My tiger-colored cat is two. He is sterilized, is kept indoors and eats complicated food (dry and canned) bought at a pet-shop. He seems to like them. Every time after I take him for several days to my friends living out of town, he vomits so badly that I even have to take him to a vet. The veterinary has advised me to feed my cat with a dry food of a high range, which is more expensive and can be bought at the veterinary. Why my cat feels himself bad? Is commercial food, widely available, not good enough, badly assimilated or can be a cause of indigestion?
- Doctors are often asked about the food quality. Commercial food is strictly controlled at all stages of production process and sale and from the point of sanitation fit your domestic animals all right. Yet the quality of food at sale differs greatly. The products of "low" range are produced out of a cheaper raw stuff and often are of smaller nutrition; food entering high "range", on the contrary are prepared out of a raw materials of a high quality and the permanent high quality is guaranteed.
Food suggested by the vet is surely more expensive (on the basis of 1 kg of its weight). Their higher price includes both raw material high quality and extra laboratory analyses that enlarge the product price: researches are sometimes held in big cat nurseries, where different mixtures are sorted out in order to be to our spoilt cats' tastes. The difference between such food and an ordinary one is the same as between a bit through hamburger and an exquisite dish at a restaurant.
Take into account that one should not compare the price of goods by its weight. One should also consider the nutrition of compared goods. The food of "low" range includes many components that are hard to digest. As a result your cat's stool gets frequent and abandoned and the cat has to eat great amounts of food to feel itself full. If you switch the diet of your cat to a food suggested by the vet you'll see your cat eats less, three days after you change it's diet and it's appetite will arise. To compare cost of a couple of goods one should consider at least a month period.
At last your cat is young, healthy doesn't bother anything much because it's sterilized. When it will grow old and will not feel itself so healthy, you'll be able to select some suitable food among dietetic ones.
Unhealthy state of your cat after some days of separation may be explained by a quick change in a diet. When you change cat's diet do this gradually, to let the intestinal flora and digesting enzymes adapt to digestion of a new food. These troubles can be probably explained by stress caused by parting from master and by a change of a place of residence. If you are going to be away not for long then it may be better to leave the cat at home and ask somebody of your friend or neighbors to visit it and feed twice a day.
Translated by Tatiana Karpova (Moscow)
(MSU, Biology faculture, Dep. zoology and ecology).