Warnings And Pet Care Tips From Diatomaceous Earth Use

I just got a couple of huge vet bills for my 23-year-old cat. It may have been due partially to him eating dry cat food stored with diatomaceous earth mixed in with it. The worst part was probably because I did not watch him carefully enough.

Older cats can end up getting sick because of being dehydrated very easily. I have done a lot of extra things to make sure all my cats get plenty of water, especially the older ones. I have resorted to using an eyedropper and making them drink, if they won't do it on their own. Most of them became resigned to it and would willingly lap from the eyedropper when I brought it out for them.

I always watch my cats' litter boxes to make sure they are eliminating enough, both liquid and solid wastes. If they get low on the solid, they get petromalt and vegetables they like. If they are not passing enough urine, they get the eyedropper. 

I bought them a fountain a few years ago and both of them began happily lapping away at it, so I thought my worries about them getting enough water were over. I still kind of watched their litter box, but clearly did not pay enough attention. 

If you do not have pets, you still need to know about information in this post. If a little diatomaceous earth in dry cat food is enough to encourage constipation in a cat, it could do that in a human. I already told you this repeatedly on this blog, but now I am telling you to be careful to watch out for this problem and take preventives as a matter of  course.

The preventive I decided on for my cats, besides the fountain, are is more water they have to drink.

I did this by increasing the amount of canned cat food they get daily, and adding water to their canned cat food. I am making this a permanent change to their diet.

I am going to make changes in my own diet to accommodate the use of diatomaceous earth for my storage food. I put diatomaceous earth in my bulk grains. So far I only have it in flour, oats and part of my whole grains. I am not getting the full amount that will eventually be my regular diet. 

By the time that I finish my gradual diet shift to mostly or all storage foods, I will be getting a much larger dose of diatomaceous earth in my diet without specifically taking the diatomaceous earth for its own uses. I have thought that once I reach that point, I probably will be getting enough diatomaceous earth daily to stop taking it by itself.

In case it isn't already obvious, my cat became extremely constipated and had to have an enema at the vet's office. I was also given a laxative to dose him with. 

This incident with my cat was life-threatening and expensive. It also badly frightened both of us. We may not be over it yet. 

I also cut most of the hair off of his behind so that his behind looks kind of naked now. His new nickname is, "Monkey Butt". Sometimes the laxative gave him diarrhea and I couldn't keep him clean because of his baby fine fur back there. That meant his fur had to go. 

He fussed at me a lot while I was cutting off his fur. I used a pair of blunt-tipped scissors to cut his fur. I gave him lots of treats while I was cutting, so he didn't mind all that much. He just likes to gripe a lot. 

I think he was relieved that the short fur on his Monkey Butt made it easier for me to keep him clean. He is a particularly fastidious cat. 

The good things I got out of this awful experience were that I can warn readers, and I now have another set of health care ideas to make a regular part of my cats' care. They get extra water in their cat food. I hope that this will give my 23-year-old cat some more years for us to share.

Apologies for the late post. There was an internet outage.

Diatomaceous Earth For Food Preservation

I tried out my first batch of cat food with diatomaceous earth on it. Rather I did it and my cats ate it. They seemed to appreciate it. I mixed a different kind of cat food with their usual when I did it. I am not certain what did the trick to get them to like it. I will keep doing the same thing since it worked.


I can see why one is advised to use the diatomaceous earth in small batches. It took a LOT of stirring to coat the cat food nuggets evenly. 


The amounts of diatomaceous earth for preservation of different foods seems to be consistent between people advising about it and the different foods as well.
Most say about a cup of diatomaceous earth for about 50 lbs. of food. I have seen some that get as low as 1/2 a cup for 40 lbs. of food, but that is not that much difference.


The exact amount does not seem to be as important as evenly coating each grain/piece of food. 


I suspect that once I have diatomaceous earth coated grain as a regular part of my diet, I will be able to stop or cut down my daily dose of diatomaceous earth for treatment and prevention of parasites.


The cats probably won't need to be dosed for parasites with DE either, once they are always eating it on their dry food. 


If you decide to treat your pet's food with DE, you might want to take extra care that they do not become constipated. I think oat grass is the best prevention. It is also very good for the general health of cats. If cats stay indoors they especially need oat grass.


