escaping kittens

The kittens are so ready to explore the rest of the house. Every time I go down there they have their little faces pressed against the door, so when I open it, there is NO corralling kittens. I have taken to using a piece of cardboard, making a crack in the door, slipping it in, and pushing them back. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I'm not.

The little girl without a tail "Bug" is an absolute love bug. However, she has one very odd quirk. She insists on pushing her little head in your armpit. It is very bizarre.

Willie (boy with a tail; the runt; the one with white) got stuck again. Hubby was upstairs right above their room and could hear a kitten meowing very clearly. Willie climbed up the post, and got into the unfinished ceiling.

I'm still concerned about Kenny. He spends a lot of his time looking at me with a very intense look. Maybe that is just his face. His belly is huge. I haven't seen him have a BM in a while... not a huge shock since I don't spend all day in the room.

A couple of the cats also have very loose stools, so back on albon they all go.

Update on Emerald too. Since she was doing so well and gaining weight, I thought I'd see if she could come off the pepcid. Nope. She quickly started losing and vomiting. So back on it she went, and she's gained some of the loss back. Why on earth is her stomach upset all the time???

One of my kitties got a fright this morning. I had a couple of plastic bags I threw down the stairs (I have an open staircase to the basement) to bring to the kitten room to clean out litter boxes with. Well someone investigated them, then couldn't get themselves out. There is no helping a freaked out cat in a plastic bag, cause you can't get near them. I just had to hold still and not make any noise so that whoever it was could calm themselves down enough to get out. Well eventually after running through the house, the bag caught on something and the kitty was freed. I THINK it was Muffin. But I have no proof. They were all completely freaked by the noise.

Emerald

I THINK I have come across the right combination to put weight back on Em. We'll have to wait and see if it fully pans out. So far, it appears that if we feed her four times a day, with canned food, and then give her handfuls of dry, and keep her on pepcid, it works. Last weight was 11lbs 13 oz!! I almost wanted to take a picture of the scale... lol She just sat on it all proud like. Hopefully, when she gets back up to a decent weight, we can go back to two times per day.

However, her blood sugars have been running VERY high. When she's on just a high protein low carb food, her highest bgs were in the low 200s. Now she's getting the 'kitty crack' the lowest high reading is 350ish. I can compensate with more insulin, but I have to imagine the swing in the sugars during the day can NOT be good. But then again, she used to eat exclusively dry food for years, and was getting up to 7 units twice a day at the time, so maybe she's just used to it? (which totally doesn't make sense, but I don't really care, she's gaining weight!!!)

Zoe asked about dry food, science diet, and mentioned how her vet said dry food is better for the cat's teeth. I want to address these issues. I was going to write to her directly, but then thought maybe I should post this cause it is kinda important.

First off, unfortunately, science diet is not a good quality food. It is actually one of the lower quality foods out there. So is Eukanuba and Iams. I know they are often recommended by vets and are touted as being the "leading" brands. Unfortunately, they are the leading brands because they promote themselves and give their product at very low cost to vets so that they push them. To see this, look at the first ingredient listed in the food. If the first couple of ingredients are not meat, or worse some sort of grain product, then it is a low-quality food. Cats are not designed to get energy from carbohydrates. Why are they in all the cat foods then? Cause they are cheap and drive up profits for the food companies. The same with wheat gluten. It is a protein derivative from wheat that a lot of cats have problems with.

As for the dental aspect of dry food, that is a myth. The teeth are designed for the tearing and ripping of flesh. When a cat chews kibble, it breaks it into smaller pieces and then eats it. More often than not the cat will eat the kibble whole, not even bothering to chew it, and later when it drinks some water, it will expand in the stomach, causing the cat to have to regurgitate the food. Check out this written by a vet.

A vet who has studied the effects of dry food on cats, and hundreds of owners who have diabetic cats, have seen the effect of dry food on a cat's blood sugars. Many diabetic cats are actually able to come off daily insulin if they are direct to a species appropriate food. A high protein, low carb diet, which is impossible to get in a dry food.

So from all the new research, experts are now equating dry food to a McDonald's type diet to humans. It has some nutritional value, but not a whole heck of a lot, and it has a lot of bad calories to go along with it. This means your cat has to eat more of it to get out of it what it needs, which in the long run taxes your cat's system and another side effect is that you have a lot more waste in the litter box. Cats also do not have a high thirst drive, so most cats who are on a dry diet tend to be slightly dehydrated. Many cats live nice long healthy lives on dry food, I won't deny that. But it is a very low-quality food.

