks in a barrel. THE CAT can move so sometimes this phase takes a pal.

FLEA RIFF for ADULT CATS- In warm weather, shampoo cats. HOW?

1.) Get two sinks of body temperature water ready; one for soaping, another with clean water for rinsing. In Winter, set up a towel or two and floor heater full blast, get bathroom warm, bring puss in and lock the doors.

2.) You will be using either diluted dish detergent, diluted human shampoo, diluted pet flea shampoo or plain old bar soap. Immerse puss slowly, talking in a friendly voice, soap him all over. Caress the spots his mother usually licks so he realizes this is a grooming exercise not an attempted assasination by drowning. Use an old toothbrush to loosen flea refuse on lower spine tail top which accounts for that red color that comes off the cat.

3.) Then rinse him in second bucket or sink, or tub. A two sink kitchen basin is great. After rinsing him, squeeze him off, wrap him in a towel, sit down to hand pick individual fleas off. I peel back towel a little from his face, start on top of head. Then peel back from neck, work that area, then shoulders. Fleas are suffocating under towel and trying to crawl up to the head, so this method peels him slowly, like a banana.

Towel him dry if it's cold. If day is warm, go outside in sun, pick off fleas that are suddenly immobilized and quite visible. They're the color of copper pennies, very shiny. Squash on table surface or newspaper with fingernail or drop into a pot of hot water with l drop dish soap in it.

On cold days, (rare that fleas are a problem then) plop him in front of heater and rub him dry and search for stragglers. If you want, you can use a dry brush or blower to fluff dry his fur but cats fluff automatically unless there's soap left unrinsed.I do one cat after another while I've got the set up, changing the water for every cat.

A kitten will usually float happily in the warm water of this bath. An older cat who has not been bathed regularly all his life is an anxious customer, and you should wear thick rubber, old, torn dishwashing gloves that you've saved for this, and talk calmly but be fairly quick with the two dunk-scrub-rinse- scrub movements.

YOUNG KITTENS: From the 4th day of life on, I take kittens into the light and see if there's even ONE flea on his belly. If there is, I put on my glasses and pick off fleas. I do it with a cup of water beside me. On Kitties, the fleas are much faster than on-adult fleas because they're drinking all that young blood and fur is dry and thin so they can really scoot. So, here's the trick. I wet my fingers, rub a dollop of water on the tummy, which immobilizes fleas, then pick and discard INTO HOT WATER. Fleas scurry away from light so quickly turn over kitten, rub at those scurrying fleas. Abundant water on your finger stops them in their tracks. Now, pick them off, into cup of liquid that paralyzes them. (One drop dish soap does it.) When you put kit on his back, exposing tummy, fleas run to the other side. When you put kit on its stomach, fleas zip back to original side. Flip him on his back and fast, wet the bug-club down before they can scurry. Just a wet finger will do it.

For a cat that likes you, you can work him while dry. Caress the fur, very slowly, tenderly as if palpating for a bump. You feel the flea as a bump, ant sized. Turn cat over, so the bump side is up, pick the bugger off, fingernail click it before you discard the flea! Do this daily. This will keep your adults clean automatically but make the kitten dizzy as hell.

FLEA COMB METHOD:These combs are expensive but they work. Get the finest tines available. Fill sink with hot water. Stand him in a shoebox near sink edge, left hand on him so he doesn't ever jump out then fall. Comb with right, One long stroke over side, Then drop him in the box for safety while you quickly, with left hand, pick the fleas off comb into hot water. Go back to the box before he’s clambered out. Stroke down under his tail to ankles. Clean comb. Then do cheeks, top of head, under neck, then tummy. Fleas travel so keep turning him, combing. Within a year of this, I had no fleas on kittens anymore. I had beat the flea problem!

