Expert: Tina - 3/10/2007

Question
Hello Tina,



My name is Paula Maher. I am a student of Morris Journalism Academy and I am working as a freelancer.



I adore cats and I am working at present on an article idea in regards to cat care and I have a question I am hoping you will



have time to answer:



What are some of the most common mistakes cat owners make?



I am wanting to inform readers in regards to the responsibility of cat ownership.



Thank you for reading my e-mail and I do hope to hear from you soon.



Regards,



Paula Maher  

Answer
Hi Paula,

I think the 2 worse mistakes made by people as cat owners are 1. allowing them outdoors loose and 2. feeding them low quality food.

The dangers of allowing cats outside are often dismissed by people until something tragic happens. A summary of these dangers and how to avoid them are in my article here:

http://catnet.stanford.edu/articles/careguide.html#indoors

As for poor nutrition, people often feed dry cat ood out of convenience, but most dry cat food is essentially meat-flavored corn or rice. As true carnivores, cats cannot digest grains and high carbohydrate foods ead to obesity, diabetes and kidney disease in cats. Feeding a qaulity meat-based protein food will do more than anything else to enhance the health and longevity of a cat and avoid expensive-to-treat disease. A very good article on cat nutrition can be found at:

http://www.catnutrition.org/clienthandout.html

Good luck with your article!