Good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year!

I’m so sorry about how I left things in early December. I meant to tell you I was taking a hiatus from the site for the holidays, but both work and home suddenly got super intense and I simply stopped posting, and left you all hanging. Totally uncool, I know. I truly hope every one of you had a beautiful Holiday, full of the joy of family and friends, good food, and of course, happy cats!  🙂

The kitties and I had a wonderful Christmas this year, the best we’ve had in a long while. The cats even received some gifts in the mail from CatCentric readers, which was totally unexpected and very touching. You guys rock!

This is Ralph and Allen enjoying their gifts…

I have some pretty exciting plans for CatCentric in 2016. The site received a complete overhaul a few months ago, making it fully mobile friendly (but still, I hope, easy to navigate), and three awesome articles, by three different authors, were added in November and December:

Probiotics for Cats: Why, Which Ones and How to Use them.

Transition Guide: Making the switch to ground raw.

Sudden over-grooming and twitching skin? Let’s talk about FHS: Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome.

I also added a section called “1-Page Guides”, and a handful of guides have already been published, including a pretty nifty Cat Food Pyramid infographic. I have several more on the drawing board, many on behavior. You can expect to seem them trickling out over the next few months.

There is – has been, really – a massive shift happening around how we feed and care for our cats. Pet owners worldwide are demanding more transparency and accountability from the pet food industry. In the U.S., pet food manufactures will have to comply with new regulations this year, including the animal feed preventive control and foreign supplier verification program rules under the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), as well as the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) requirements for calorie content statements on nearly all dog and cat food labels.

Speaking of which, AAFCO’s mid-year meetings take place just under two weeks from today. Mark your calendars and plan to attend via phone! (More on that next week.)

In addition to caring about what’s in their food, cat owners are also paying more attention to what cats need in their environment; what makes them happy, what stresses them out, what their curious little antics really mean. This has led to a happy increase in the popularity of feline behaviorists, such as Jackson Galaxy and Pam Johnson-Bennett, as well as new words and concepts. Catification, for instance! (Use the search feature if you haven’t heard of it. 🙂 )

CatCentric has pretty thoroughly explored feline nutrition and provides quite a few tools for creating and transitioning cats to a balanced fresh diet, so this year, I’m shifting the focus a bit and the site will begin discussing feline behavior in more detail. I intend to cover all the basics, from litter boxes to aggression to introductions, and more. The better cat owners can understand and accommodate their beloved kitties, the happier both cats and owners will be (and, not incidentally, the fewer cats will be relinquished to shelters).

I say, strap in, folks! I see some pretty cool things happening this year. I hope you’ll stay with me for the ride!  🙂

 

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