This article by veterinarian Suzi McIntyre discusses the distressing condition our family's cat Charlie suffered from before I decided to start him on this new regime.  He's a picture of good health now - thanks to these two simple dietary changes!

Often also called Miliary Eczema, affected cats have a combination of numerous scabs, hair loss, hypersensitivity to touch, scratching, excessive licking and irritation. The cause is usually an allergy to flea bites. Even just one bite from a flea will produce this terrible allergic reaction.

I avoid the use of drugs wherever possible as they generally get rid of the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause. Allergies are not cortisone or anti-histamine deficiencies any more than a headache is an aspirin deficiency! I use nutrition as the most important part of any treatment.

Why?

The foundation of health is nutrition, providing the nutrients needed for the body to continuously repair and regenerate used and damaged cells. Remember, the body is made of cells, each with its own special function. For example, liver cells are all clustered together in an orderly manner to form the liver, each cell performing its task in conjunction with the other liver cells.

If the nutrients consumed are of poor quality, the repair and regeneration of cells will be of the same poor quality, so the body gradually degenerates. The regulatory mechanisms also start to malfunction and all sorts of bizarre reactions result, allergies being one.

It is not natural for cats to have fleas nor is it natural for them to have a violent reaction to a flea bite, often leading them to lick off their own fur and scratch themselves raw. These symptoms are evidence that something is desperately wrong, so something has to change!

Treatment

The first thing to do is to change the food. Feed your cats with raw meat and bone mixed with a teaspoon of liquidized greens and 1/4 teaspoon of Pet Plus. Any fleas will go. The cat’s immune system will gradually recover, the skin will be able to repair and the excessive scratching and licking will cease.

It takes time for this recovery to take place. The last cat I treated took 3 weeks to show signs of improvement, but then recovered completely in 2 months. Her fur is still growing back, so it’ll be a while before she looks completely normal, as she had licked off nearly all her fur, poor thing. Also, the owner couldn’t believe that such simple changes could make any difference, so she was a bit slow to get onto 100% raw food! Her cat was relying on the Pet Plus for the first few weeks as she was still receiving processed food. As soon as the owner saw the improvements in her cat after 3 weeks of adding the Pet Plus for Cats to the processed food, she changed her onto raw food with the Pet Plus.

Prevention

Wouldn’t it be better to feed raw food and Pet Plus from the start and prevent these horrible ailments? Just do it!! You know it makes sense!

How?

There are numerous frozen minced meat and bone mixtures available both online and from the pet shop. Prize Choice is one you can buy in pet shops. Cats tend to like the rabbit, chicken, tripe (just once a week!), fish and lamb. The tripe has no bone in it, but it is rich in other nutrients and really smells!! Great for the cat, not so good for the house! Online, you can get raw meat and bone minces form Natural Instinct and Darlings Real Dog Food, all great for cats! Tania of Not the Norm swears by Nature's Menu for her cat Charlie.

They also thrive on raw chicken wings which you can give every day along with the minced meat and bone, liquidized greens and Pet Plus. This helps to keep their teeth in good health. It’s good to give them some raw heart once a week too.

Suzi McIntyre

Pet Plus is a powder containing the nutrients and micronutrients our carnivorous pets would otherwise have eaten in the wild.

Enzymes

In Pet Plus, we’ve used Protease for protein digestion, Amylase for carbohydrate digestion, Lipase for fat digestion and ProCerelase for the digestion of vegetation. On a processed food diet, these enzymes are critical for the proper digestion and assimilation of the nutrients, as enzymes are rendered inactive by the heating involved in the production of processed foods. Also, many processed foods are bulked out by cheap cereal based fillers which are very difficult for dogs and cats to digest.

Fed a raw food diet, the enzymes in Pet Plus help with the digestion of the raw food, especially the vegetation. Dogs and cats are not good at digesting vegetation. They would normally access most vegetable nutrition from the intestinal contents of their prey, where it has already been well chewed, partly digested and is full of vegetation-digesting enzymes and probiotics. So the ProCerelase is especially important.

Dogs And Cats Need Probiotics

Lactobacillus Acidophillus is one of the best probiotics for dogs and cats. It colonizes the gut easily, creates an environment that discourages pathogens and does not transfer antibiotic resistance, unlike some other probiotics. We decided not to use several different probiotics as they would then be competing with each other to colonize the gut, which would be rather silly.

Pets Need Prebiotics And Antioxidants

Fructo-Oligo Saccharides (FOS) are known to be the very best prebiotics, providing so much support for the existing healthy gut flora that supplying probiotics is almost unnecessary! We decided to do both with Pet Plus, to give our dogs and cats the best of both worlds! Frutafit Inulin IQ is the patented source of FOS we’ve chosen as it is plant based, very palatable and completely natural.

Alfalfa, wheat grass and barley grass have been pulverized and juiced then carefully dried so that all those fabulous nutrients, which would otherwise be hidden inside the cells, are preserved without chemicals and readily available to our pets. The beet root fibre is also a great source of fibre.

Together, these five ingredients are an essential support for the probiotics and provide an enormous number of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients.

Bilberries

A fantastic source of antioxidants, resveratrols and numerous superfood micronutrients, the addition of bilberries to Pet Plus takes its range of health promoting activities up to a whole new level!

Safflower Petals And Flax Seed

Excellent sources of essential fatty acids, safflower petals and flax seeds supply the perfect balance of omega 3 and 6 for dogs and cats. They are also rich sources of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients and support the probiotics.

Brewers Yeast

Repelling parasites is the main role of the brewers yeast. It is also a marvellous source of B vitamins and many other important nutrients.

Coenzyme Q 10 (Ubiquinone)

Efficient energy production by the cells is critical for health. Coenzyme Q10 is an essential co-factor for the release of energy from food at the mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of every cell. This fuels all the body’s systems, enhancing the smooth running of the whole body, especially the immune system and the cardiovascular system.

Taurine And Liver

Taurine is essential for feline health so is provided in plenty in Pet Plus for Cats. We’ve also included some liver to prevent any problems with palatability, as our feline friends are sometimes rather careful about what they’ll eat, even when it’s so good for them!

Synergy With Nature

The key to successful nutritional supplementation is to use the ingredients found in nature in their whole form. There are at least 15,000 micronutrients in raw food which all work together, synergistically. If we isolate these to make individual vitamins, we are removing the very things we need! Always go for whole food based nutritional supplements and avoid isolates! Nature knows best!

- Suzi McIntyre

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About Susanna

Susanna McIntyre is an experienced holistic veterinary surgeon who has developed Pet Plus to promote health in cats and dogs. She also has expert knowledge in small animal dentistry, running a Veterinary Dental Referral Service in South Wales.
As a vet in practice, she spent most of her time treating chronic degenerative diseases and allergies. It wasn’t until her mother developed terminal cancer that she discovered how unnecessary all the suffering is. As Hippocrates said, 'Let food be your medicine'. We really can address many of our ailments through food.