Once cats start eating oat grass they really like it. Mine try to persuade me to give them a fresh tub before they finish the one they are working on. I am working on getting more tubs of oat grass into their rotation, so it will be fresh for them more often.


Both of them get very excited and yell a lot and sit up and beg for it when they see me bringing out a new tub of oat grass. They are always really happy when they get it.


My equivalent of oat grass is sprouts. I grow my own and eat them a lot. I keep sprouts in my sprouter all the time, but am probably going to make some extra ones to make it easier to have more than one kind at a time. I like the mixed sprout salads better than only one kind of sprouts at a time.


You can mix seeds of different types of sprouts in one container, but I don't like the same mix in everything I use the sprouts in. An example is radish seeds. The sprouts from radish seeds are spicy tasting and overpower the flavors on some things.


It is a pleasant feeling to eat a meal that I grew myself, even if it is only something as simple as sprouts. You might like it as well. It is also a way of eating what we store.

Alternative health care, like diatomaceous earth, can be confusing at times. One reason for this is because when you first start taking care of a problem you can get very sick, suddenly.


This is because your body is so ill that the thing that it needs makes it have a bad reaction. I thought this was called a healing effect, but I can't seem to find it under that name.


Some people I know got very bad diarrhea from using diatomaceous earth at first. I believe this was because their bodies needed diatomaceous earth or something in it very badly. I am not an expert on either diatomaceous earth or alternative healing. Every person is different and the most important part of using alternative medicine is to pay attention to what is going on inside your body. 


Diatomaceous earth may cause severe constipation for me and others I know, and my animals. Since I became vegetarian, this is not much of a problem for me. When I give diatomaceous earth to my cats, I always make sure they have lots of oat grass to eat. This prevents constipation for them. I watch their litter box and if I think there is any tendency for them to be constipated, I dose them with petromalt as well.


Someone was searching for how to dose cats with diatomaceous earth. I put it into food. I like to use butter because it is easy to get into their mouths. You can even push it between their teeth. 


I always take a treat and let my cats see me put it nearby to give to them immediately afterwards.They are so interested in the treat that they don't pay as much attention to the diatomaceous earth being shoved into their mouths.


I have a huge repertoire of tricks that I use to give my cats medicine and do other treatments to them. This blog is not for that kind of information. 


I want people to include their pets in their preparedness, and the basics are okay here. I will probably do a cat care blog and maybe include some helpful things I know about other animals, especially dogs. Right now I need to keep helping people be prepared for disasters.


As you know, if you read my blog much, I believe that people need to be prepared for bigger, more frequent and more widespread natural disasters. These are in addition to nuclear war disasters, and other kinds of man made disasters.


I hope that you and your loved ones will work on disaster preparedness, so that you will have a better chance to survive.

Diatomaceous Earth To Protect Stored Food

I have already posted a little about diatomaceous earth. This post is going to be about how to use diatomaceous earth to protect your food. I will fit in a little about other ways to protect your food as well.


I like to use hardware cloth to keep out rodents. It is a lot tougher than wire screens, so they can't get through it as easily. 


If you are making raised garden beds, you need to put hardware cloth on the bottom, before you add extra soil or even  think about plants. 


If you absolutely cannot afford hardware cloth you can put pieces of broken glass down deep so the rodents will cut themselves. I hate this method and it make become a risk to you and others later.


Your root cellar really needs to be protected against rodents. Even if everything is safe in glass jars and cans, rodents can contaminate and carry disease with droppings. If you have barrels of apples and potatoes, etc., those can become a rodent haven.


Pick hardware cloth to line your root cellar with that is smaller than you think you will ever need. You do not want a surprise to find they can get through smaller holes than you thought. We can also expect new species of rodents to invade new territories. You could get smaller rodents than you were used to.


You need to be fanatical to make sure there are NO GAPS in your hardware cloth. Cover vents as well, even small pipes and areas around the pipes and vents.


Put diatomaceous earth into food that could be infested by insects. If you are not aware of this, I have to inform you that there are already insect eggs in most of your food. This includes everything from dry pet food and grains, to prepared foods that are ready to put into your toaster.


Once any insects hatch from eggs in your food, they will die as soon as they eat any food with diatomaceous earth in it. 
This post is getting too long so I will continue it.