It was the week before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - except fur the Catnip Mouse.   I had just nestled, all snug under the Tree, when a vision of salmon treats came flying to me.  The smell drew me in, my tum gave a growl, and before I knew it my paws were on the prowl.  

They led to the kitchen, unerring in their aim, and crept toward the cupboard as I called out by name.  'Now Chicken, now Tuna, now Turkey and Beef.  On Salmon and Crackers and thin slices of Cheese!'  I drew back my paw, was turning around, when pouncing toward me came ShiShi with a bound.  Her furr was all fluffed, from her tail to her cheeks, and she stepped right between me and the treats!

After laying a paw on the top of my beef, she ​pushed it back in the cupboard and hissed at me 'Thief!'   Her eyes how they twinkled, but they weren't very merry - no one would ever mistake her fur a fairy.  Or rather, a Santa Paws elf, if you please - I just couldn't figure out how to appease - My sisfur can be such a tattletale kitty.  I was filled with remorse - and a bit of self-pity.

My thoughts how they flew, simply churning around.   If only I'd snuck better and hadn't been found.  'Purrlease don't tell Santa about my fell slip - twas only a dream  - I was caught in its grip!'  The treats in my dream had led me astray - if only I could think of something better to say.  Imagine my wondering eyes when they saw, my sweet sisfur ShiShi lower her paw.  She mewed at me softly, then winked with one eye.  'I was just teasing you silly!' She turned with a sigh.  

And I heard her exclaim as she vanished from sight, 'Don't eat too much now, it's Christmas Eve night!'

The Christmas Season is such a busy time fur me -so much to be done in preparation, so much to oversee.  I hardly know where to start most days!  With such a big family, there is always something going on around here:  tree decorating pawties, house decorating pawties, and even more pawties to make all those delightful decorations.  Plus, I purrsuaded my family this year that homemade gifts are much more fun fur me to help with, so there has been quite the workshop set up on our dining room table that (of course) also is in need of my expert supervision.   

Truly, there are so many things to rearrange so that Santa will love them best, so many gifts to add the delicate touch of my paw to complete - I hardly know how to get the time fur a catnap these days.  I've been kept up late many nights -busy with my re-arranging, then up again at the crack of dawn.  It's good that things tend to be a little more calm around here in the afternoons, because it's nearly the only time that I've been sleeping!  Now, in case you wonder, meowma has frequently told me that I should put off my Christmas readying efforts until morning, but I'm so worried that we won't be all ready fur Santa to visit.  And that would just be a tragic disaster!

My biggest work of seasonal art this year is, of course, our Christmas Tree.  Or, I should say, My Christmas Tree.  You simply wouldn't believe the time and effort that I have been putting into making sure that My Tree will be up to Santa Paws' exacting standards come Christmas Eve.  I mean, I do deeply appreciate all the toys that my family hung so carefully on the tree fur me to play with, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Santa Paws (and conversing with his reindeer while they are on break at our house).   The things those reindeer have seen while traveling all over the world - you wouldn't believe the pawsome, interesting conversations we have each year while they nibble on their carrots!

Not to be furgotten in the Christmas effort, of course, is all of the necessary baking fur pawties, and the treats made to give to furriends and family far away.  I rarely supervise this pawt myself - that is normally Chef Haku's job.  However, this year Haku was somewhat indisposed after eating his way through a bag of rice that had been tucked away in the pantry fur safekeeping, and I was forced to take over a portion of his duties.   While I do enjoy watching over the creation of some of the finer Christmas pastries (such as meowma's special recipe fur Bonito Flake Pinwheels), having to keep track of all the hooman treats as well can be very wearing.  My advice to any of your who find yourself in such a situation is to sniff only - those hooman cookies just don't have the same fabulous flavoring as the Kitty Only ones...

I've been meaning to write a post for a while about the raw cat food diet that has been so successful for ShiShi and Haku.  It's become an integral part of our family lifestyle, thanks to both the improved health of both cats (and the drastically reduced odor in the litter box).  At this point, we have a hard time imagining feeding our cats any other way - it really does make that much difference.  The improved kitty health in our household is nothing to sneeze at - both of my cats had issues that were either dramatically reduced or disappeared altogether, seemingly thanks to the raw food diet that they eat now.

Before I go any further into this raw diet stuff, though, I would like to say that there are probably a million opinions spread around the internet about whether a raw food diet is healthy for cats.  I'm not here to recommend my cats' raw diet to anyone else for their own cat.  I've just had so many questions over time about how I feed ShiShi and Haku that I wanted to share our experience.  Feeding raw food to cats is a very individual decision, and should be based on both the cat's specific needs  and the availability of appropriate raw foods.   For anyone considering switching their own cat's diet to raw, I recommend asking your vet's opinion.

