Renowned author and consumer advocate Tracie Hotchner, author of The Cat Bible and host of Cat Talk Radio, recently shocked her loyal audience by recommending a dry cat food: Halo Spot’s Stew. Just to be clear, Tracie (who is also known for The Dog Bible, Dog Talk Radio, and her appearances on Oprah), is an outspoken advocate of wet food for cats, and she’s long been a fan of Halo Spot’s Stew cans for cats, and Halo kibble for dogs. Certainly, none of that has changed.

But a series of earnest inquires from her loyal followers led Tracie to the conclusion that some cat lovers must feed dry food. And when that’s the case, she felt she owed it to her audience to make a recommendation. In her own words, “if circumstances require dry food, it’s time I told you what you’ve been waiting for: which dry food is best?”

I’ll quote Tracie at length:

“I have recently been singing the praises of Halo’s Spot’s Stew. In fact, for the first time I have chosen it as the DOG food kibble that is head and shoulders above the others and which I am now feeding to my dogs as part of their daily meals. And the reason for the tap of the “Tracie Wand” is all about ingredients. For dogs we want a kibble made with the cleanest possible ingredients and with as high a protein content as possible – with cats this goes double, since their digestive systems are not designed for carbohydrates and they need real meat. Well that is what makes Halo’s Spot’s Stew in a class by itself. … Halo uses only meat that is “fit for human consumption” in their foods. Halo has made a moral decision that they will only use meat that people could eat…”

We’ve long been honored that Tracie Hotchner recommends Halo, and have recently become proud sponsors of her hugely informative web site. But this is an honor that we never expected. Thank you as always, Tracie, for helping consumer read (and understand) ingredients to make the best choices for their pets!

Read the whole story here on Tracie Hotchner’s blog.

Q: I purchased 3 large packages of your dry cat food that says it is for indoor cats, sensitive stomachs etc. I have noticed that my cats throw up more often than when they were on other brands of cat food. Your ingredients seem so much better for them. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jean

A: Hi Jean,
Thanks for trying Halo. Even the highest quality food can cause digestive upset if it is introduced too quickly and cats are notorious for stomach upset with food changes. This happens because the bacteria and enzymes within the digestive system have to adapt to the new food in order to properly digest it. If you have been feeding the new food for less than 2 weeks, be patient, the problem may resolve itself. In general, for patients with sensitive stomachs I recommend the following diet transition:

Day 1, 2, 3, 4 – 75% old food, 25% Halo food
Day 5, 6, 7, 8 – 50% old food, 50% Halo food
Day 9, 10, 11, 12 – 25% old food, 75% Halo food
Day 13 and on – 100% Halo food

The other possibility is binge eating. Often when cats are switched to a superior food, it tastes better than some of the foods they were previously eating and so they binge at the bowl! This over-eating is often a problem with cats that are free fed (have access to food throughout the day) and can definitely lead to vomiting. I recommend placing small portions of food out two to three times daily to cut down on this problem.

If the vomiting persists, please see your veterinarian as there may be another cause.

Hope that helps.
Keep us posted.
Dr. Donna Spector

We especially love when consumers are the judges, which is the case for the Zootoo.com Pet Lover Choice Awards. We’re proud that Halo Spot’s Stew for cats was named “the best of the best in the pet world as chosen by hundreds of thousands of pet lovers in the Zootoo.com community.”

Halo’s won a number of awards recently, and I’ve been slow to fill y’all in on them. But more soon, I promise! Meanwhile, here’s where you can learn more about our holistic, natural cat food.

In late 2008, Cathy DiMatteo was browsing the aisles of Whole Foods in Princeton, New Jersey. An owner of three dogs, she mistakenly picked up a can of Spot’s Stew for cats. “When I placed it back on the shelf, a man standing there with a clip-board said ‘Excuse me, can you tell me why you put that can back?” recalls DiMatteo, who told the man she was looking for Halo dog food. “And the man said, ‘I’ll help you find it.’”

The man turned out to be Alan Kerzner, Halo’s president, visiting the store with other Halo employees. During this chance meeting, DiMatteo told Kerzner she was a volunteer at Sayreville Pet Adoption Center, a no-kill animal shelter in Sayreville, N.J. She told him that the center was always in need of food, and that when volunteers brought in cans of Halo, the cats went wild.

Kerzner, impressed that people were donating Halo, decided to make a much larger gift: Soon after that fortuitous meeting, Halo donated 100 cases of dog and 300 cases of cat Spot’s Stew to the shelter. “As animal lovers it makes us feel great,” Kerzner says. “It’s good to help any animal, and especially gratifying to help those in need.”

Barbara Keegan, director of the shelter, was ecstatic when a truck pulled into the shelter driveway. “That was such a blessing they gave us that food, beyond belief,” she says. “This is over and above anything we’ve ever been given.”

This good fortune for Sayreville almost didn’t happen. DiMatteo planned on shopping earlier in the day but a stroke of luck put her in the aisle with Kerzner. “It would have never have crossed my mind he was so high up in the company,” says DiMatteo, noting Kerzner never told her he was Halo’s president. “He was so down to earth.”

Sayreville, a privately-owned shelter, is completely dependent upon donations; one of its biggest expenses is for food at over $10,000 annually for the approximately 25 dogs and 170 cats that are there at one time. “So far this year,” says Keegan, “we haven’t had to spend a cent on food, which is awesome.”

When the cases of Spot’s Stew arrived in late January, so did a homeless American bulldog that the shelter staffers named Halo. “We really wanted to honor the company,” Keegan says. “And he was the number one lover of the Halo food.”

DiMatteo says that the shelter’s normally noisy cats now quiet down when it’s feeding time. “It’s so funny,” says DiMatteo, “everyone shuts up and eats. The cats are in heaven with the Spot’s Stew.”

The Halo donation has helped Sayreville care for what Keegan notices is a tremendous rise in homeless pets. “It’s very bad, especially now,” Keegan says. “We’re seeing more abandoned pets, animals being found in parking lots, animals that were clearly someone’s pets.” Why? “Because of the economy,” says Keegan, who has seen a spike in owners whose homes have gone into foreclosure come in to give away their pets. “It’s horrendous.”

Still, at least these strays will be well fed. One top feline aficionado of Spot’s Stew is Big Boy, a toothless Siamese mix cat with feline AIDS. Says Keegan: “He has no teeth left but he loves the Halo.”

Dr. Spector Answers Readers’ Letters: Dr. Spector Reveals Inside Scoop on Pet Food

Q: I think the author has confused meat meal with meat by-product meal.

A: Sorry for any confusion.

By-products are the clean non-rendered parts other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but it not limited to lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, blood, bone, fatty tissue and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents.

I had stated that meat meal is “by-products that are cooked, pressed, dried and added to food.” I can see why the terminology I used may seem a little confusing. I was just trying to give the average consumer some easy definitions of by-products and meals. Meat meal is the rendered “parts,” other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals, whereas if meat meal is cooked and the meat fat is removed, the remaining material is extruded to form meat by-product meal.