“Celeste Yarnall, author of the books Cat Care, Naturally and Natural Dog Care, feeds her Tonkinese and Oriental Shorthair cats an all-raw diet and requires her kitten buyers to do the same. When one of her cats fell from a rooftop, his owner rushed him to an emergency clinic, where the veterinary staff marveled over his strong bones and excellent health. In fact, an attending veterinary technician realized that she had never seen a truly healthy cat before, and the following day she telephoned Yarnall to discuss her unusual (by veterinary standards) approach to feline health.

‘The problem with veterinarians today,’ Yarnall told me, ‘is that the only animals they see eat nutritionally deficient food and get vaccinated every year. To them, a dog or cat that isn’t dying of cancer is healthy, even though it may have eye and ear infections, skin and coat problems, allergies, poor muscle tone, structural defects, terrible teeth and gums, behavioral problems, and arthritis. These conditions are so common they’re considered normal. Twenty-year old cats are unusual today, and among pedigreed cats they are practically unheard of. In fact, it’s getting hard to find cats who live to be nine or ten. I believe most feline and canine health problems stem from poor diet and overvaccination, and these are conditions an owner can control. While natural diet and holistic therapies can’t cure everything, they can improve or prevent most common health disorders and help the animal live to an active old age.’

‘The only sensible strategy to follow,’ she concluded, ‘is to provide the food our pets were designed to consume. For dogs and cats, that means a constantly changing assortment of raw foods, especially raw meat. Veterinarians and pet food manufacturers are not the final authority on pet nutrition. Mother Nature is.”

- Excerpt from The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care by C.J. Puoitinen