Menu Foods Wet Cat Food Recall

Our cat, Chia, has been sick most of the week. Yesterday my husband made the connection between the assortment of Special Kitty foods she's been eating and how lethargic and seemingly "sad" this cat has been for the past seven days. We purchase all of our Special Kitty wet and chunky cat foods at Wal-Mart.

This evening I read about the pet food recall at Menu Foods, one of North America's largest pet food producers.

The Canadian Press story by Colin Perkel reported:

"Menu Foods, one of the leading North American private-label and contract manufacturer of wet pet-food products, produced more than one billion containers last year.

It supplies its products to 17 of the top 20 retailers in North America for sale under store labels such as Master Choice, Compliments and Select and manufactures for several national brands.

The story further reported, "One dog and a "small number" of cats in the U.S. are reported to have died from kidney failure after eating the food....There had been no complaints from Canadian pet owners."

Um, excuse me! I'd like to complain about this. What are we supposed to do now? Luckily, we had some Whiskas wet, chunky food. But it has just now occurred to me that Whiskas brand may be affected, too. Unfortunately, as of the time of this post, the Menu Foods website is not accessible.

I had noticed that our cat had no energy. She always comes when we call her name. Nothing this week has been enough to inspire her to move off the sofa. On those few times when she has ventured a little further, I noticed that she was extremely uncoordinated -- she slipped off the sofa several times for no apparent reason.

What do we do now? How do we ensure that our cat will recover with no lasting side effects?

Updated March 17, 2007: The Menu Foods website is now working, and, in fact, the Special Kitty brand has more than 100 affected products. I am happy to report that the Whiskas brand is NOT made by Menu Foods. Can you guess what kind of cat food she'll be eating from now on?

I tried posting a comment to the Menu Foods website but the form is not working. Instead I sent them an email. Any chance they planning to reimburse pet owners their veterinary bills?