THE OUTDOOR OR INDOOR QUESTION. If you have enclosed yard and front patio, feel free to make your adult cats live outdoors in warm weather. If you have wild dogs, foxes, wolves, coyotes, possums in your area, (possums will actually eat kittens), don't keep any cat, outside, ever. If dogs can leap your fence unexpectedly, no cats outdoors without leaving house doors open so they can flee. I have an exterior gate but postman, son, friends -- all leave it open and cats are occasionally chased if not attacked by maurading dogs.

If such wild life exists in your neighborhood, you cannot leave litters outdoors, day or night without human supervision. I have known dogs to arrive from nowhere and try to attack. I've seen opossums decimate litters left in a box condo in patio.

I do today have a lot of cats in the yard, but very tall fences no coyotes, no wild dogs and all house doors open give adult cats a door to get inside in a hurry. In last 3 yrs, I've had three dogs leap in from street, smelling food but the ruckus was such that I chased them away. Dog doors on a home work fine but how can a mother cat move her babies? Cannot be done in a moment of danger. So all litters inside.

Leave no kittens outdoors, ever. Chicken hawks patrol looking for small animals. Possems can get into any yard, even if you think it's sealed. If an outdoor cat has a litter, keep her inside until they're 8 weeks old, then, she can go in the patio when you're watching, as no dogs can leap in. A DOG can leap any fence so that is a problem. Maybe, if you feed all cats on the kitchen floor, no food aromas will appear in yard. Discard all bones or bury them deep where dogs cannot smell them. Do not feed feral animals too close to your property.

So if your yard is your choice, arrange super market carton boxes so that a multi-wind shielded home is arranged, cover with a canvas to keep boxes from moving, and to insulate as well as shelter from drafts. You cannot weigh canvas down as anything heavy could fall on a kitten. You can create a floor of stacked newspapers, carpets, towels or rags, with the heating pad underneath the rags if anyone in the litter looks ill. If there are possums about, cats must be 4 mos old, minimum to escape being eaten. Possums can climb into that fort. They eat all parts of baby except skull.

NOW THAT BRINGS US TO A SAD REALITY. SOME Male cats eat babies. They consider them delicious tidbits. The mother who is brought up in a cat tribe doesn't have instincts to prevent this happening. She watches a male carry off her young as if she were watching television. You cannot have any litter/mother in any area of the house where any male cat, adult or over 5 months, is able to smell, walk. PERIOD. Even if he makes a grab and you think you can rescue the crying kitty, the holes he will put in a  baby are not curable. The holes in them are deep and they infect. MOTHERS must have their own room, their own water dish, food dish, cat box, and it should be a brand new one as germs from cat boxes create most serious kitten infections. BETTER YET, lock all males out of the house, full time. ONLY queens get to be inside. They'll deal.

BACK TO CATS IN PATIOS: The problem in the city is neighbors who let their dogs walk without leashes. Those dogs can smell the kittens and will bound into your yard or patio and snap and shake and kill them in one second, so you must have gated patios. Usually dogs will not leap over fences, but don't count on it. A dog can swim through a tall hedge, using leaves and branches for support. Mostly I've seen them swim hedges to get out of a yard, not in.

As I once had pitbulls in houses next door, it was necessary to show each cat what was there. Hold him on your fence top and call the dog. Growl at the dog. Make the dog insane. Throw rocks at him. Make him growl so the cat recognizes an angry beast is on the other side of the wall or fence. Dogs will kill an interloper, even adult cats. NEVER fail to feed your cat or he'll try to sneak past the dog next door to get the dog's kibble . Unfortunately cats at night think that the dog is not there as it's silent. They see in the dark, don't see a danger. They go into that yard, that dog smells them and catches them. So if pitbulls next door, cats cannot go outside. Good Golly Miss Molly taught me that one. And Walter Birnbaum did too, but we called him STUMPY after he taught us that. Tailless, he lived a very long life and the porker Pit bull didn't!

