After he was well, he went back to my friend’s house. He’s more comfortable there, and can always come back here if he needs to.
Liz: Wow, that’s a great story. What about the tumor?
Cynthia: My friend is working on it. You can’t give him anything topically of course, at least not anything I know of. But I’d been giving him internal neoplasene—about a milliliter a day. The dosage is “to tolerance”. In other words, give as much as they can take without getting diarrhea or vomiting. I didn’t press it. The tumor started to break up. She’s continued to give it to him at home and I hope she’s regular with it.
Liz: Can you highlight a few things you do differently than regular cat rescues?
Cynthia:
- We feed raw, organic food, and insist that our adopters do as well.
- We do not vaccinate, and insist that the adopters do not either.
- We insist on adopted cats having access to the living world
- We do not spay/neuter before systems are mature (at least six month of age before surgery).
Liz: What converted you to the holistic approach?
Cynthia: I do a lot of reading, and I have a curious mind. There’s just vast amounts of information indicating that a lot of the mainstream protocols are dangerous.
And of course a good dose of common sense is always appropriate. For instance, if you put a pesticide on an animal—gee, you know, that might not be a good idea.
…it’s very common, in shelter and other practice these days, to do premature spay and neuter before the cats systems are developed, at six months or older. But I think most people would instinctively say, “that’s not a real good idea,” if you wanted to do it to prepubescent human, right?
Liz: I see–because their hormones and systems haven’t finished developing.
Cynthia: And I learned about industrial farming practices and how damaging the food that results from them is, in addition to the terrible cruelty…and so on.
And I was fortunate to meet a really good holistic practitioner in Oakland, Dr. Jenny Taylor of Creature Comfort Holistic Veterinary Center.
Many people are–for whatever reason—trusting in the status quo. I follow teachers I have come to trust, and my own experience.
Liz: That’s how I got into holistic health–way back. It was for my own health. I was trusting conventional practitioners who turned out to be really wrong. And I had to figure it out myself.
In a few days I’ll post Part 2, where Cynthia talks in more detail about how she feeds her cats and about keeping the right perspective when times get tough, plus some final words of wisdom.
Cynthia invites you to visit her site and even to call her if you have questions about holistic cat care!
All photos in this series are courtesy Bee Holistic Cat Rescue.
