Meet the New Addition

It's a funny thing. You realize when you lose a pet that you can never, ever replace them in your heart but oddly enough your heart can grow and have room to love a new one. Meet Samwise or Sammy our latest addition. He was one of 6 kittens that a local woman was trying to find a home for. He isn't all black, there is a white spot high on his neck under his chin and white hair in his ears.

We named him Samwise after Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. J.R.R. Tolkien described Samwise as the bravest character in the series and "stout of heart" and very loyal. Our little Samwise is very brave and virtually fearless and is already taking over the house. He has displaced Curious George from the top of the cat tree and Callie from the back of the love seat, attacks anything, never backs down and is very cuddly when he chooses to be.

Callie at first treated him like a day old kitten and George attempted to ignore him. Now they all play Thundering Herd of Elephants and seem to be getting along fine. Samwise initially was flea infested. The poor things first experience in our home was a Dawn soap bath in the bathroom sink and tweezers. He is flea free and fiesty now. The woman said they were 8 weeks old but judging from his size I would say he was closer to 6 weeks. He is litter trained and loves dry and wet cat food. He and George share the wet food in the morning.

Samwise is quite a delight to have around.

Max Cat Food Recall

We went to buy cat food on Friday and the shelves in PetSmart where the Max Cat formula dry food usually is were bare. We went and asked and associate and she explained that there was a voluntary recall on almost all Max Cat food due to potentially high levels of zinc and potassium in the food.
This hit us like a sledge hammer. We switched to Max Cat last year and last winter switched to the indoor weight loss formula (one of the types recalled). And a few months later Charles was starting to lose some weight. Then the week between Christmas and New Years when we had a house full he got kind of run down and a couple days later was jaundice and one day later we had to send him over the rainbow bridge. The vet stated there were a few potential causes for his condition and one at the top of her list? Zinc poisoning.
If you have any Max Cat food take it back to PetSmart immediately! They will refund your money, exchange it for a different brand or give you store credit.
We are now in the process of getting all our information in order before contacting the makers of Max Cat and processing through a lot of what ifs (like what if we hadn't switched food?). Charles was barely 6 years old. We can't change what happened but it brought the loss of Charles right back to the front. The paperwork we have on the recall states that to their knowledge no cats have died but I think it is more likely that more cats were like Charles...hard to figure out without expensive testing that wasn't going to save him anyway.
The Facts:
Nutro Dry Cat Food Recall began May 21, 2009. Contact Nutro customer service at 1-800-833-5330 or visit www.nutroproducts.com. You can contact PetSmart at 1-888-839-9638 or on Twitter at @PetSmartTLC.
This recall includes just about every brand of Nutro Max Cat and Nutro Naturals brand cat food.