I have culled this research from many different sources, but one of the main sites that helped me realize that the dry food had to go was http://www.catinfo.org it is created and run by a vet. She has stated that most vets don't even take nutritional classes, that it is an elective in school, and if they do it is only a very short class. Most of the vets training on good nutrition comes from (wait for it....) the companies that provide them food for sale... Mainly Science Diet, Eukanuba, and Iams. (which btw, all make kitten foods that almost none of my 200 foster kittens would eat)

Check out http://www.catinfo.org and http://www.littlebigcat.com and http://www.felinediabetes.com/diabetic-cat-diets.htm (and just because they talk about diets for diabetic cats does not mean it is an inappropriate diet for non-diabetic cats)

Foster update

Just a reminder, this is where they started at the end of July,

and this is them yesterday :)

Their bellies are big and round, they RUN, oh man do they run like the wind.. two pounds two ounces, so maybe two more weeks? Little Kenny still strains when he passes stool. Ends up on his two front feet.. but it is getting out, and he doesn't seem in pain. Discomfort, yes, but pain, no.

Mom, Gertrude, she is ready for them to be gone!

Willie getting "stuck" on the climbing pole

Kenny. I am starting to be able to tell them apart. It isn't easy!!

Shirley

DINNER!!

Dry food

I have come to the conclusion (after much reading of other's research on the matter) that dry food for cats is like McDonald's food for humans. Basically made up of nutrients needed, but doctored in such a way as to make it fast, convenient, and tasty.

I have kept it around the house for treats for the kitties. When I feel the need to gather them all up in one place, I just shake a container or throw a handful down on the ground. They LOVE it.

Even Emerald.. Who totally shouldn't have it as it throws her blood glucose way off. Who also has completely messed up teeth and can't eat it very well.. she ends up chasing it all around the floor or pushing it all off the plate.

Well last night I woke up and went to the bathroom (where her food is being kept since she eats differently from the rest of the crew because she refuses to eat what they eat, and they would eat all of her food before she could finish her first bite) and she was in there looking at me with those big huge "I'm starving and haven't eaten in weeks!" eyes. I didn't feel like going across the house in the middle of the night and finding her food, so I put down a plate full of dry.

You should have seen her try to eat it.. she was SO excited.. but she ended up pushing most of it off the plate trying to get it. she eventually pushed the plate out of the way so she could get to the bits on the other side.

I know it made her BG numbers climb because it ALWAYS makes her bgs climb.. but she actually was satiated this morning. Ate some of her breakfast but not all of it - where she usually licks the plate clean and begs for more.

So now the question becomes, do I give her junk food because she loves it and it makes her full even though it is dangerous for her to have? Not that it is exactly the same, but there are people out there who feed their kids high-fat foods like pure butter because their burning fat helps with whatever physical condition they have (I don't remember off the top of my head, but I remember seeing a number of shows on it many years ago) but I don't even think that is the same.. to me, I only see feeding a diabetic sugar. which is wrong.

then why does this feel like the thing to do??

Updates

Notice the new domain.. cool hun? Not sure what I am going to do with webwmn.com at this point.. I really should deal with that.. but I don't know what I want to do with it, so I'll leave it as it is for now.

The kittens are doing much better. They have been on Albon for a while now, and they are now eating 6 cans of food per day, along with the dry that is out.

The little boy without a tail (Kenny) is still having problems passing poop though. It is now solid, but he pushes so hard, that he often ends up on his front two feet. Poor thing.

I haven't weighed them in a bit, but they do seem to be gaining, and if they keep eating at this rate, they should be headed for adoption soon.. which is a good thing, because Willie is TOO CUTE and TOO SWEET.. it is freakin adorable!!

They don't seem to sleep as much now too.. so I guess the trip to the vet was a good thing even though they didn't come up with anything. It was the stool sample I was able to collect because they spent the entire day at the shelter and half of them went poop once they got home. Dr found coccidia, and put them on Albon.

Em is back to losing weight. I took her off zantac, and she went right back to vomiting often. So I put her back on that but took her off the thyroid meds. She seemed to gain, but then started to lose again. She was only off it for a few days, so I put her back on it, and she stabilized, but then started losing. This has been her pattern to begin with. So I took her back off the thyroid meds.. still no change. She is constantly nauseous, though, so I am constantly feeding her.. she loves it..