Do you have a companion animal. I have posted a picture of my Inky as my avatar.

Why not post a pic of yours?


Joss

Inky is definitely not vegan, but she is pro-life. She often brings me live mice and they usually get away from her. I suspect we have one of her little friends in the kitchen at the moment. At least judging by the hole in the pumpkin.

Also she loves live birds and I pulled out my bed a couple of years ago because  a funny sound was coming from under it. I found a fledgling dove strutting around quite unharmed. He looked right at home there. Judith and I had to drive about 10 kilometres to give him to  a wildlife carer.Inky was very unimpressed. When I was living in Tasmania, her quarry of choice was the little New Holland Honeyeaters. She would bring them inside and they would fly madly around the lounge before I managed to shoo them upstairs and out the windows.

However she does kill moths and heaven help me if one should fly into my bedroom overnight. No matter what time it is, she dashes madly all over the place trying to catch the poor thing. I quite often have to get up and chase it out of my room. I do not appreciate being jumped on while asleep.


Joss

hello lovely joss! inky is a beauty! i have a cat (lou) and three dogs! a full house here... or they have me! all vegan and doing very well- they also have a holistic vet. i have lots of pictures of millie (some with janie)- you can find them here:

http://www.vegankind.org/millie
millie even had a journal at one point! hehe
http://www.livejournal.com/hellomillie

and all of them are on either catster or dogster. i love them to pieces!

sorry to hear about bosun carrotgurl. must've been so tough to lose a fur friend.

hope everyone is doing super- wishing everyone a happy & healthy new year!

LOVE!

Goregeous friends there Welly 

hi everyone! joss, i'm so glad you enjoyed the photos!

lovely neet! mung and meggsy (cute names!) would absolutely miss their meaty meal, i think. you'd have to ween them off bit by bit. i started lou cat off with vegan when he was just a kitten. we feed him dry and wet cat food from evolution diet (it has  L-taurine-- which i think is the only thing cats miss when they don't eat the flesh diet). he goes nuts in the morning because he just loves the wet food. here's the info on the can:

100% complete for all life stages-
vegan, gourmet entree
no growth hormones/antibiotic residues
no animal fat/cholesterol
no disease animals or byproducts
----
have you seen this?  looks good!

http://www.veganpet.com.au/   
http://www.veganpet.com.au/cats1.htm

At the beginning of last year we had 6 animals. 1 white and 3 brown alpacas (Butternut, Sugarplum, Savannah and Maverick), a dog (James) and a cat (Anastasia - Tassie for short).

Our first cria (brown)called Maverick (meaning independant) was born in Jan.  It's very exciting watching animals being born one of life real miracles.  Within a few moments of being born alpacas and other herd animals are on their feet toddling around. Trully amazing compared to us humans who take up to 14 months to get on our feet.  Three weeks after the cria was born we lost his mother and sister in acrtic storm conditions the beginning of February(48 hours of 100km winds freezing temperatures and torrential rain.  Alpacas are normally very resiliant animals but they had been shorn just three weeks before.  The day before the storm was 38 degrees.  Extreme weather conditions are no good for humans or animals.  A lot of experience alpaca breeders and sheep and cattle farmers lost a lot of animal.  It was devastating to us because we had grown to love them.  We saved the cria's aunty who was pregnant.  Her temperature was so low from hypothermia that it didn't register on the vet's thermometer.  We saved her by surrounding her with hot water bottles and blankets and massaging her to get circulation going again.  It was a miracle that the cria survived.  The vet said his mother would have fed him as long as she could and the warm milk in his tummy would have kept him alive.  I bottle fed the cria for 6 months and he is thriving.  He thinks I am his mum and is uncharacterisically friendly and mischevious.

Beginning of July we assisted in the birth of our second cria.  It was her mum's first baby so she didn't know what was happening. Contractions had stopped so we pulled the baby out by the legs as gently as we could.  She has a lovely temperament and has wonderfully soft white fleece.  Alpacas are very intelligent and curious animals and I love watching them roaming around our property and giving them a good hug and pat.  They are naturally reserved but are better the more you handle them.  They are kind to the environment because they have soft pads and nails instead of hooves.  Coming from a dairy farm background I really appreciate that alpacas only poop in the same piles in pellets so you don't walk around the paddock and squish into pats like cows and horses.

We had an Akita dog called James for nine years.  He was a great dog and wonderful with the kids.  Unfortunately we had to put him down in August because he attacked our 6 week old white cria.  She survived but had 4 drains put in on her back and a course of antibiotics.  She's such a tough little girl.

Our cat Tassie is a 12 years old Balinese ginger tabby cross.  She has the soft long no maintainance fur from her Balinese mum and is a tortoise shell colour.  She sleeps most of the time but is great company and very patient with the kids.  They say you live longer and deal with stress better with animals around.  We love our animals and they give us a lot of joy. 

Nikita

Nikita, all of your animals sound like wonderful companions!  Such sadness to have to put down one of your animals for the sake of the other though, its hard putting down an animal you love.

When I was 3 years old, we got a Golden Retriever called Taffy who was the most beautiful animal Ive known. He was snow white, not a hint of gold at all. Everything about him was eccentric and lovable. We had lots of fun times together!

When I was 16 years old, he got bitten by a white tailed spider and degenerated dramtically. He also contracted Addisons disease, Cushings disease and Arthritis. He was on medication that made him ravenously hungry and fat, and we'd find him eating anything and everything in his path, particularly tissues from the bin and digging up our compost heap! He was like a goat. It didnt matter if it was actually food or not, he would eat it. It was funny, but sad.  He would be so hungry that he ate away half the flesh on his front legs and paws. Many times we had to strap a bucket on his head to stop him from making the sores worse. Such a sight to see. As a teenager, I was mortified of having to walk him in the park with a bucket on his head, such a pitiful sight, and so sad.

Mum was instructed by the vet to put him on a Cooked cabbage diet for a few months.  OH MY GOD did that stink. I'll never forget the putrid smell of cooked cabbage (and the smell after he ate it!).  It was so bad, that when I went raw, I couldnt eat even Raw cabbage for ages!

I have often wondered in the past year of being raw what would have happened to Taffy if we had known about raw vegan pet food at the time.

He unfortunately got so sick and could hardly move, and the time came to put him down. I fed him his last favourite ice cream cone and the vet came and gave him an injection. I had to run away crying when I saw the vet bring in big black garbage bags. He buried Taffy in our back yard with his favourite toy football, and mum later planted a white rose tree there and an angel statue.  The white flowers are beautiful!


On boxing day just gone  I housesat for my brother, and looked after his 2 Golden Retrievers. It gave me a lot of joy to be around animals again. They were great companions when times were tough, and made me laugh and smile at the littlest things!

Please have a look at
http://www.catnutrition.org/foodmaking.html
We've been making this food for our cats for a year now.  One suffered from irritable bowel and was deemed incurable by our vet in Brooklyn, NY, well, he's now cured.  Our vet here is apparently passing this recipe on to his clients (according to a friend of ours, a former cat breeder, who feeds this recipe to her cats as well and goes to the same vet).
Worth checking out.  We leave out the Glandular Supplement as we have been uable to source it in Australia.
Good Luck!
Cheers, Gay (aka Cat Mom)