CHILD BIRTH- 1.) Location Location. Create corners in closets, in boxes. Line with towels. She'll take her pick.  NEVER let a pregnant cat outdoors in her last few days. Other cats eat kittens and so do barnyard critters of all sorts. And unsupervised births give HERNIATED UMBILICALS, meaning INTESTINES, hanging out in a big bulge like an egg yolk sized tumor. Only thousand dollar surgery can fix a hernia! So you must catch the baby in mid air and make sure the umbilicus reaches to the ground before you let the little guy go or he'll HANG by his umbilicus and it'll herniate! SO QUEENS must be locked in the house, shown their CLOSET FLOOR, lined with nice towels, far from the clamor of the household. Fail to do this you're gonna end up with VETS BILLS thru the roof to patch the muscles of the kittens' stomach.

DUE DATE: She'll lick her butt, that means they're coming. Take her to her prearranged closet, rub her lower back muscles, have scissors ready to cut umbilicus, as far from kitten's body as possible! Leave it there to DRY!

Rub the muscles over kidneys, in her lower back, during spasms. Rub her lower brain of she's worried. Lift, don't Pull baby as it emerges so it doesn't HANG by its umbilicus and RIP its own tummy. If you can lift baby far enough from Mom and she's not intruding (her instinct is to bite off the cord,) you can scissor the cord. Leave a few inches there to dry up. DO NOT cut near the belly. Scissors can slip, you're nervous, she's moving fast, so in and out deftly! eh?

Now if you're at work, unaware, or just busy it is entirely possible that she'll disappear on you, not show up for a meal. You'll never know she went thru labor. You'll just hear the kittens' little mealtime squeals. You'd better pray none of them were hanging too long in the mid air! Ripping their guts out.

If she has gotten outside and had a litter outdoors, in the bushes, retrieve the entire gang, create that sheet/towel lined closet floor and leave the door to that room ajar so she doesn't feel trapped.

YOUNG KITTENS: From the 1st day of life on, I take kittens into the light. put on my glasses and pick off fleas. If you have a sensible Queen who's in the house all the time, there possibly will be no fleas.  I do the search with a cup of water beside me. l drop of detergent in it to immobilize the fleas who can float on a water surface and crawl right out of that cup.

THE INDOOR CAT FLEA QUESTION: Don't banish babies to outdoors because of flea-fears. Let small babies live inside. So many people are afraid of cats being inside due to fleas, and don't realize how easy it is to get rid of this bug if you know a few tricks. And how hard it is to bring back to life a chomped on kitty.

Do your flea cleaning daily. Use baby kittens as vacuum cleaners. Yes! It's a well known fact that fleas prefer young, sweet, tasty kittens. They will stay off adults. If you comb babies every few hours, you will, be collecting every bug in the house. COMB INTO VERY HOT WATER in a bowl cat can't fall into.

Adult fleas lay eggs, so vacuum twice weekly. Put a chip off a moth block inside the vacuum bag. Shake eggs off tablecloths where cats sit, into bath tub, then clean all table cloths in the washer, on hot' setting.'

Flea collars are a very bad idea as these deadly pesticides put a terrible load on your cat's immune system meaning all the really funky diseases can get in the door. Putting poison next to the breathing orifices for 24 hrs a day is toxic on the liver too and may account for rising cat cancers.

To maintain a bug-free cat, between baths, get a flea comb with the FINEST teeth available, only found at pet stores. Comb the animal. I stand cat on the ledge of the sink so fleas fall into soapy water. With two fingers, I slide along tines, pull fleas off comb into hot water so they fall in sink. If outside, they fall in a pan that has l drop detergent in a huge pan of hot water so fleas can't crawl out. When you de-flea a cat in the sunlight, you can see every flea. Their penny brown color leaps out at you. It especially helps if his fur his wet as there's no fluff to hide the bug and he can't move in the wet fur.

To create a non-flea environment, throw salt in the carpets, never diatamacious earth (silica) which destroys the pet's lungs through silicosis or 'black lung' and kills the cat as well as the flea. Vacuum the entire house regularly and put a mothball in the bag or throw the bag OUT, afterwards. Do not use spray poisons or gases as remnants will kill cats, you and your children as well as the fleas and it's serious overkill when you think of how easy it is to work a cat over for fleas and how much fun it is for a loving owner to groom his baby cat. See, fleas are not a real problem. PET OWNERS are and DISEASE is.

