Pet Food

http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/784/Patrick06.html

Now this is a very interesting article about pet food done by a Harvard student in 2006 labeled "Deconstructing the Regulatory Façade: Why Confused Consumers Feed their Pets Ring Dings and Krispy Kremes"

Bet you never considered the food you were feeding could be equated to Ring Dings did ya?  (well unless you've actually been reading this blog and read up on pet food in the past)

See, it isn't just me who thinks dry food = cookies :)

oh yea, and in case you want more references...

http://www.catinfo.org
http://www.feline-nutrition.org
http://www.felineoutreach.org/Education.html
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm
http://www.felinenutrition.net/
http://rawfedkitty.org/

The Crew History - FIP

This is not an easy post to write, but I needed to get out the experience I had with FIP in order to be referenced during Muffin's and Eli's upcoming posts.

In the fall of 2002 I brought home a set of orphaned kittens.  There were six of them and they were a LOT of work.  This being my first fall using the downstairs room to foster, I didn't realize how cold it would get down there.  Not ideal for young orphaned kittens who have a hard time regulating their own body temperature.

At the time I had a mother kitty with four kittens.  I didn't know this at the time, but not all of the kittens were hers originally.  I still don't know who was an add on and who she gave birth to.  Not that it matters.  I talked to the shelter about the orphans, and they suggested that I take my mother cat and see if she would nurse the orphans - since her four kittens were eating on their own and were doing just fine.

Well she did take to them ok, but it didn't seem very fair to leave her with out contact with her own kittens.  It was still very cold in the basement, and I figured if they thought it was ok to put the mother with the kittens, why wouldn't it be ok to put the kittens with the mother instead, so I combined the two groups into the warmer of the two rooms.

Orphaned kittens can not be tested for Felv/FIV until they are six weeks of age.  It apparently wasn't even considered that this could be a problem, but sadly it was.  The orphan's story is quite heartbreaking on it's own but that is the past.  They taught me a lot of respect for fostering, and being aware of what COULD happen. If nothing else, their short lives were for something.  The shelter's policy on kittens is to euthanize if they are found to be felv or fiv positive.  I understand a lot of people find that offensive, but I have to respect the shelter for realizing their limits and accepting their financial resources should be limited.  Yes, they could have kept these kittens for another few weeks and tested again, but then those funds could go into an animal that absolutely can be saved, and not drained in the risk of maybe they would fight off the infection.  I don't like it, in fact I hate it.  But I hate the fact that any animal needs to be put down before it's time, and better it be for an incurable illness then a fixable injury

***just an aside.  Felv/FIV should not be a death sentence for a loved pet.  A lot of cats can live long healthy happy lives infected with these horrible diseases.  Both work on the immune system, so cats who are infected need to be cared for a little more cautiously, but it does not mean they are going to immediately die.  Kittens brought into a shelter with Felv or FIV could be raised and very well could be neutered/vaccinated and not have health issues, but it is a risk that the disease could cause problems, and frankly it is VERY hard to find people to adopt these types of cats.  Why would they take a chance on a cat with a known health issue, when right next door is a kitty who is healthy and just as cute?  It sucks, but it is life in a shelter system.

So now we have a known exposure to Felv for the four kittens and the mom who remained.  I was asked to keep them for six weeks and have them tested again.  What a hardship on me, because the longer you have a kitten, the more your heart attaches to them.  But I was already head over heels for one of them, and didn't mind having him around.  The whole family was constantly battling URIs, and except for a really bad case over Thanksgiving, they did seem to abate while waiting out the incubation period.

Six weeks later, we had them tested.  Unbeknownst to me, the shelter only tested the mother and one of the kittens.  I do not know who, but it really doesn't matter.  The test came back negative, and I was never so thrilled to hear of a failed test :)   Took me quite a few minutes before I could wrap my brain around negative being good.    I brought them all home with me, and we had decisions to make.  The litter of kittens had two boys and two girls.  Both of the girls were totally full of it - personality up the wazoo.  One of these "Muffin" was also quite photogenic.  She loved being photographed, and being in the middle of things all the time.  The boys were "Eli" and "Kodi".  Kodi was a beautiful cat, and both my husband and I wanted to keep him very much.  We felt we were at our limit of cats with three, and I tried to convince my husband that we didn't want to keep him with "Well if we keep Kodi, we have to keep Muffin and Eli too!" (The other girl kitten "Izzy" just did not bond with us at all, and I am sure she has found her perfect place in life just as she was meant to)   Some how he agreed and we went from a three cat household to a six cat household.  It was crazy and insane, but some how it worked.

Unfortunately Kodi never did get over his URI.  He battled congestion continually.  I finally brought him to my own vet (outside of the shelter system) who recommended a less aggressive course of treatment for it.  URI in owned cats is generally viral, so most medications you can give won't really help.  It is mostly supportive care and making sure they can eat that is critical.  I place absolutely no blame on my former vets for what happened next, because I doubt that even taking an aggressive stance with the URI would have changed anything.

