{"id":4719,"date":"2019-12-23T14:18:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T19:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=4719"},"modified":"2019-12-23T18:18:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:18:33","slug":"so-i-almost-karen-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/2019\/12\/23\/so-i-almost-karen-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"So, I almost Karen-ed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So I decided not to pull a Karen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I mean by that? Well\u2026 lately, I\u2019ve been sharing a\nlot of posts and such on FB criticizing the anti-vax (or if anti-vax offends\nyou, I\u2019ll use the term child killer instead). [Note: legitimate medical reasons\nfor avoiding vaccines are not included in the above contempt.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, so the whole Karen thing is based on the belief that 15-30 minutes of Google searching is somehow as good or better than tens of thousands of hours of study and work put into a particular field by trained, degreed professionals. But my own near-Karen moment has nothing to do with vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have two cats. Loki and Dorian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the 3-ish years I\u2019ve had these two, I\u2019d been feeding\nthem Hill\u2019s Ideal Balance wet cat food at night, and the dry version in the\nmorning (at least until my vet put Loki on weight control Science Diet).\nRecently, Hill\u2019s decided to discontinue the Ideal Balance brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Loki, when I told him about Ideal Balance being discontinued.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And so, the hunt for a new wet food began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My cats are fickle. Yes, I realize cats in general are\nfickle, but my two are the sort of cats that other cats say \u201cdamn, boy\u2026 you\u2019re\na picky eater\u201d to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back up a few years. Prior to Loki and Dorian, I had three\nother cats: Patch, Tweak, and Angry. All three of those cats died a little\nyoung (~14 or so for Tweak\/Patch, 6 for Angry). Patch and Angry had cancer,\nTweak, I think, suffered a massive stroke.) At least in the case of the cancer,\nI kinda blamed my use of Friskies cat food for it, so when I got Loki and\nDorian, I decided to make sure they ate healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ideal Balance seemed like a great product. And the cats\nloved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, Hill\u2019s decided to stop making it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\u2026 I went to the internet. Searching cat blogs. Everyone\u2019s\nharping about grain free food, human-grade meat, and so on. And the one theme\nthat consistently emerged: Purina is the devil. And not just the little \u2018step\non a Lego at 3 in the morning\u2019 devil. The \u2018wants to throw your cats into the\nfurnace\u2019 devil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, to a point, that clicked with my fear of giving my cats\nbad food and losing yet another two cats too early to a theoretically\npreventable cancer. Consequently, I started looking for some grain free \u2018healthy\u2019\nfood. I tried 4Health, Instinct, Weruva, and Tiki Cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Dorian has no patience for Google.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Did I mention my cats were picky eaters? They nibbled on the\n4Health, absolutely refused to touch the instinct at all. Weruva got the same \u2018what\nis this crap?\u2019 reaction from my cats. (not a slam on Weruva, I\u2019m just\ndescribing how my guys reacted to it.) To be fair, Tiki Cat had a similar shredded\nchicken flavor that the cats also totally ignored. The Tiki Cat sardine flavor,\nthey kind of ate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here I am, frustrated and worried that my cats are going\non a hunger strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just so happened I had an appointment come up to bring\nDorian to the vet for his rabies booster. While there, I asked my vet about her\nrecommendations for food. Know what she said? High end Purina, like Pro Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, that <\/em>Purina\nthat the internet calls the High Devil of feline Acheron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also said the \u2018grain free\u2019 thing is a fad, and that\nboutique cat food brands can also be dangerous or lack vital nutrients because\nthere is far less oversight on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, that should have been the moment I thought, hmm,\nmaybe I\u2019ll listen to this woman with a doctorate degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t. Because I Karen-ed. The whole internet of\ncat-lovers can\u2019t be wrong, can they? What does a veterinarian know that a bunch\nof people who keep cats wouldn\u2019t? Hmm. So, a little shocked to hear my vet\nadvocate for the giant evil mega cat-killing corporation (so sayeth the Ancient\nScrolls of the Internet), I FB chatted with another vet who I know via the\nauthor community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guess what she said?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yep. Purina is fine. And she also said the grain free thing\nwas a fad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, either there\u2019s a secret conspiracy between veterinarians\nacross the country to help evil corporations\u2026 or maybe they know something that\npeople without doctorate degrees don\u2019t. Yeah, having a second vet in a\ncompletely different state say the same exact thing to me was like getting hit\nupside the head with a piece of raw salmon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d Karen-ed pretty hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, after all my railing online about people who trust Google\nmore than their doctors, I decided to follow my own admonishment and listen to\nthese two professionals. Ordered a case of Purina Pro Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guess what\u2026 my cats devoured<\/em>\nit. Like practically ate the bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, it seems I\u2019ve found the food to replace the Ideal\nBalance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two women with degrees actually knew something better than the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who\u2019d have thought. (meant with full sarcasm \/ self-deprecation)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Edit\/update: I shared the link to this post with one of the vets, and she sent back some links. (The links are dog-focused, but she says the same condition happens to cats as well.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/animal-veterinary\/cvm-updates\/fda-investigating-potential-connection-between-diet-and-cases-canine-heart-disease?fbclid=IwAR1Oo7ptFky_ISap_ieIQlUg1-7ca_kiHneH6s7FGmoqRCFkAaUbmyEiQ58<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/24\/health\/grain-free-dog-food-heart-disease.html\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu\/news\/uc-davis-investigates-link-between-dog-diets-and-deadly-heart-disease?fbclid=IwAR2Zr2-jSov0T9zp7nhLS0TG1DIpbswjDgE-iQaz2MF0bDhf8g2WkIPi1fw<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I decided not to pull a Karen. What do I mean by that? Well\u2026 lately, I\u2019ve been sharing a lot of posts and such on FB criticizing the anti-vax (or if anti-vax offends you, I\u2019ll use the term child … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4719"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4731,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions\/4731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}