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Day one of Tiger's kidney diet, and history
Rene wrote:
Well, there is no reason why I couldn't grind up a whole chicken and feed it to my cats. - They could do a lot worse, and the cost per pound would be significantly better than canned cat food. FYI, you need to include the organs too. Feeding cats a raw diet is a tricky things. They are obligatory carnivores and need a delicate balance of nutrients. I'd strongly suggest feeding a tested, balanced raw recipe. This great website has one: http://catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood Yes, but those, "balanced diets" are quite expensive. We have 5 cats and taking care of them gets kind of expensive. One of the reasons why we feed them chickens is that they are quite a bit cheaper than canned cat food. One chicken, roasted, costs about $5.00 and it will feed both my wife and myself, and our five cats. (5-1/2 actually....My wife started feeding another stray last week, and it showed up again yesterday, so its only a question of time before we have 6 of them) |
#12
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Day one of Tiger's kidney diet, and history
Brian Link . wrote in
: I'll explain what we're trying in a bit, but first some background. Apologies for the long post. Tiger's a 17-year old Maine-Coonish moggie (long hair, ear-tufts, tabby markings). My son picked him from a litter of farm cats. He's always been very healthy. I thought it was time for a physical, so we brought him in to our regular vet. The vet was impressed at how well he's doing - coat is very good, strong, and he's only lost one tooth, which was extracted a few years ago (he also said that cats Tiger's age usually have lost 25% of their teeth! Can that be right?). He was a little concerned that he'd lost a pound over the last 3 years. Unfortunately, our relief was followed by the results of bloodwork, which showed anemia and elevated BUN and Creatinine levels, which indicated renal failure. The vet prescribed the moderate-protein, grain-based diet which is the norm, apparently. I've recently read Elizabeth Hodgkins' book "Your Cat", which says that's backwards, and the "kidney cat" should get good quality real meat protein (wet), but with phosporous managed either by cutting the food with cooked egg whites (high protein, no phosporous) and/or the addition of phosphate binder. Tiger's always eaten Wellness wet food. There was a lot of soul-searching. Hoo-boy was there soul-searching. I called several vets, most of which echoed our vet's advice. I reached out to Facebook friends, and many reported good results with the low-protein approach. A few agreed with Dr. Hodgkins, though. So I thought, the most conservative approach is to follow the vet's advice for a while and see if he improves. If not, we go to plan B. We picked up the prescription food, and gave it to him for a few days. He bacame quite lethargic, and resumed gulping down water and barfing it back up. And wow, the farts.. His younger "brother", Louis the Bengal age 10, wouldn't touch it. I thought: "well, this must be acute kidney failure", and we should start planning for Tiger's demise. Then I posted (under google groups) here and asked for advice, and found sympathy with the good-protein, wet, no-grain strategy. Finally, I had a long conversation with a "conventional" vet who's begun to suspect conventional wisdom, and a holistic vet that thinks conventional wisdom is barbaric. The former almost teared up when he admitted that before his change of heart, he was basically starving his kidney cats to death. I also reached out to a local big cat rescue center that I trust, who said they just feed their big cats with kidney issues raw meat, with some electrolytes added to their water. What settled it was a response from an old cat advisor who saw that post and set out very forcefully that prescription diets are indeed barbaric. I trust her judgement; she's worked with a lot of cats. Also, I made the calculation that one makes with terminally ill cats: is discomfort worth a few extra months of life? As in, sure you can do chemo for a cat with cancer, but then you've got a miserable little beast that lives a little longer for your selfishness. Even if the prescription diet preserves renal function, is it worth it to have a longer-lived miserable cat? BLink I admire your persistence as well and I'm sure Tiger does too. How much does Tiger weigh? I've always heard Maine Coons are the biggest breed of cat. I can't read the rest of this thread, the grinding up of whole birds kinda makes me sick to my stomach. --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to --- |
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