I would like to preface this sharing of knowledge with telling you that I am a strong believer in the use of herbs and natural medicine. It saved my life and I still incorporate them into my daily activities. However, in the use of my beloved cats, I have had to draw a line in their usage.

First of all, when I was utilizing them in my life to help cure a disease, I was quite capable and able to moderate the dosage to the right amount. I knew what felt right and what felt like too much. I could lessen, increase and stop completely with a decision.

Our cats can’t do that as well. They can throw up, have a reaction, but for the most part, natural medicines don’t affect you in this way. So you go on, dosing and thinking you are doing the right thing for the kitten.

My story is with herb, red raspberry, and its usage in pregnancies. After hearing about it, I read up on it with everything I could find and a knowledgeable herbalist told me to start the red raspberry about midway into the pregnancy. (I could find nothing in the books and information I located which would dispute this, so I tried it.) The first pregnancy and delivery went very well, but I had started dosing fairly late into the pregnancy. Thereafter, I had four C-sections in a row, the last resulting in the loss of an entire litter. I was devastated.

In an attempt to save kittens, after all I was choosing to breed, but I didn’t feel that losing entire litters was a good choice, if you can understand, I started using a monitoring program. The person on the other end of the phone is a retired nurse who worked in human hospitals for a long time and being a breeder herself, felt the monitoring system was something breeders would need and use. In talking to her in one session, I mentioned the usage of red raspberry and thought she was going to have a heart attack.

This will show my ignorance of human functions, particularly in the birthing process. Never having a child myself, I could have cared less about how things worked. I had the basics down for my cats, but to understand the way red raspberry works I had to understand the uterine wall muscle.

Red raspberry works in that it causes the uterine wall to contract just like a normal birthing contraction (not as heavy during the actual birth and you can rarely see it, but the monitoring equipment can pick it up). This wall is a smooth muscle, and like the lungs, constant usage in a non-normal way, doesn’t cause it to get stronger. (Liken this to an asthma attack, something I’m well versed in. When a person is having an attack and straining to draw in a breath, the lungs are straining. When the attack is over, the lungs are not any stronger, just tired.) The same happens to the uterine wall. And each time there is a contraction, the blood flow stops to the kittens and this in itself causes damage in the growth process.

Along with this, by the time delivery is here, the uterus is so exhausted there is no strength for a normal delivery, hence the C-sections which are required.

Not only that, even if you started much later in giving the herb, you are not guaranteed of much of anything. Since herbs are not regulated in the way our medication is, you are not always aware of the actual strength you are getting. Nor are you able to ascertain in many instances where the herb was grown, what type of molds or fungus might be present.

Even though this is my bad experience with the usage of a herb with my cats, I believe they can be used safely, but should only be done with complete understanding of what the herb does and the correct dosage. And since your cats can’t tell you most of the time that this isn’t right, a herb should probably not be used, just like medication, until a full understanding is obtained.

My monitor nurse on the phone let me know that many breeders, cats and dogs, have had the same experience. I was hoping to put her write-up on this page instead of my own as it would be more technical, but this will have to do right now. As I learn more, I’ll be updating these pages. But you can be sure that this will be more from reading and listening than from first hand experience. My idea is to tread lightly and keep my babies as healthy as possible.

Since the usage of red raspberry has been discontinued, I have had five litters delivered without unnatural incident.