HUGE Price Difference!

YIKES!  We paid over $50 for Primal Feline Chicken and Salmon frozen raw cat food at NationalPetPharmacy.com (shipping was free).  I checked Pet Food Express, which is a brick and mortar pet food store here in the SF Bay Area, and they sell the same 4 lb. bag for $21.99!! Holy cat food, Batman!   (Pet Food Express has a web site , but one cannot purchase food at the web site.  However, one can check to see what the brick and mortar store carries.  The web site also boasts a "buy 3, get the 4th free" special in the store.) 

Unfortunately Pet Food Express does not seem to carry  EVO, made by

 Natura, a local SF Bay Area company.  That's what Ivan and Boo are eating, along with Primal Feline Chicken and Salmon.  But there are some other pet food stores in the area that carry Natura's products, or so the Natura web site says.  We will pay a visit to one of them, Sam's Downtown Feed, which we have passed a million times but never visited. They have a large model horse in front of the  store.

Because of the cost of the Primal food, we were not going to

continue feeding it once the 4 lb. bag we have in the freezer is gone.  However, now that we see how comparatively cheaply we can buy it, we may continue it!  And if we can find Primal's "Raw Meaty Bones" for cats being sold in our area, we may try those as well.  However, we do foresee a problem with those.  We currently give Ivan and Boo dried chicken breast pieces as treats and also to satisfy their chewing obsessions.  We give those to them on the dining room carpet, as they are dry.  However, because of that, we envision them taking "raw meaty  bones" onto the dining room carpet, too.  That would not be good.  We'll see what happens!

On another front, VPI Pet Insurance denied our claims for Dev and Belle's first vet visit!  The paperwork said the claims were denied because the vet's invoices were not itemized.  Hogwash! They were itemized.  So I called VPI and the customer service rep was as puzzled as I. She finally found out that one item on the invoices, listed as "Kitten vaccination," needed to be better defined.  She said that if I could get details about what exactly that vaccination was, and call VPI back with the information, I would not need to resubmit the claim.  Of course the vet was closed today (Saturday), so this will have to wait until Monday. 

We purchased a new type of cat litter to try with Ivan and Boo.  It's called PerfectLitter.  The PerfectLitter web site is a bit annoying, so here is a link to information on the product from

PetPlace.com (but you can click on the PerectLitter image here to go to the PerfectLitter site, if you feel brave).  It is touted as being 70% lighter than clay litter, flushable, dust-free, four times more absorbent than regular cat litter, and if your cat develops a urinary tract infection, his/her urine turns the white litter pink.  We haven't tried this litter yet, but as soon as one of the litter boxes in our home is ready for a complete litter change, we're going to try PerfectLitter. PetPlace.com suggests having one litter box with your regular clay litter available as your cats get used to PerfectLitter in another litter box.  A good suggestion!