Let's look at the serious offenders, the CAT'S MOST FREQUENT DISEASES: UPPER RESPIRATORY DISEASE, (which can be viral or microbial) and DIARRHEA, (usually VIRAL)   You must catch these early or they are fatal. But let the cat recover from it, he's vaccinated for life, and so are his offspring. If you want to build a master race, learn to nurse a sick cat thru the malady.

THE HEAD/CHEST COLD: For UPPER RESPIRATORY MALADIES, when the cat first starts having supperation from eyes, before he is lying around listlessly. If the serious diseases get a head start, they are very hard to cure. Immediately start regular tonics that lift the immune system: rosehips left to soak in orange juice, added to drinking water. Chlorophyll rich juice. I hear wheatgrass is good for cats. I'd dilute it and spoonfeed water if they won't take it in their dish.

I know that onions are not good for animals but they are mucus expectorants. I'd make a solution by soaking onions in ripe lemon juice & water, strain, serve in eyedropper or teaspoon. Do this three times each day. Keep his room warm and get on knees to feel for hidden drafts.

Force feed if cat doesn't want to swallow by giving homemade soups. Most of all, keep room warm. If you have your head in the clouds and don't notice the animal is getting ill and the first thing you see is a very sick pet, flailing around on a cold floor, confine him on a heating pad in a high-walled box. Pad is set on low, several towel thickness over it so he won't 'cook.' Keep him hydrated and fed. I often play Chopin or Mozart on the radio, 24 hours a day. I'd give Minocycline or Tetracycline  for the infected eyes, mucusy nose and lung which is mycoplasma pneumonia. If you think it's another kind of pneumonia, (only a vet can distinguish,) antibiotics like ampicillin, amoxcillen, penicillin or sulfa pills given in food or liquid may work.

FOR DIARRHEA:as soon as you see a kitten making liquid stool, and see that he's feverish spring into action. It's enteritis which can occur about the time of weaning, 6 weeks, due to the fact he is not getting the antibody rich Momma's milk. What you do is make toasted rice gruel. Slip garlic into the Electrolyte solution ---a sweet and salty liquid that you give between meals which can be orange juice or apple for sugar, or lemon juice with added sugar, or vegetable broth for minerals, or electrolyte solution bought in bottles for 4$ at supermarkets. UNFLAVORED!  But I know how to turn water into electrolyte solution. I add celery juice and a drop of tamari for the salt required. I also add a few drops soy sauce to each ration of his gruel as it creates body salts. No medication works on virus disease, sadly. Only keeping immune system strong and letting time pass so the kitten's immune system kicks in and starts to create his very own set of antibodies--- works. If Mom had the disease and survived, she gave him antibodies. They will kill the virus. SO we are only buying time. The gruel food must bind. The water must have electrolytes, i.e dextrose/ salt in it to duplicate body fluids. DIARRHEA kills by throwing your minerals out of your body. It melts you! SO BUY a bottle of plain unflavored electrolyte in baby dept of super market. Or make something that is salty, minerally and sweet!

TO PREPARE GRUEL: Toast brown rice on a thick pan, until some grains pop, all is lightly toasted; grind into a flour in the blenderjar. Sweeten lightly & boil in spring water w. few drops soy sauce or wee pinch of true healthfood legit sea salt. Boil until thick. I add chlorella algae, a great product for enteritis, tablet of cal-mag, for mineral replacement. Store in fridge; reheat as needed. Give by teaspoon. Gruel will 'stop' up the cat. Give no proteins except broth to a cat w. diaharrea. If all this seems too much work to you, and you have 40hrs a week at the office, and no one home to play nurse, in a pinch, Gerbers baby cereals are good. Usually the kitten's own immune system will nail the nasty intestinal bacteria within a few days. If you give antibiotics, be sure to give yogurt to him when he gets well, to restore intestinal bacteria.

