i've had 11 cats in my personal life before i adopted jericho.
so i've made plenty of mistakes and i'm still making mistakes today.
i'm not perfect i'm not an expert
everyone makes mistakes.
yes i have high standards but i'm still working my way up to those high standards.
hey friends it's jess and jericho
one of the first mistakes i've made with jericho is he burned his paw pads on the stove.
i was making tea
boiling water took the pot off the stove and when i turned around jericho jumped up on the stove
on the burner that was on high high heat.
so he scalded his paw pads. they actually the skin actually peeled off his
his paw pads are black but they turned pink because the skin peeled off.
so i had to wrap him up in gauze with some ointment and then use one of those
sticky sticky things that holds the guaze together.
oh my gosh that week was was horrible because he kept going you know like trying to get it off.
he didn't want it on and then when he would go into the box it would come off
then i'll have to put it back put it back on.
right after it happened he cried and he was holding his paw up and licking it.
ah i felt so bad and it actually happened more than once.
the second time that it happened i was so upset with myself
because like i should have covered the burner.
the like jericho's always up on the counters. he's always in the kitchen.
he's gonna go to school soon. i'm gonna train him and i'll make the video about that later.
but yeah the second time that happened i was so upset.
i grabbed jericho i was crying we're sitting on the couch and you know i was just i felt so bad.
and i felt so upset with myself because i'm like how did i let this happen again.
and i was crying and holding him and saying like i'm so sorry i'm so sorry.
and i was looking into his eyes and i just felt so much sorrow.
i felt so bad and so disappointed in myself for letting this happen again.
and i was looking into his eyes and then all of a sudden he started licking my hand.
he's like oh okay maybe that's his way of telling me like it's okay you know what shh happens.
so now what i do is i put up a gate in the kitchen that way i can hear jericho coming.
and i also cover the burners after i use them.
put up a note on the wall that says cover burner.
the next mistake that i made with jericho is leaving my my sponge out my dish cloth out.
he chewed it up and then yacked it up.
you know like i mentioned jericho's always on the kitchen counter he's always snooping around.
he's a street cat so he's always trying to get into something he's
always going dumpster diving in the garbage.
so we have to put all the garbage in the refrigerator until we can take it to the chute.
so now i keep the dish cloths behind
the cabinet and again i put a note on the kitchen counter that says put sponge away.
another mistake i made with jericho is he's had an ear infection since i adopted him in 2017.
so originally i asked the vet you know his ears are dirty what's going on.
she looked and said oh it's probably just because he lived outside.
and then i did more research and found out
the vet should take a sample of the debris to find out what it is.
because ear mites and ear infections cause the same like dirty waxy substance in the ears.
so you have to take the debris look under a microscope to see what it actually is.
and the lesson here isn't you know disregard what your vet says.
the lesson here is be prepared before the appointment you know do your research
ask a lot of questions.
because like i said she didn't even take a sample.
later with my other vet i took a sample and she
confirmed it was bacteria and yeast that was in the ears.
and it's causing him a lot of scratching and itching.
so again do your research and maybe even get a second opinion
if you think that you know something sounds off.
and going off of that mistake with with
ear infection overall jericho's scratching and itching all the time.
originally i thought it might be a food allergy because he was eating
chicken and turkey for a very long period of time.
so that's why i transitioned him to mouse earlier this year tested for the food allergy.
fed only ground mouse no supplements no treats nothing else.
literally just the ground mouse and when you test for a food allergy you do that
you feed only that protein for three months at least.
you know that way the old stuff can get out of the
system and you can actually test to see if it is a food allergy.
jericho's still super itchy so i think that it's because of the environment.
i live in an apartment building with a lot of people.
sometimes i can smell cigarette smoke inside
so i don't know if it's coming from outside or if the neighbors are smoking.
we also share our apartment with cockroaches unfortunately.
so no matter how much i clean no matter how much i keep
food in the refrigerator and not out and about
it's we still have this problem.
there's just so many people that live in this building.
the garbage room is always a mess.
so for now i clean as much as i can
and then we're gonna save money and move to a nicer building when we can.
the next mistake i made with jericho is ignoring his dental care.
jericho still to this day it's 2021
he has plaque and tartar on his teeth he has angry red inflamed gums.
he actually lost two of his incisors those are the baby teeth on the top.
i don't know if that's because of the dental issue
or if it's because he's very rambunctious when he plays.
