Um, I've had cats (and dogs)all my life, and I never had a cat that didn't puke occasionally. Hair balls, or the tendency to eat leaves or other vegetation that sticks in their throats.
I've never used processed wet pet food for either dogs or cats and I've never had a vet that recommended the stuff (except maybe the Rx kind that's made for sick animals), but I did have a dog that died of kidney failure; he was a rescue, and Lord only knows what conditions he came from; likely eating out of garbage cans before he was taken to the pound.
The bottom line is that both cats and dogs die of kidney failure every day, and this situation appears to be reaching the hysteria level of fiction over fact.
I am being observant, not hysterical. But thank you anyway.
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Shark Attack Hysteria Is Business as Usual for Media
By Brian Carnell
Friday, September 7, 2001
The other day I was watching NBC News which lead off its program with a segment on the latest victims of shark attacks off the coast of the United States. What was odd about this particular news program was that after the segment, NBC ran a second story pointing out that shark attacks in the United States and around the world are little changed from 2000, when every shark attack wasn't featured on nightly news.
In this respect, the media is like a drunk who knows he shouldn't have just one more drink, but cannot muster enough willpower to stop. NBC knew that shark attacks aren't epidemic, but the ratings draw of leading off the news with a horrific attack was just to much to resist.
This is not some oddity, but is paradigmatic of how the news media operate to spread unwarranted fears about everything from cell phones to school violence. As George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack Files summed it up, "It's a media frenzy not a [shark] feeding frenzy."
The media flit from crisis to crisis, rarely providing any sort of context, in-depth analysis, much less follow-up. This is painfully obvious by seeing how quickly poorly thought out stories about the supposed energy crisis have all but disappeared from the American media, to be replaced by equally inane stories about the shark attack crisis and Gary Condit.
Source:
Shark attacks: on the increase?. Kate McGeown, The BBC, August 20, 2001.