Now, for that big problem, IMMUNE SYSTEM DEFICIENCY. One in 6 American cats has one of the two deadly feline leukemias, says the IDEXX Corporation of Portland who surveyed 1,500 vets in the USA. 7.4% had Feline Immune deficiency virus, or FIV and 13.3 % had Feline Leukemia, or FELV. Both cause impairment of the immune system, says Alice Wolf, a vet researcher at Texas A&M University. I've heard that cats can live fairly long lives with feline AIDS disease, especially if not exposed to another sick cat. Vets do expensive testing to see if your cat has AIDS. If it does, they recommend putting it down. Another reason not to go to a standard, allopathic vet. I've had immune system compromised animals live to ten, not the usual twenty, and they did not infect other cats.

BAD BREATH CATS HAVE FOUL LIVERS! I raised one cat from birth, when she was abandoned by her mother. I fed her cow's milk, which ruined her liver. I found out as when this, my most favorite cat of my entire life, Peaches, became listless and weak, I took her to meet Dr Art, the holistic vet. He told me she has a toxic liver, obvious with her bad breath and rotten teeth, but unusual for a year old cat. At that time, I was still feeding canned foods. But I stopped instantly and started years of buying turkey burger, mixing it with soft carrots, greens.

BOILS- On another occasion, a Queen had a huge ball under her skin, the size of a tangerine. I didn't know what it was, thought maybe it was a tumor. I was frightened, and even though there was no money for heat, rent, food for humans, I took her to a vet. The vet told me he would have to operate as it was a boil. The operation would cost $300. As soon as I knew what it was, a paltry BOIL!!!   I took her home, used hot compresses for a few days until it was about to burst. Then, while I held a hot towel on the boil one afternoon, pus shot out. I pressed her skin, expelling it all, then sprayed calendula on it, (I make my own, keep it in fridge) which closed the wound. The wound drained clear and healed and she lived for years after.

Boils in cats are as easy to treat as a splinter in a human. One uses wet-heat poultices (herb tea soaked into a washcloth and used as a steaming compress). After a few hours or maybe a day or two of that, this boil will explode so keep cat confined away from furniture and rugs. Best is to anticipate the proper degree of thinness of the boil's skin and do a last steam as it's ready to blow, facing boil down onto newspaper. Boils absolutely do not require surgery. That vet exaggerated in order to get 300$ which I obviously didn't give him. So add hot poultices to your methods. It may take several days of 20-minute hot soaks but suddenly the cat will get this urge to scratch and the boil will be ready to burst. Let it drain and medicate. The gash always heals easily, and I have learned. You don't need to bandage it. These holes seal themselves automatically especally if you use calendula tea or calendula spray available at HFS, on wound. Calendula SHUTS the wound by magic.

When Walter Birnbaum (Benny's son,) one of my fav cats went in the neighbor's yard, he was confronted with a pitbull who had already killed Good Golly Miss Molly. Walter tried to flee over the fence but his tail was shredded. I didn't realize until a day later. The smell of rot was horrific. We amputated, with pruning shears but forgot to pull back and leave extra skin. Three inches from his butt, he had a cross section of tail an inch wide, like a silver dollar, all bare raw, red meat and bone. We should have pulled back a lot of skin before we amputated to have something to work with. But lo, there is one magic herb that will GROW skin. We used calendula spray daily, with a little Neosporin on top, as calendula makes any wound close, and in a week, the skin had grown over the stump. Of course, we bandaged after spraying and changed bandage daily but there never was a hint of infection. And now his name is Stumpy and he's a happy little guy. (NOTE: HE outlived the PITBULL! By a decade).

Immune System Deficiency is the serious threat to my cat tribe. It's genetic, inherited, environmental and prevalent. During the late 80's, I became aware that many cats grew to adult hood but had no ability to survive disease. Many survived a year or two but in my huge tribe of 30 cats, there were a lot of illnesses ping-ponging around so they couldn't have long lives. Later, when I began to feed frozen turkey burger with collards, all diseases stopped in my other cats and I realized an immune system cat could live ten years. Some of them lost the AIDS and became healthy again.