When Haku first arrived at our home around 4 months old, he was a very sick kitten.  In fact, we spent the better part of two months wondering if he was going to survive.  I spent countless hours laying on the floor to be near him, while he huddled under one piece of furniture or another, completely miserable.  He had stuff coming out of his eyes, his nose, and his bum (diarrhea), and antibiotics got us nowhere.  After (many!) emergency visits our vet pronounced that Haku had permanent allergies that he'd just have to live with, and that all six foods we had tried with him so far were a problem.

Totally stressed at that point, I went home that night and (feeling completely desperate) cooked up a batch of ground turkey from our freezer, mixed it with cat vitamins (left over from our previous cat's end-of-life diet), eggs and some salmon oil.  Haku gobbled it up (no surprise there, if you know Haku lol!) and miraculously had normal kitten poop  the next day.  Over the following month I kept feeding him the cooked food mix and his eyes, and nose mostly cleared up, as well as his disturbing lack of energy.  

Fast forward to a few months later when we brought ShiShi home to live with us.   I was still cooking all of our cat food, and supplementing appropriately (having educated myself a bit more on cat nutrition by then.  But ShiShi was a really picky eater.  So picky, in fact, that we constantly worried if she was getting enough calories, no matter what we tried to feed her (yup - we ended up trying a bunch of different commercial brands with her too, but had the same picky results).  With lots of coaxing, we (mostly) kept her fed, but when she was a little over a year old, she stopped eating altogether for nearly a week.  That week was one of the longest, most helpless of my life - one I never want to experience again.  Once we miraculously had her eating again, I was determined to make some kind of a change that could resolve whatever was keeping her from eating properly.

ShiShi's tummy had always seemed a bit bloated and tender no matter which food we were feeding her, and I'd read that raw meat was supposed to be easier for cats to digest.  I'd seen a variety of raw frozen cat foods at my local pet store, and decided to take the plunge.   From the first, it was easy to see that ShiShi preferred nearly every sample of raw food that she tried to any of the other foods we had given her to date (more brands and types than I can even remember by then).  We did stumble around finding a raw brand and meat variety that she would eat consistently, but once we found Rad Cat Raw Venison, we were golden!  For the next blissful year, we watched ShiShi fill out, her coat sparkle, and her personality become dramatically more outgoing with us. 

And what was Haku doing all this time?  Eating away like the food machine that he is under nearly all circumstances.  Mind you, he still had that incredibly sensitive digestive system - any move toward commercial food always leads to diarrhea misery, but raw or home cooked foods seem to be just fine for him.  In fact, Haku's eternal struggle with extra weight melted away (while actually eating much more food).  It used to seem like he could look at an extra calorie sideways and gain an weight, but that has completely evened out now - even if he manages to snag an extra 'treat' off the counter (all the time!), his weight stays nicely in balance.  Both kitties are glowing  since the raw food switch last year, and scooping out the litter box is practically pleasant - no odor, and just small, compact poop.  A win in every direction.

Then, several months ago, disaster struck.  Probably not the kind of disaster you are thinking, though...  The frozen raw cat food company that ShiShi's ever-picky taste buds preferred ran into financial issues and stopped production.  Needless to say, I nearly cried.  After eking out the last bits of Rad Cat left in our freezer, we faced a non-eating ShiShi.  Once again, she was refusing most of what we put in front of her unless it was sprinkled heavily with bonito flakes and catnip chicken bits.  And sometimes even that failed.   

The morning that ShiShi finally balked completely at eating her breakfast, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and just make something for her that she would eat - and could thrive on at the same time.  I ran down to my local health food store and grabbed a pack of frozen ground venison.  And blessings - she chowed it down like candy the second that I had it defrosted.  Whew!  As long as she was eating, I knew that I could figure out the rest with lots of research.

Fortunately, the cat food supplement that I'd used before with Haku's original cooked turkey was also formulated to be used with a raw diet.  Alnutrin, the company who makes the supplement, provides an online nutritient calculator where I am able to plug in the ingredients that I want to use in a cat meal, and make sure that it will be properly nutritionally balanced with the vitamin supplement.  ​While the Alnutrin calculator doesn't list venison specifically, I feel pretty comfortable using their calculations for ground beef.  The end result is that ShiShi eats, and I'm sure that she's getting the nutrition that she needs to stay her healthy best.  I use my same recipe for ground elk and ground buffalo, which she also enjoys.  Unfortunately, she is still completely unwilling to eat chicken or turkey, or even rabbit, but I figure that frankenprey is definitely better than no prey at all.