I’ve posted a couple times about the pet food recalls in the last week or so. Of course it was a week in before it occurred to me that I feed the CATS Taste of the Wild kibble….course, the media keeps saying its a DOG food recall, and certainly most of the specific formulas mentioned are dog food. But some of them don’t specify. So two days ago I called TOTW, and sure enough, not only is cat kibble included, the bag I have on hand is ALSO included.
ARG!! Getting Janie to eat something new is HELL, even when I can use the old food to gradually intro the new. But with her poor kidneys I don’t dare feed her any more of the potentially contaminated food. So that means a cold turkey switch. Picked up a small bag of Earthborn (since as far as I can find out they don’t have any relationship with Diamond), and made note of a couple other brands I’d be willing to try.
Well, she ate some last night….and now she’s puking flem. Pancreatitis most likely. Quite possibly set off by the new food. Whether because of something about the food itself, or just the cold turkey change I have no idea. And of course the vet is closed for the night. I could make it an ER visit, but I know from experience that if it IS a pancreatitis flairup none of the standard treatments will help her, and since she isn’t otherwise acting in poor health its not worth dragging her down there.
Oh geeze, I feed the cats TOTW too . The place that I buy the food from still had cat food on the shelf, so I never thought anything of it. Guess I wil have to check the bag (hopefully I still have it – I dump the food in a plastic bin for easy distribution). Shadow, our oldest cat, is a little weaker than he used to be, so it possibly could affect him.
Hope Janie gets better!
Just checked, and yep, that bag is on the list. Guess I’ll go back to Earthborn (which I have fed them in the past).
If they still have the cat food on the shelf when you go in let them know please. I’ve been in 3 stores this week, all three had the OLD version of the recall (the numbers were updated early last week), and two were unaware they were supposed to be pulling cat food too.
If I can remind you- (not to be snarky)
It’s the humans that got the samenalla, not the animals.
I don’t think (as long as nobody’s sick) that gradually changing out will hurt anyone.
There are only confirmed HUMAN cases yes. The problem is IDing animal cases. Vets treating a dog or cat for extreme diahrea and vomiting don’t generally assume salmonella unless something like the recall is already in place, and the only way to confirm that salmonella was the cause is to specifically test the dog for salmonella WHILE he’s having the reaction. Since in most cases an antibiotic clears up the problem (assuming it doesn’t go away on its own, which it often does) vets didn’t have any call to NEED to test for it.
I know someone who’s dog had a SEVERE case of bloody diahrea and vomiting just over a month ago. Vet prescribed antibiotics, it went away, all was good…..except the dog has a weakened immune system due to various issues, and she was feeding Taste of the Wild. When the recall hit she checked her bags and every bag she had was recalled. At this point she can’t confirm salmonella, but its awfully coincidental.
Is it possible that Janie’d be fine if I did a gradual change over, sure, but I’m not willing to risk it either. The good news is that after that one brief episode of reaction to the new kibble she seems to be doing ok on it, so cross your fingers!