Twenty five years ago when I started keeping cats, I had four children. As a single mother, I couldn't afford to have any animal vaccinated, or to have any animal's blood lab tested and diagnosed, so I'm not certain what all they had. I know that whatever virus it was --it exploded into action, killing many kittens, at weaning time, when a cat will become most susceptible to opportunistic infections. In survivors, a localized infection sometimes settles in a specific body part, like the ear or eye or lung, causing life long organ infection, complete with pus exudes.

Vets maintain that cat diseases cannot be transmitted to humans but I disagree. I got mycoplasma pneumonia instantly when a cat sneezed into my eye. Never get within sneezing distance of a sick cat. A SICK cat has a wheeze indicating mucus in lungs and an infected eye! Don't kiss a cat that has teary eyes, i.e. conjunctivitis, indicating mycoplasma pneumonia. This is a lung disease, a mycoplasma spore carries it and the PINK EYE is a sign it's in your pet. Don't let that kitty sneeze on you! Clean eye with slightly acidic water, lemon or boric acid in the water. Then take NEOSPORIN original formula, take a small pearl of it, PULL BACK lids, STICK the ointment PEARL RIGHT ONTO the kitty's EYE, close lids, and mush the EYELIDS around OVER the eyeball in a circle. Use clean side of cotton ball to wipe off excess. Wash hands well. I caught the eye disease, used the ointment, it was gone instantly. Ointment feels great in the eye!

In HUMANS a droplet of cat saliva gives an instant, very sore throat, l0 days of ghastly fever and a month of lung phlegm. Minocycline easily cures it and is myco specific, tetracycline also works. I got some tetracycline capsules from a doctor and I open a cap, throw a mg of powder in tspoon, dilute it and eyedropper this into kitties' mouthes 3 x a day. (If they show pink eye, mucus in lungs.) But who can get an expensive culture, and diagnosis then a prescription. NOT any of us frugal 21st century cottage industry people. ANYWAY, NO vets or human doctors,  realize that is the sole cure for mycoplasma pneumonia in either cat or human. And you want this bacteria gone as it can cause rheumatism. Don't put your hands to your eyes or nose after handling a cat or get too close to their breath. Wash hands and dispose of all kleenexes, cotton balls used on them.

Viruses are different from Mycoplasma which is a spore. The SPORE does not LIVE for a considerable time on dishes but still, don't use human dishes for sick cats. And obviously, don't invite clawings or admittance of their body fluids into cuts on your hands. Your lymph glands will swell up like a football for a week. I had it happen, and it's scary. I hear humans even die of catscratch fever sometimes.

There is a great deal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Epstein Barre appearing now in humans, mystery viruses of lengthy duration that damage the human immune system. No one knows if pets are the Typhoid Marys, the guilty culprits, the carriers. They may well be. Or IF OUR PORK GEESE and DUCKS carry it.

I know I have been sneezed upon by cats and had my throat glands swell up within the hour, and stay swollen, keeping me violently feverish for l0 days. On the first occasion, it segued into a very phlegmy lung infection, which was nothing like any human disease I'd ever had in my life, but which was identical to the cat syndrome with the same unusual odor. Research proved it was mycoplasma pneumonia. Do a search on those words. On later occasions, my immune system learned to beat it, but it always took SEVERAL days of fever, sore throats, aching bones, listlessness which to me means that when it shows up in Puss, you will have to expect a l0-day regimen of heating pads, feedings and the one that's easiest to forget, l0 small, liquid meals a day. Tetracycline and Minocycline work on this spore. It's not a microbe, germ or virus. It's a spore. SEE FILE ON MYCOPLASMA

