Crunch time

It's crunch time around here in more ways than one...

This weekend, I've notice that our male kitty Chester Pete has not only gained a fair bit of weight, but he has also started limping again (he has thickening from osteoarthritis in one knee). He's already on a glucosamine supplement, but the years of crappy kibble and his voracious appetite have left him yet again overweight, in pain, and with a fairly poor coat quality.

So we have now, several years after beginning the journey, moved on to step 3 of the cats' transition to raw-- step 4 maybe? I don't know. First we got them on decent kibble, but that didn't last all that long. Then we got them on scheduled feedings, and my god that took some time. Five cats can be tough to feed all at once and individually when you have a couple who are picky pants and couple who will eat everybody's food all at once. Then we got them eating a mix of kibble and wet food.

Now we are moving to all wet food. Chester has made this transition pretty much immediately. However, because he's had a history of urinary crystals and a blockage, we will continue using the Health Meter litter in the litter box that he uses most often. Fingers crossed that we can someday make the switch totally to raw.

For the dogs, it is finally crunch time in a much more literal way. I bought a case of turkey necks and good god they're huge (and kind of obscene!). I ground about 1/4-1/3 of the case-- the grinder had a bit of a hard time. I had to frequently reverse it. But it did ok.

Then I took one giganto neck and took each dog outside individually and held it while they had a chance to gnaw on the thing. Everyone was thrilled. It took Andre a little while to figure out that he could chew it and not just lick it. And Luna was an absolute bitch when she came back inside, her resource guarding shit-headness coming out in full force-- a reminder of why they have to be fed separately and these chew times minded with caution. Then everyone had a boneless meal.

At any rate, I will be making a point of doing this once or twice a week for the teeth benefits and to give everyone some one-on-one time away from the others.

I've taken a round of "before" pics of everyone's teeth. None of them are horrible, but they all have some plaque and some redness at the gum line. And some have smellier breath than others. Here goes nothing.

Luna

River

Andre

Robin

Senior Day at the homestead

Today, since I am off work, I finally had time to take Chester in for some blood work. Before I make such a radical diet change, I wanted to be sure that he didn't have any chronic illness that might need to be dealt with delicately in terms of his diet-- things like kidney or liver disease, or diabetes. He is 10 or 11 years old, which isn't exactly geriatric for a cat, but it's certainly a point where it's a good idea to be aware of common chronic illness and to have a baseline against which to compare future tests. 

The vet did agree that he had some muscle loss in the back end, and he has lost weight, despite still looking huge. And as I mentioned a few days ago, his coat is greasy, coarse and thin. 

He was less than happy about the blood draw, but he hung in there. 

And everything looked perfect. We decided to hold off on a thyroid panel for now, and instead we will try increasing his protein--moisture rich protein, meaning an all canned, low-carb or carb-free, diet, or raw. This vet is newer at the clinic, but she didn't give me any grief about the diet change. 

I will still be monitoring his urine pH using the color-change litter as we move forward.

Now on the canine side of the family, River has been mopey lately. She's seemed uncomfortable, reluctant to come up the stairs or to jump on the bed; she's been clingy and needy. Her coat is a bit dry and dandruffy. She has some arthritis in a front leg, and she has some scar tissue from a puncture wound on her hip, so she already gets high dose glucosamine  and chondroitin, MSM, and salmon oil. 

For River, we discussed potential thyroid problems (she also has a hard time losing weight), and possible increased pain from the arthritis. We have decided to hold off on the thyroid panel for her, as well, and will opt to ramp up arthritis treatment with Adequan injections. Adequan is similar to glucosamine, as I understand it; it is another building block for joint health. You do a 2week, 4 injection loading dose, and follow with, usually, once monthly injections thereafter. 

When our old man, a lab mix Simon, took these treatments, it was miraculous. He would begin the day unable to stand in one place long enough to eat breakfast, and end it running to greet me at the door. He began by getting the shots every 6-8 weeks, but eventually took them every 2 weeks. I feel that they were the single most important piece of his treatment puzzle and helped him live happily to 16 years old. Tramadol (Ultram) was the second most important. Neither of those treatments have many side effects. Simon had some nausea with the Adequan and some constipation with the Tramadol, but those were short-lived and worth the benefits. Since Tramadol is, despite it's safety, still a synthetic narcotic, I'm starting with the nutraceutical before the pharmaceutical. 

So far, it looks like River is having some nausea, maybe, but she still enjoyed her outing with me this morning. So she gets to rest all afternoon. She's earned it. It's sort of strange for me, though. I still think of her as our young, Emo, drama queen pup. She's also 9 or 10, and her body is telling me that she's older than I want to believe she is. So here's hoping we're starting these interventions early enough. It's one regret I had with Simon-- that I waited too long to give him the quality of life he could have enjoyed sooner. You live and learn, though. And that's what we're doing.

Kitty Konfession

This morning, I am curled up on the couch as I am every morning, drinking my coffee. And since it's the weekend-- the last weekend day before I go back to work after the holidays-- the black dogs have toy time... And Chester Pete is perched up here on the couch with me.

And here is where I make my confession. 

My cats eat crap. There. I said it. They eat crap. 

Years ago, I got them to eat good dry kibble. Grain free, high protein, and high calorie. But somewhere along the line, Big Pete here became overweight and developed osteoarthritis in one of his knees. And he's not that old. So we put everyone on scheduled feelings, which meant adding canned food to entice eating in one sitting. That took a long time. And the only canned food that they loved was Soulistics, which is basically Weruva rebranded for Petco. Unfortunately, it's high in fish. 

Back then, I didn't know anything about struvite crystals. In dogs, they are primarily a result of a urinary tract infection; in cats, it's much more tied to diet (tuna=bad) and other factors that increase the likelihood of having them. Like being overweight. 

