🐈 FIELD GUIDE 26: Kitty Cat Chronicles

I left you in July unsure of where we were going to find our next writers. Turns out, our next writers are right here. You may find me popping up in your inbox personally, don’t be alarmed. I want to learn about you!

We start the new season of FIELD GUIDE with someone that has written for us several times. She’s our favorite cook, Katerina. But today, she’s sharing something a bit more personal. Joining her is her feline companion, Psipsina.

It’s amazing how sometimes animals know what we need before we do. Psipsina did just that for Katerina.

—Skyler

Name

Katerina Pavlakis

Habitat

Wales

Occupation

The Intuitive Cook & cat mom

Soundtrack

(Spotify)

Thirteen years ago (pretty much to the day) a little stray cat knocked at my door.

Actually, it was more dramatic than that.

She was howling outside my window and pawing at the glass in the middle of the night. It woke me up enough to think, “This is strange,” only to realise that she was now climbing in through the open bit at the top.

I was now wide awake - what the heck?! I got up and started looking for the cat who seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Then I pulled out one of my under-bed drawers... and there she was: staring at me, shielding 3 newborn kittens with her body. Oops! Jeez! And now what?!

I decided to leave her be for now and go back to bed. I would think about what to do in the morning...

I wasn't looking for a cat, but she didn't give me a choice: she made it clear that she came to stay.

I started buying cat food. I learned to interpret her different voices: one for communicating with me, another for talking to her babies. I found myself spending time just watching the kittens play. I started buying better cat food. Another 4 weeks and I had a cat flap installed: the cat family was slowly, surely, inevitably becoming part of my life.

In fact, I started rearranging my life around the cats.

Everything started going through the cat filter: Did I want to do this, or that, or would I rather hang out at home with the cats? Was a certain person or activity really worth my time, compared to the pleasure I got from just hanging out at home with the cats.

I started making different choices, having different priorities, following different interests, looking at people differently.

In many ways, I was reconnecting to myself. Reconnecting to that kid that grew up enjoying the company of animals. In fact, I always wanted to work with animals. But I didn't know how, and for the past 20 years my life didn't even have space for pets. I actually actively avoided getting close to animals, even other people's pets, subconsciously fearing I might loose my heart to them.

That cat literally changed my life.

She also made me see the world differently.

And that was because of cat food.

Obviously I started buying cat food: cats eat cat food. And my cat family was hungry.

3 months later and the cat gets ill (that's another story). It's the weekend, I'm worried and the vets are closed. So I frantically search for answers on the net. And here, rather accidentally, I stumble on the concept of 'raw feeding' for carnivore pets. Like cats, who were designed to eat critters, not pellets.

Now that I'm reading this, it seems totally, utterly obvious.

The realisation hits me like a ton of bricks. I am shocked that it NEVER EVER occurred to me: Cats don't eat 'cat food'. They eat meat (and bones and skin and feathers).

It just never crossed my mind that cats could be fed anything else than that nicely packaged stuff, featuring happy cat photos, specially made for cats, in approved cat factories and formulated by cat experts.

Even less did it occur to me to check the ingredient list on the 'best' cat food I was now buying. Do cats really eat 'dried poultry protein', soya meal and maize grits?

I was shocked to realise that I had been brainwashed by the cat food industry, selling me their product as the 'correct' way to feed my cat, without any regard whatsoever to the cat's biology.

And then, how brainwashed was I about my own food? About what my body really needed and what 'products' I was made to believe were so much 'better'.

This was the moment the blinders came off. I went out and bought the cat some chicken wings. We never looked back.

And I started reading the ingredient labels on my own food too.

I began questioning EVERYTHING, even the things that seemed 'obvious'.

As I was feeding my cat more consciously, I started feeding myself better too. And that brought about another lot of changes.

Then…the dog came, then my soul mate appeared, then we left London and moved to Wales, then the sheep and then donkeys came, then we opened a food shop, then I found purpose in teaching people cooking more intuitively...

All because of a cat.