A side bar about this disease. Subsequent to my getting ill the first time, Naturopathic Doctors detected a mystery virus in my thyroid, which caused my thyroid to become enlarged, over-secrete, giving me fast heartbeat and insomnia. These are the exact symptoms that cats get from this virus. I was scanned for only one virus, Toxoplasmosis, and there was none present so that's not what the virus was. I couldn't do scans on all the viruses possible so I worked on my own immune system with healthfood, raw juices between meals, and avoidance of my favorite dietary abuses: coffee and chocolate. The swollen thyroid abated but returns if I indulge in poor diet. What that tells me is that the virus is now resident in my thyroid. A friend who downloads alternative healing information from the internet found mention of Mycoplasma rampant in the animal kingdom as the cause of those phelgmy lung infections. In humans it is called walking phenumonia. Mycoplasma might be what I got from my cats. Mycoplasma bacteria is also the suspected agent in Gulf War Syndrome so it's no little gentle Hong Kong Flu. It will put you off your feet for ten days, enough time for the Iraquis to win the war, they thought.

At times I wish I'd never been given that first pregnant female cat, and I actually do not recommend that any family go LOOKING for animals. On the other hand, having cats has forced me to become a holistic healer and spend hours 'care-taking,' which I suppose, it could be argued, develops one spiritually. Bhakti Yoga, the Indians call that, yoking with God through devotion.

And, if I had a third hand, I'd say that during lonely times, cats are great companions although loneliness has a lot to recommend it too. Loneliness might attract one a HUMAN companion which would be the best pet of all; Someone to share some rent, food & vet bills which no cat I EVER saw would do. Having pets is work and sorrow. In tropical California my female cats have babies year round and half the kittens will wither through the mycoplasma lung disease or the eye mucus virus.

During the first years I had cats, I was too poor to neuter them. Finally, it became absolutely necessary. I borrowed the money and fixed only my females. That worked. My boys are hot toms but I keep them so filled with trytophan rich turkey burger that hot dreams are all they have.

During the years that I had huge cat tribes, certain kittens, upon weaning, got either the diaharrea disease, or the fever and phlegm lung disease. I lost a lot of them, and that made me grieve, but as my methods became sharper, more of them survived and finally, as disease survivors began to breed with one another, both parents having aquired antibodies, all of the kittens survived.

I'm getting better and better at springing into action when a cat first looks funny and that's the whole trick to helping one survive. SPEEDY RECOGNITION of illness is important. You cannot be in denial. 'Oh, he's not feeling well, maybe he'll get better.' CAT DISEASES are all killers. You have to NAIL THEM IMMEDIATELY with heating pads, raw vegetable juices w. lemon, raw meats, soups, avocado as a meal and the magic Rose Hips juice. You give light power foods and don't try to fast a kitten. They are growing at too ferocious a rate but if you feed broth every 2 hrs, they fight the disease at the same time as they grow. I give chlorophyll juices to convalescing kittens mixed with mashed avocado------making certain this fruit is never overripe, in which case avocados can be deadly.

Mullein leaves from the healthfood store, boiled into tea with onions are suited for lung expectoration in cases of those fevers and that lingering phlegmy-lung cats get. Fast the phlegmy lung in adult cats and do not resume l00% meat right away. Just as for humans, meat is overly acidic in reaction. Milk is worse ---dangerously mucus producing. Use meat as a flavoring for other vegie/tofu mixtures, when you resume solids.

You must feed kittens soup many times a day. For wee ones, a true fast is not a good idea. They are growing rapidly, even when ill. Grind all food and serve with the tiny, rubber covered spoon sold in super markets by baby food companies. EYE DROPPER CAN WORK TOO but always make certain it's drip-drip on TONGUE then EMERGE to give them room for a swallow reflex. DO NOT POUR as they will inhale and choke

You can fast older cats all day, but give one meal a day at bedtime. When he recovers, 3 small meals of 'food-lite' is a good idea: mashed carrots w. avocados, finely pureed with raw ground meat or blood /broth and marrow. Tear apart a chicken, crush bones with a hammer, simmer with vegies. Always use protein foods that are pureed & don't involve husks, fat or indigestible skins. Gerbers babyfood-meats stirred half and half with Gerbers pureed carrots or stringbeans is excellent.

