Feeling Helpless but Not Hopeless

Bad IAMS Cat Food: Is It Tainted?

So, Koko was doing beautifully until she ate IAMS dry cat food for the first time since her ordeal began. We started thinking of the chronology, the other cats having the same problem, the cats who were suddenly having familiar problems.

Then we were kicking ourselves. A couple of months earlier we’d noticed the IAMS was burning our hands…

And we continued feeding it to our cats?! Yes, we did. They seemed to like it, and we were overwhelmed. Just putting one foot in front of the other, as we’d been doing for a dozen-plus years. Trying to get through another day of working and cleaning and feeding and medicating — and loving. It’d be so much easier if we didn’t love these cats.

Bad IAMS Original Cat Food with Chicken

I called the vet (Thursday, the 1st of July) and began explaining to the receptionist that (and why) we believed Koko’s problem may have been caused by the IAMS Original dry cat food. She interrupted to say, “well, we don’t sell IAMS cat food.”

Say what? That’s a bit like calling the police to report that one may have been (by accident or [possibly criminal] negligence) poisoned at a restaurant only to have the desk sargeant say, “well, we don’t serve food.” I was astonished, but the vet was on vacation until the following Tuesday (July 6th).

I left a message asking to speak with her as soon as she was available. Koko would be out of meds before she returned, but I was told it wouldn’t be possible to refill her prescriptions without (the unreachable) doctor’s orders. Unable to afford starting over from scratch with another vet, I told myself surely this vet would be more interested in what was happening than was her receptionist. Boy, was I wrong…

So Good He Could Eat It w/ A Spoon

I called Tuesday afternoon, said I understood that the vet was probably swamped after her vacation — but Koko needed her meds and we’d heard from a number of other people that they, too, had felt “the IAMS burn.” We now had even more cats who may well have been harmed by this food. What if lots of cats are being harmed by this food?

Didn’t get a call back on Tuesday (and in the meantime was speaking with someone from IAMS and someone from the FDA). Didn’t get a call back on Wednesday, either, so left another message. Think it was Friday that I flipped my lid and pretty much demanded Koko’s meds. WTF?!?

The vet and IAMS were in touch. I was assured of that, several times. The IAMS rep was a whole ‘nother story, but I always have to remind myself that IAMS is now Proctor & Gamble. P&G would contact me and tell me where to send “the rest of the food we still have.” I told them we have an unopened bag and half of the food from an open bag, but we’d need to save some for independent testing. 

Cornell University tests pet foods (“bad food” is less a rarity than one would hope), but they require that the request for testing come from a veterinarian. We needed this vet to call Cornell and make that request. I could hear the ennui (and imagine the rolled eyes) as I left my daily messages/pleas.

Yesterday (Monday, July 12th), the message was of the “are you freakin’ kidding me?” variety. I didn’t care if I was boring the receptionist as I gave her the bullet points: Koko was fine until she ate the IAMS again and the reaction was instantaneous. As mentioned in several previous messages, other cats unexposed to Koko, Daddy, and Greylian and in an IAMS-Only area are now having the same problem. An additional several cats are having the problems which alerted us to the last “bad food crisis” — and had the vets listened to us then, the news might have broken 6 – 8 weeks earlier than it did. How many lives might have been spared in that 6  8 weeks? And how could a vet not be interested in at least speaking to me about this.

I got my call-back. Still reeling, too. It’s late and I want to look ahead rather than behind, but here is just a bit of (the gist of) our conversation:

vet: I’m not going to request that the food be tested because the food didn’t cause Koko’s problem.

moi: What does cause Koko’s problem. You said you didn’t know.

vet: Nobody knows.

moi: Then how do you know it’s not the food?

vet: It would be almost impossible to really test the food. We wouldn’t even know what we were looking for; it could be anything.

moi: Did they know they were looking for melamine the last time there was a big problem with the food? They found it. Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

vet: It isn’t the food. I’m not going to request the testing.

moi: You don’t know that it’s not the food, and after having gone through this once already — we lost 17 of our healthiest cats in a matter of weeks, most of them to kidney failure. We kept asking vets if it could be the food, they kept assuring us it was merely coincidence. We’re not the only people who’ve noticed “the IAMS burn” — we don’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to make sure this food gets tested. Isn’t it better to know for certain?

vet: You’d know if someone poured a bottle of acid into a bag of cat food.

moi: What? Who said anything about someone pouring a bottle of acid into a bag of cat food? Of course we’d know if someone had poured a bottle of acid into a bag of cat food. Before we’d left the store. But this has been going on for several months. We didn’t pull the food until the end of June.

vet: Well, Cornell wouldn’t do the testing even if I asked because they only test feed for livestock.

[Should you wish to have the suspect pet food tested, there are many private labs that will test the food for contaminants and toxins. Many veterinary colleges provide pet food testing resources, however many will need the recommendation for testing from your veterinarian. One of the best is Cornell University Veterinary School.]

There was more, but I’d rather think about what I’m going to do tomorrow (except now it’s today). If anyone has read this far — we could sure use help making a stink! And until we do know for certain, friends don’t let friends use IAMS (Original dry cat food)!!