40 different brands of pet food, sold between December 3 and March 6, have been linked to sudden renal failure cats and dogs... The supplier lists the affected brands here.

We *did* buy one small pouch of Eukanuba when Whoosey was in the hospital last month, which worries me. Fortunately, so far it seems that either it wasn't affected or the one package spread out among several cats wasn't enough to cause a problem. (The canned brands I get for treats or medication are Natural Balance and Pet Gold.)

Scarily, until a year ago, the main canned actually was in the affected chunky Nutro line, and the previous year, a few of the cats had been eating it every night! The reason I changed was that Max started throwing up everything he ate in March 2006, and it forced me to try all the other 'good' brands I could find. I learned that he could safely eat Natural Balance, which had impressive ingredients, and that Pet Gold was excellent for hiding foul-tasting medication in. (I didn't find out that NB has fish versions that are good for med-hiding until much later.)

We also used to feed the dry version of some of the brands on that list (Nutro, Iams, Eukanuba) but several years ago, they were bought out and subsequently decreased the quality of ingredients. I admit that I wouldn't have guessed that they sunk to the level of being made by the same folks that make the off-label grocery brand garbage with names like "Price Chopper".

OK, enough of that... I should post a pointer at my main LJ to this post for anyone unaware. I hope none of my LJ friends or the owners at the support groups for cats with renal/heart failure have pets affected by the disaster!

Tags: canned food, pet foods