and those teeth are very small so any type of trauma can knock them out.
he's ran into my leg before while we were playing.
he's also knocked his face on the corner of the coffee table.
so all of these mistakes are leading to his dental issues and i'm still working on them today.
i don't know i'm just scared to put him under to get dental work done.
if you've done this with your cat please tell me in the comments what the experience was like.
you know how your cat healed and were there any negative side effects from the anesthesia.
i've read good and bad things so i'm just really nervous.
and of course this is another mistake, this is another fault that i have.
you know i'm just i'm just scared to do it.
the next mistake that i made with jericho was he was overweight and then he was underweight.
so i wasn't weighing him i was
kind of all over the place with the amount of food that he was eating.
and since i wasn't weighing him regularly i didn't realize that he was underweight
until he started doing weird things.
weird behaviors that he's never done before.
so one of the weird behaviors was sleeping under the covers.
jericho sleeps in bed with me every single day.
he naps with me and he also sleeps with me and cuddles you know on
on the pillow next to me or he'll settle in like right in between here.
he's always on top of the covers.
but he started going under the covers and it wasn't even cold.
so i was like that's really strange he's never done that before.
and then he also ate one of his litter clumps.
and i was like okay this is this is extremely bizarre why would he do that.
so i look online and some cats may eat clumps of litter because they're
malnourished they're missing some nutrients.
instinctively they know that some of their waste contains nutrients so they would go and eat that.
another version of eating non-food items would be
pica which is stress related or it could be nutrition related.
there's a lot of different things.
but what i did for jericho was weighed him and saw that he was underweight.
so then i adjusted his food amount.
and now i weigh him every single week right before i portion out his food.
that way if he's losing a little weight then i know i should make his meals a little bit bigger.
and another mistake that i made with jericho is switching his food too quickly.
when i first started feeding raw to jericho it was a company called rad cat.
and unfortunately they had a recall and
i personally feel that the fda bullied them into this.
but they had a recall and then they expanded that recall and it ended up being too much money.
and the business they they had to say goodbye to the business.
so i was sol so to say.
i went to the store bought out everything that i could.
but then i had to find a new company and i didn't have enough food to do the transition properly.
so i had to switch cold turkey so to say.
and jericho got crystals because of it and he had diarrhea because of it.
so whenever you're changing your cat's food do so gradually.
and the other lesson here is don't rely on one company.
because we have no idea what's gonna happen. we don't know if it's gonna be out of stock.
we don't know if they're just gonna stop making that flavor.
sometimes companies change the ingredients they change the formula
and aafco gives them six months before they have to change the label.
so all these things could happen without you knowing.
and then all of a sudden you're stuck and you have to buy new food that your cat's never had before.
then you're gonna switch cold turkey and that can cause digestion issues.
so yeah i've made a lot of mistakes i'm still making them today.
the lesson again is we're human we're gonna make mistakes.
a lot of you say to me i feel so guilty i feel like i killed
my cat because i had no idea about quality of the cat food.
it's not your fault.
i made those same mistakes.
like i said i had 11 cats in my personal life before i had jericho.
and all of them ate dry all of them ate crappy food all of them had serious health issues.
and my mom and i had no idea why.
it wasn't until i started working with cats professionally like
hundreds of cats that i realized something's going on.
because my cats were different breeds, different ages.
we adopted some we bought some from breeders.
kind of all over the place mixture.
and then the same when i started working with cats professionally.
again hundreds of cats.
so cats of all breeds, all ages, all sizes, all different backgrounds.
some were adopted from the street, some were adopted from a neighbor,
some were adopted from the shelter, some you know were purchased from a breeder.
so it's like big variety of cats from all different backgrounds.
and the ones who required medication or had special needs were eating low quality food.
if you think about it we are what we eat.
but it still took me a long time to realize and even my mom it took
us a long time to make that change.
and no one's expecting you to make this change overnight.
cats are creatures of habit they don't like
changes they get stressed very easily with changes.
just try to do better and better every day that's it.
and do what works for you.
you don't have to be perfect no one's perfect i'm not perfect i'm not an expert.
i'm learning as i go.
yes i have more experience with more cats, my interest in education is on cats.
you know nutrition, aafco labels, training, and behavior.
but i'm still learning every day and i'm working towards those high standards.
just get you know one percent better every day that's what that's what most people say.
what mistakes have you made? let me know in the comments below so we can learn from each other.
thanks for watching!