<< I've been trying to educate friends and family and whoever
will listen for YEARS that mystery meats in pet food are bad news, Steve
Crane & Hills to the contrary! >>

Yeah, but it only takes a little beef stock, beef extract, whatever to cause
CJD.  You can't know what's in any cat food or what's in your own food.  Go to
a restaurant, they might have beef stock in a dish that doesn't even have meat
in it.  Cripes, I've been a vegetarian for 15 years and I know full well that
when I go to restaurants, there most likely is beef or chicken stock in any
number of "vegetarian" dishes: soups, all sorts of things.  No one knows for
sure what they are eating.

Candace
(take the litter out before replying by e-mail)

See my cats:
http://photos.yahoo.com/maccandace

"One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other
than human."  (Loren Eisely)

So does anyone recomend any type of cat food when price is not a problem.
My kittie just got spayed and is running around like she has a
firecracker in
her butt (excuse the refrence). She is a hi energy cat, however my sister's
tabby, who also lives here, does not have a much energy. We had been
feeding them
Science Diet for kittens and we switched to Nutro Max Cat kitten...has
anyone had
any experiences or is the a better quality food. They are both healthy
and deficate
regularly with no problems. They are both spoiled rotten as they should
be...

Exactly right.  What little regulation there is for pet foods is mostly
involved with labelling.  If the contents are beef, chicken, fish,
whatever, the label must say so.  It is the mysterious "meat
by-products" that can legally contain the flesh or rendered flesh of any
mammals, including mink, marine mammals, zoo animals and, as shown by
some well documented instances in the past, euthanized pets.

Do premium cat foods list the parts of the animal that are used?
As far as cooking food for one's cats, how do you ensure they get
the proper nutrients in the proper balance?

And why aren't premium cat foods available locally?  Is it the
quality vs. quantity thing?  

Jean,
 Education is a two way street. The term "mystery" meat is simply
silly. Pet foods contain what you the consumer demand to have in the
food. Thus if you want chicken in the food, that's what you get.
Personally I don't care what meat protein a consumer desires, they are
all pretty similar in nutrient composition (lamb excepted). On the
other hand the decision to use any particular ingredient is quite
silly and of little value to the pet. It is the nutrients that the
ingredient provide that are of critical importance. When a consumer
makes a decision based on ingredients they can potentially get into
trouble. Making such a decision is about on par with doing third grade
math - simple addition and subtraction. Making decisions based on the
*nutrients* provided in the food is stepping up to the next level of
nutrition - about on par with high school calculus and trig. As long
as a consumer is content with third grade elementary nutrition, and
there are no disease issues to contend with, choosing a food based on
ingredients works just fine. Unfortunately such choices can prove
potentially disastrous. Placing a geriatric kitty of a food with "good
sounding" ingredients and phosphorus levels above 1.5%, sodium levels
above 1% and low levels of N-3 fatty acids could prove lethal.

Yes, I do understand that....