I thought my cat would be healthy

[evenifigoalone]

Well. Early stages of kidney failure. Found out when I had him get a blood panel to check for onion toxins. (Onions are toxic to dogs and cats.)
My future is one of vet bills.

Well, I doubt this would have been caught at the yearly checkup since they don't do blood panels then. So probably good that this scare happened, better to find out about these things as early on as possible.

 

[reba]

our cat almost died.. 5 days 4 nights in the hospital. urinary track failure of some sort he has eaten nothing sense 2006 but
food for urinary problems.. he is doing fine.. DH was having fun feeding him Wiskers treats and they were way to much for Sparky .. He gets nothing but the prescribed food

 

[littlemr]

I had a cat that saved my life once, a neighbours dog was going to attack me at my mail box and my families cat went mental. That dog left me alone after that, and everyone talked about it for years.

 

[Angel]

Sorry to hear that.
Will pray.

 

[evenifigoalone]

Reading up on diet options. While at the vet I bought the K/D food. I want to know if there are other options out there, especially being that cats have more need for a carnivorous diet than dogs do. Also trying wondering what treats or snacks I can and cannot feed, should have asked the vet when I was there.

Apparently a common problem is that cats can be really picky and may not eat the food they are prescribed. But their body will digest their own muscles if they don't eat, so it's important that they eat something even if it's not the prescription.
My cats seems to be willing to eat anything, though.

 

[Eugene]

I had a cat that saved my life once, a neighbours dog was going to attack me at my mail box and my families cat went mental. That dog left me alone after that, and everyone talked about it for years.

Was this your youtube?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/15/cat-saves-boy-from-dog-attack-video

 

[Obadiah]

Reading up on diet options. While at the vet I bought the K/D food. I want to know if there are other options out there, especially being that cats have more need for a carnivorous diet than dogs do. Also trying wondering what treats or snacks I can and cannot feed, should have asked the vet when I was there.

Apparently a common problem is that cats can be really picky and may not eat the food they are prescribed. But their body will digest their own muscles if they don't eat, so it's important that they eat something even if it's not the prescription.
My cats seems to be willing to eat anything, though.

Research on the internet into natural raw meat cat food. (Look for the sites that tell you how to make it properly, not the fearmongering sites that will try to scare you back to the commercial pet food companies.) Almost all the commercial pet food is just trash and is killing out pets. That is unless your willing to buy the absolute healthiest brands and pay more for your cat's food than you do for your own! There's a lot of info on how to make your own and what needs to be added to it for their health.

My cat was diagnosed with kidney failure when he was 16 and all the vet could say was "When you're ready, bring him in (to be put to sleep)! That's when I found a holistic vet who told me about how it's the commercial pet food the destroys their organs and shortens their life, and told me about the natural raw meat diets. He went on from a death sentence to live for another two years. I wished I'd known about this from when he was a kitten!

 

[evenifigoalone]

I actually fed my dogs raw for years, until more recently when we had fewer options due to availability and decreasing income. I fed my cat raw meats before, just not as a staple of his diet. (These days the dog gets a brand from the pet store (Taste of the Wild or a similar brand) and the cat gets wet food. Wet food because cats don't have much of a thirst drive and need water in their food, and also because it tends to use more meat and less carbs than dry.)
I'm not very happy with the prescription diet looking at the ingredients, it's so carbohydrate heavy and it's meat is mostly by products. But I also don't want to go with a diet that has the things he's supposed to be avoiding.

From what I'm getting, considering he's been on a diet of wet food, it doesn't sound like this is the result of dehydration, so I have to wonder what did bring this on.

 

[littlemr]

Was this your youtube?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/15/cat-saves-boy-from-dog-attack-video

Nah, it happened in the 80's bro.

Weird.

 

[evenifigoalone]

I actually fed my dogs raw for years, until more recently when we had fewer options due to availability and decreasing income. I fed my cat raw meats before, just not as a staple of his diet. (These days the dog gets a brand from the pet store (Taste of the Wild or a similar brand) and the cat gets wet food. Wet food because cats don't have much of a thirst drive and need water in their food, and also because it tends to use more meat and less carbs than dry.)
I'm not very happy with the prescription diet looking at the ingredients, it's so carbohydrate heavy and it's meat is mostly by products. But I also don't want to go with a diet that has the things he's supposed to be avoiding.

From what I'm getting, considering he's been on a diet of wet food, it doesn't sound like this is the result of dehydration, so I have to wonder what did bring this on.

