Scratchings-and-Sniffings |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2009 08:56 AM PDT
Her nine month old kitten is an eager eater, maybe a little too eager, and snarfs down his food a little too quickly. As a result he throws up. Her vet has suggested feeding several smaller meals a day which is a good idea and should help control the regurgitation problem. Kittens should be fed three to four times a day up to about seven months of age. After that you can back them off to twice daily. So a nine month old kitten will do just fine being fed twice daily. This works out well for most people that work and can't get home in the middle of the day. This kitten could be fed morning and evening and then before the owner's bed time to limit the amount he gets. As far as the second question about when to switch to adult food, I did a long detailed post over at the By nine months of age kittens look like adults but they are not fully grown yet. Ideally they would be on kitten food up to a year of age. The really rapid growth phase for kittens is in that three months to six months time period. They can need up to twice as many calories per pound during this time and kitten foods are more energy dense than adult foods. That being said, the world is not going to come to an end if a nine or ten month old kitten is eating a good quality adult food. |
| Posted: 04 Jun 2009 06:24 AM PDT
C'est la vie, n'est pas? Anyway, I read two interesting articles in the NY Times over the last couple of days that I thought might be of interest to sentient pet owners. Both articles deal with emotion and remorse. One is about the virtues of blushing in people and the other asks whether dogs have a sense of regret. According to researchers, the act of blushing serves a useful purpose in people. It is a way of indicating that you have committed a faux pas and that you are sorry for it. A blush serves to soften the observers perception of you when you have made a social blunder or bad judgment and can help maintain the social bond instead of weakening it. It is a way of acknowledging a mistake without having to go through the agony of an apology. For some, blushing is an embarrassing trait and one they wish they did not posses. It may make some feel vulnerable, but in terms of social interaction and non verbal communication it is highly adaptive behavior and demonstrates that you care what people think. In fact, researchers believe that the act of blushing helps maintain and strengthen the human bond. Those that don't blush in the face of a transgression tend to tear at the social fabric and lack a conscience. Some might say Dick Cheney, for instance, lacks the ability to blush. The second article probes the question of whether animals can sense regret. Do they feel sorry for something that they have done or do they lament missed opportunities? The author combs through various pieces of research and seems to come to the conclusion that animals do feel remorse for certain actions. The author would like to believe that his own dog feels sorry for having destroyed some valuable piece of property or for an erstwhile pee deposit on the carpet. I'm not so sure he is correct. At least I hope he's not. As we've mentioned many times before on the blog the idea of punishing a pet for misdeeds after the fact is a bad idea. They have very short memories and if you don't catch your pet in the act of chewing up your new shoes punishing them for ruining them after the fact will only confuse them. Ah, but, "I know he knows he's been bad," you say."He takes one look at me when I come in the house and see what he has done and he slinks away in shame." Like people, dogs are very social beings. They have spent thousands of years in close contact with people. They have a very highly honed sense of what pleases people and what does not and they can sense what you are feeling simply by observing your expression or your posture. When you walk in the door and see your new shoes torn to shreds you send out immediate non verbal signals of displeasure and disapproval. That is why your dog tucks his tail. He can tell you are unhappy. What he doesn't know is whether you are unhappy about the shoes or about the lousy date you just had. Personally, I'm just fine with that. Our dogs lack of memory is precisely why they are so happy to see us every time we come home. I'm glad our dogs don't obsess about daily disappointments and human failings. I'm glad someone can live in the moment and see every day as a new day, a new beginning, a fresh start. I'm still embarrassed by things I did thirty years ago for god's sake. Shame is highly over rated. Unconditional love is an ideal that is very hard to come by in real life. We all want it and we'd love to be strong and good enough to give it. I'm not sure with our big brains and long memories that many of us are truly capable of that. Dogs and cats are made to forgive and forget though, and that's just fine by me. |
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