Most mass-produced pet foods are not made with human-grade ingredients. They contain cockroachs, rodent droppings, mold, intestinal products, floor sweepings and other discards from human food processing. “Animal digest” contains ground up euthanized pets put back into the pet food, pentobarbital and all.

From Wikipedia:  Many animals euthanized at shelters or animal control agencies are sent to meat rendering facilities,^[11] to be processed for use in cosmetics, fertilizer, gelatin, poultry feed, pharmaceuticals and pet food.^[12] The amount of phenobarbital in dog food has caused dogs to become less responsive to the drug when being euthanized.

OK, so here is my take on the subject: I like everything to be in it’s proper place, nicely decorated and harmonious.  So I really do prefer living room furniture and accessories in my living room.   Therefore, car parts, tools, greasy rags, greasy old car parts, greasy tools, and, did I mention CAR PARTS are FOREIGN OBJECTS in my living room. Definitely alien to my decor. Not at all natural to my living space.

Unlike me, Taco LOVES foreign objects, he immediately claims them as his own:

This cat can sleep on anything!

You may be curious about why these foreign objects appear in my living room (me too).  My most awesome and amazing (one of many) 19 year-old son is going to school to be an auto technician, and he does quite a few repairs out in the driveway (this drives the wicked witch into severe fits of agitation) and inevitably the car stuff gets tossed in the living room for a few hours days weeks.  On the bright side,  I get car repairs done for cheap…so I try to be patient…grease and all…*sigh*

In honor of their one year blog anniversary, they are having a fantastic giveaway, a gift basket from Whimsy Cats which includes an autographed copy of Buckley’s Story and lots of fun surprises for your feline family members.

If you’d like to enter the giveaway, go to The Conscious Cat and:

• Leave a comment on the anniversary post.
• Tweet about this giveaway or share it on Facebook for an additional chance to win and leave the link to your tweet/share in a separate comment.
• Subscribe to The Conscious Cat via  e-mail.  If you’re already subscribed, you’re automatically entered in the giveaway.
• Blog about this giveaway on your blog and leave the link in a separate comment.

The giveaway is open until midnight Saturday, March 15.

Casper has been queuing with other passengers to get the number three service from his home in Plymouth for months, bus company First said.

The company says the cat often curls up on a seat during the ride.

Mango looks forward to our daily stretching routine much more than I do!

Called FGD gypsum, this synthetic powder is produced when coal plant “scrubbers”  remove sulfur dioxide from plant emissions.     

Last year, a coal ash pond just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, spilled and flooded about 300 acres of land with ash, killing many fish in the area. The spill damaged many homes as well, and cleanup costs are expected to be upwards of $1 billion. This catastrophe has prompted the EPA to draft regulations on how to handle toxic coal waste safely.  Guess what they came up with?

In 2001, the USDA together with the EPA began to promote FGD gypsum use in agriculture. Since that time, the amount of coal ash used by farmers on their fields has tripled. According to the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), nearly 280,000 tons of the byproduct was spread on fields last year.

FGD gypsum contains toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, but according to the EPA, “the mercury contained in FGD gypsum does not affect plants and runoff into water supplies at significant levels.”  Guess they never heard of PHYTOREMEDIATION, a technology which uses plants to absorb heavy metals from the soil.

If the waste from coal plants is toxic and must be dealt with in a manner that keeps it contained, I’m just wondering why the EPA would promote the same waste for use on FOOD crops.  Perhaps it’s just more cost-effective to sell toxic waste to farmers than to stop producing it in the first place.

Food that’s USDA-certified organic cannot be grown with coal ash.  I’m sticking with organic for my family, and that includes my cats.


Nature’s Variety Raw Food Diets Organic Chicken Patties 6 lbs.