I will see if we can start doing partial raw again.
What the vet specifically said was his diet needs to be low in sodium. Other sources online say that the diet should be low in phosphorus too. (I'm still reading up.) Sometimes there is a protein restriction as well, but that is more debated and sources are saying it's not really needed in earlier stages anyway.

 

[evenifigoalone]

One raw meal that is easy and cheap is buying frozen feeder mice from the pet store. I don't think I can just buy them in bulk, though. lol They sometimes don't have more than two or three frozen, most of them are live. (Because the feeder mice are usually for snakes and stuff, and snakes won't always eat prey that is already dead.)

 

[Obadiah]

Yeah, sounds like you've already learned about all that. It might be cheaper to go back to the raw meat diet than to pay for all that questionable and expensive prescription food and vet visits. Healthier too. When they put "meat byproducts" on the label, they might as well just put "poison".

 

[evenifigoalone]

Kitty is only just barely three years old, kidney problems usually come when they're a little older. I wonder if it may be somewhat genetic here. It's not like I know anything about his family history, though. I knew his mother enough to spot similarities in their personalities, that's about it.

 

[Obadiah]

One raw meal that is easy and cheap is buying frozen feeder mice from the pet store. I don't think I can just buy them in bulk, though. lol They sometimes don't have more than two or three frozen, most of them are live. (Because the feeder mice are usually for snakes and stuff, and snakes won't always eat prey that is already dead.)

I stuck mainly to chicken, beef, and some fish. I ground it up by running it through a sausage grinder 3 times. I ground up the chicken bones and all because there is a lot of nutrients in the bones that they need. When a wild cats eats it's prey if the bones are small enough (like in a mouse) they eat them too because they need them. Also, beef in one of the few things with taurine. They need taurine, but if you cook it, it destroys the taurine.

I found as long as I bought the meats in bulk at a place like Costco it was cheaper than the good quality cat food, and much cheaper then the prescription stuff.

 

[evenifigoalone]

One reason I never went full raw with Oreo (my cat, and yes I wish we had come up with a better name) was because of concerns I wouldn't be able to provide enough taurine. I think it's mostly in beef heart, right? Beef heart isn't something we're able to get much around here.

 

[Obadiah]

One reason I never went full raw with Oreo (my cat, and yes I wish we had come up with a better name) was because of concerns I wouldn't be able to provide enough taurine. I think it's mostly in beef heart, right? Beef heart isn't something we're able to get much around here.

My understanding is that it's in all red meat, but there is more of it in beef hearts. You can also buy taurine supplements. I've also mixed in some regular cat food that has the taurine supplement in it already. That's not really the best way, but I've been a little lazy. It's still a lot better than eating 100% commercial cat food though.

I think Oreo's a cool name for a cat!

 

[evenifigoalone]

I asked my mom if she thought that raw might be cheaper than buying the prescription diet. It was $40 for a case of 24 cans. He eats one can a day. The thing is I would want to do partial raw at least at first, so that complicates things for price.

It's just that everyone names their black and white cats Oreo lol.
Here's a baby picture:
View attachment 8544

 

[Obadiah]

Yeah, everything I read recommended partially changing at first and slowly increasing the amount of new food over time, whether it be raw or something else. I noticed my cat started eating less too, and I was worried he didn't like it. But in researching more it seems they eat less because they are getting so much more nutrition from it that they don't need to eat as much!

But whatever you do for him, I sure hope Oreo gets better.

 

[Angel]

awwwww hes so cute!

 

[evenifigoalone]

Okay, I've asked someone to give me a ride to the pet store this Friday. I know they sell some frozen raw foods and some similar stuff. Probably out of my price range, but it can't hurt to look. Besides, I def. want to buy feeder mice anyways. I will probably start doing that more often now. Whole prey meals are as balanced as you can get. (Though I wouldn't feed whole mice exclusively, variety is important and also I'd think a little more meat would be important as there'd be a high percentage of bones and other non-meat material.)

I'm not sure full raw would be doable. Another reason I stopped doing raw was that organs other than liver became a lot more scarce and were hardly ever at the stores anymore. That said, with the cat, buying a thing of livers and a large package of some other secreting organ (when available) would go quite a long ways since he's very small and those organs would only make up 10% of his diet. So maybe we could make it work.
Would have to buy smaller stuff. (Don't have a sausage grinder, and the cat isn't as capable of crunching things down as my little dog is.)
If we had to buy supplements, not sure how much that would cost or how often they would need to be replaced. I already buy two long term medications for my dog, and I still have to be able to pay for their upcoming shots and yearly exams.