My cats have always been pretty healthy, and they've gotten to be thirteen years old with no major mishaps on the way.

El Nino brought in some strange stuff, though, and this summer, Fritz got some kind of skin condition that caused him first to lose most of the fur on his fluffy, fat tail, and then to develop scaling along his back, and the fur over his whole body thinned out. He wasn't very pleasant to pet any more, and he knew it.

I decided it was time to share my Super Blue Green Algae with the cats, and so I started to save a capsule just for them, sprinkling just a little bit over their food. It took a couple of days of going hungry before they accepted this new flavor. Cats are the pickiest animals in the world.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks on this diet, Fritz stopped losing hair. A couple of more weeks, and his skin stopped scaling. The algae takes a while to work: After all, it isn't some kind of antibiotic bomb that gets inside the body and traumetizes it; it's a food, albeit a power-packed food, and it works gradually and safely.

I've thought about ordering the Super Blue Green Algae Animal Food, but why rock the boat? It takes so little Algae to nourish my cats - between them, one capsule lasts for three days. If I had a dog in the house, though, I'd definitely order the Animal Food and save money. I've even read about some people who raise horses for breeding and racing, who are feeding them the SBG Algae Animal Food and are really pleased with the results.

Anyway, the end of the story is that Fritz is growing his hair back, and I can pet him without my spine crawling. From now on, they're going to eat their Super Blue Green Algae just as faithfully as I eat mine. I'd like to keep them around for a few more years. As playful and energetic as they've become in the last month, they may end up outliving me!

UPDATE 12/98: My cats have been consuming Super Blue Green Algae for about three months, now. Fritz's coat has thickened for the winter, it's glossy and soft, and he waves his plume of a tail proudly, now that he's got all his fur back.

I wanted to mention one thing, though, that I think is significant. My cats live indoors, and they use a litter box. One thing I've noticed in the last month is that the cats don't seem to be excreting a lot of ammonia in their urine any more, and that state of affairs is a relief to all of us.

I always thought that cats just naturally had that strong ammonic scent in their urine, but now I'm beginning to wonder if that hasn't actually been a result of us habitually malnourishing them. I know that when a human's urine smells ammonic, they'd better get to a doctor quick. And cats do seem to be susceptible to urinary tract infections.

Just wondering: When we feed our cats traditional cat food - even the good stuff from the pet stores - are we just slowly starving them to death?