More and more I became like an ancient witch, sitting up nights with a candle, reading ancient cobwebby tomes on the power of foods and herbs, my lair strung with fragrant, drying buds, boluses and branches. By day I strolled the herb shelf at the healthfood store buying herb tea leaves by the ounce, storing them tightly wrapped in foil, then in an old 40's flour canister which I kept in the freezer, so they'd stay potent. Like a modern, techno-witch armed with puree/blend machines, eyedroppers and freezers, I watched my cats fatten and multiply as their person-mother wandered the ancient avenues of shamanism, brewing tisanes by the full moon.

At night we wandered in the garden, Peaches, Moon, Mousie, Starbuck, Annie, Good Golly Miss Molly, Siamo, Megan, Petunia, Kiss-Kiss, Walter Pidgeon, Bernie Birnbaum and his son Walter Birnbaum, Blanquito, Tizzy, Ethiopia, Bito and Binky, Rufus, Bandit, Natasha Snowflake, Jack, Tangarine, David, Precious, Carolina, Emily, Moon, Vanilla, SPARKEY, Carmen Cha Cha Cha, Ruby and Rebecca, and Harry Krishna, the Russian blue with seven fingers. Butchie with long thumbs like a human. Princess Claudia Cartemesia. We'd lift our heads, look up at the midnight sky and realize that the immense potency of those fiery stars overhead was exploding out of the tiniest atoms of the vegetables that grew beneath our feet.

I'd pick armloads of them: carrots and broccoli, steam it in the kitchen, add rosehip and peach leaf elixirs, pomegranate bark and garlic. They'd hear the blender whizzing and I'd get out the eyedropper and come after them ---and hear this explosion of paws as they'd all stampede under the bed and huddle together, their emerald eyes balefully glowing at me.

Cat aversion to human force and will is the final impasse for which the final holistic trick is ---take them firmly, as if they were helpless human babies, but be glad they have this scruff on the back of their neck for grabbing, which human babies don't. Grab their scruff as you cram this stuff down their throats, talk lovingly and peacefully about what good you're doing to them. Stuff their little fanged orifices with holistic goodies that God intended for human life and shun the canned goop that vets and multinational corporations tell you is good for them, and which continues to line somebody's pockets just as it lines and poisons your cat's gut. Any and all cui bonums must end with the owner, and the pet. Good luck with your furry friends. They were sent here for a reason. And it's not only that they are 'eye candy', it has a lot to do with how they will develop you as a resourceful, hard-working, caring human being. As I write these words, Mousie Trashbasket, who just survived a case of viral enteritis is on my shoulder waving her question mark bent tail enthusiastically as I just promised her her first solid meal.

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by Anita Sands Hernandez from astrology@earthlink.net and do ask for calendula seeds. My gift to you and your cats for reading this far!

HOW TO FIND A LOST CAT

PRODUCTS AND LITERATURE ON HOLISTIC ANIMALS: The Natural Pet Magazine --PO Box 22899 Milbourne FL 32902,

The Holistic CAT magazine, "Tiger Tribe" 1407 E College St. Iowa City (319 351-6698.

For a great website on poisons in commercial catfood, go to and for a holistic book, read "Reigning Cats and Dogs," by Pat McKay 800-368-5057,

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Our POSTER is ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ, Los Angeles Writer, mother of 4  and career Astrologer. Catch up with her websites  TRUTHS GOV WILL HIDE & NEVER TELL YOU, also The  FUTURE, WHAT'S COMIN' AT YA! & HOW TO SURVIVE the COMING GREAT DEPRESSION, and Secrets of Nature, HOLISTIC, AFFORDABLE HEALING. Also HOW TO LIVE on A NICKLE, The FRUGAL PAGE.* Anita is at astrology@earthlink.net ). Get a 15$ natal horoscope "my money/future life" reading now + copy horoscope as a Gif file graphic!

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