One day, my chow hound Chester stopped eating. Just stopped. I don't know what made me think to do this, but I locked him in a room by himself with a litter box and food. I enticed him to drink some water (by adding broth) and after a while, I realized he wasn't peeing. He would sit in the box and nothing would happen.

So off to the vet we went. Where I found out that crystals in male cats are serious business. His urinary tract had completely blocked and he was backing up. They put in a catheter, flushed his bladder, dislodged the crystals and mucus, and sent him home with an open catheter and special food. 

Let me say that again. An open. catheter. 

He was dripping bloody pee for a full week, on a steady drip. He ate crystal dissolving food and then went onto a maintenance prescription food. I read a lot of info about raw and while I felt in my head it would be the best thing for him, my nervous temperament doesn't want to rock the boat on a life threatening condition. 

Then 2 of the other cats (females) developed crystals, so we switched them to the Rx food and added Fancy Feast classic food. It's surprisingly, basically, grain free, low carb, high protein, high calorie. We tried every single other good food with no luck. And then my picky allergy grazer Birdie went on strike. We'd kept her on high quality kibble since she did so much better on it, but she stopped wanting it. So she now gets Royal Canin sensitive stomach formula and Fancy Feast. Her coat isn't nice, but she's not throwing up.

Eventually, I became of the opinion that the stress of trying to force them to eat "good" food was worse for them than the bad food. And I'm still of that opinion. 

So that brings me back to today. Chester is sitting here with me, and I'm petting him. He's still overweight, though less than he used to be. Thing is, I feed him as little as I can. And he's fat, but I can feel his backbone. He had an arthritis flare up a while back. His coat is greasy and coarse at the same time. He's losing muscle mass, retaining fat, and not gettingt he right nutrition for his coat. I won't go into how crappy the ingredients of that dry food is, but 

I think it's time. He's only 11-- our oldest cat is 17or 18. Monitoring urine is more difficult with cats, but they make the special litter for that. I can isolate him with that litter periodically to check. 

Today, I order the good grinder. I'll go back to the catinfo.org website and revisit the needs for cats, as they are different and more restrictive. I won't push it if they get stressed. Or if I get too stressed. 

They're all eating and doing well, so I hate to screw that up. But it's time. 

We'll do whatever works...

That cute little pink nose.

It used to be black. A total black crust of snot. Birdie wheezed and sneezed and snarffled and snuffled and snotted all. the. time. Even after all the vomiting had stopped. She also had a patchy, dry, dandruffy coat. She reacted to most topical flea treatments.

At that point, I thought, "Well hell. Getting rid of corn stopped the vomiting. I wonder what losing the rest of the grains would do?"

I assumed their coats would improve. And we got that. But we got so much more.

One day, I suddenly realized that Birdie wasn't snot-filled, and lo and behold, she had a pink nose. That "chronic respiratory infection" that she would never be able to shake, according to the vet, was gone.

Since then, she's been fine. Perfect. She has so far been fine with every totally grain-free food we've tried-- Pinnacle, Merrick, Solid Gold... And she has gone back to snotty and awful within a couple of days on any other foods with grain, even the "high-quality" ones, except Wellness Salmon. The rice and barley seem to treat her fine, so I suppose it's not a totally across the board grain-related issue. We've never done a dedicated food trial with her because just finding something grain-free has always worked so well, along with this Wellness variety that we'd resorted to when she was being picky. So we're happy with that. Someday I'd like to get everyone on raw, but I'll save that for another day.

At any rate, Birdie has been the barometer for the importance of diet. Our little guinea pig of a cat.

Alice's Adventures in Pet Food

My sister-in-law called it the rabbit hole when I asked her what she recommended we feed our new dog. She gave me the option to stop right there and go no further... but I didn't listen.

Our dog Simon was elderly, to put it mildly. He had arthritis and was developing some Canine Cognitive Dysfunction. And he was extremely fearful of people.

But dogs, he loved. He communicated better with them than with people. He was happy with doggie friends. He couldn't physically handle a puppy, but an adult dog that could just be a companion in his old age seemed appropriate. The idea of having a dog that we could be more active with appealed to us. And the prospect of a silent home when it was time for Simon to call it a day was more than I could bear to think about. I picked him out of his litter when I was 15. I'd had him roughly half my life.

We'd always fed him whatever was on sale at the store-- Beneful, Kibbles n Bits, Dog Chow, you name it. And at 13 or 14 years old, it seemed to have worked for him.

But we'd recently learned it wasn't the best, thanks to our cats.

This sweet gal, Birdie, threw up daily. Multiple times a day. She was healthy, according to our vet. I'd had cats all my life, and they'd always thrown up. But this was the first time I'd had a strictly indoor cat, and I was tired of cleaning up vomit constantly.

With a little research, we learned that corn doesn't sit well with cats' stomachs. This was 6 or 7 years ago. I can't even remember where I learned this, what websites I visited, what books I read. I know I did a lot of research (catinfo.org is my current go-to site for cat nutrition information).

This was also before the big trend of pet foods without corn. It was almost impossible to find one, especially to find one we could afford. We were poor.

But Petsmart's house label made one. And sure enough, it worked. It worked. Immediately. No more vomiting. No more cleaning up piles of half digested kibbles.

It was my first clue that what we feed our animals really matters in a tangible way-- that it's not just raw fuel for energy. It is important in so many ways.

That's when I fell down the rabbit hole. It's when I started asking an awful lot of questions about what was going into the food that I gave my animals. It was when I really understood that I'm in charge of that. My animals have no choice in that. It's all up to us humans (as if we don't have enough on our plates... ;-). It's when I started looking at what I could do to extend Simon's life and what I could do for the newest member of our family, River.