Kodi got worse, and my vet couldn't see him for a couple of days, so I decided to bring him to the vet that saw him previously.  They gave him a much more aggressive treatment for his URI, but it didn't make much of a difference.  On a follow up exam, it was determined he had a fever.  URI and fever generally don't go together, so we started looking for different reasons for it.  Well in the end they settled on FIP.  I almost fell down - having just read about FIP the week before.

FIP is a mutation of a very common virus that generally is found in cats.  In fact pretty much every shelter cat has been exposed to it, and except for maybe a few private catteries who aggressively eliminate it, well lets just say it is very common.  The mutation is not.  They still don't know why the virus mutates.  While their understanding of FIP has come a long way (when I first started reading about it on the web, most of the information was from the 80s and 90s. and that it was that it was highly contagious) there still is much that is unknown - and pretty much unknowable at this point.  There is no test for FIP.  Previously they tested for the coronavirus - which is the virus that mutates - and which is the tests that were run on my cats.  I did not know, and the extremely high titers that came back scared the living daylights out of me.  It was recommended we test again in six weeks, and several of the cats tested even higher.  I was told by the vet attending my case that this means the cats are shedding the virus and this was bad news.  She could not tell me much more then that.  She also went behind my back and told the shelter I should no longer foster kittens because it was dangerous for them.  She not once told me she felt this way - which I found to be a huge betrayal (especially since I was now working for the veterinary clinic she was working at)

Well I never stopped reading about FIP and over time I realized how wrong this vet was.  FIP is a diagnosis of last resort since there is no test.  There are two forms.  Wet FIP which fills the cat up with fluid is pretty obvious but still is not conclusive to be FIP.  Dry FIP is much more elusive, because other then general malaise and a fever, there is no definitive clues that says "YES! this is FIP"   I can't strongly recommend highly enough (enough adjectives there?) that anyone facing an FIP diagnosis get their kitty to a new vet for a second if not third opinion.  Since you are reading this on the web, I also recommend you find an FIP active online community forum who can help you look for other conditions that have been previously diagnosed as FIP that hopefully your cat has instead of FIP and can be treated.  (yahoo groups has several at the time I'm creating this post, but I'm sure there will always be others)

But unfortunately what she was not wrong about was that he had FIP.  Poor Kodi had a tragically short life.  While I did not end up doing a necropsy to be absolutely certain he had FIP, he ended up bleeding into his eyes, and had several other classic FIP issues.  Could it have been something else? I guess.  And I so wish I had thought to bring him to a different vet back after I first got the diagnosis for him.  Probably wouldn't have changed anything, since I was ignorant of what FIP was, and I was unable to get my hands on any of the new information until quite a long time after Kodi passed.

My whole point with this blog is to share information.  This is what I faced, and this is what I chose to do and faced with this again, the changes I would make.   I don't always succeed in not being obnoxious about things (declawing, food, free roaming outdoor kitties) but it is never my intention to make anyone feel they were wrong about decisions they have already made.  What is done is done, and all you can do is make decisions from the point you are and go on.  If you had a kitty die of FIP, I am very sorry.  My heart breaks for you because I have been there and done that.  If you are here because you just got the FIP diagnosis, please learn from my ignorance, and get a second or third or fourth opinion for your kitty.  Google the living daylights out of FIP, and learn all you can about all the new research, and all of the different illnesses that can mimic FIP for a doctor who is not quite as up to date on things.

The more out of touch your vet is, the faster they are going to come up with an FIP diagnosis.

Ollie

Now this is interesting.  Right after I did his little diddy on this blog, stating that he doesn't seem to really want a whole heck of a lot of attention, he has done little else but demand that I pat him.  Nudging his nose into warm bits as I am laying in bed.  Chirping grumpily at me if I don't adorn his head with my hand, and just generally being a nusance (but in a good way)

Ok seriously, what is going on with my cats?  are they reading this blog??

This morning was really cute.  I didn't much want to get up, and Eli wanted belly rubs (Eli ... now this is a whole different post) Ollie wanted to be patted, and Jack was snuggled up to me.  Just me and the boys.. (Skippy still being just a kitten)

The Crew - Jack

 

Jack is my first foster failure.  I started fostering in 2002, and he was in the third litter I had.  He came with three other kittens, and shortly afterwords one of them became very ill and needed to be put to sleep.  It was the first loss I had fostering, and it hurt.  I spent a lot of time with that group of kittens as a result.

Jack was a pretty unremarkable kitten. He came with the name Houdini, which fit him nicely because he was quite a little escape artist, but it wasn't an easy name to call a cat.  Jack has the ability to look like several different animals depending on his mood, and we picked Jack because he looked a bit like a jackal one day. He was a little fluffier then most short haired kittens, but wasn't quite long haired.  He was also quite gangly, and he almost seemed to be put together from several different kittens.  But he needed me.  He used to nurse on my ear and snuggle up tight.  I wasn't overly amused at the actual being nursed on, but his need out won my discomfort.  When the time came for the litter to go back and be put up for adoption I cried.  I had sworn to my husband when I started fostering that I wouldn't keep any of them (ha ha ha) but he was so special and unique, and I loved him for him - certainly not for his looks!!  I finally could not deal with it, and ran down to the shelter and scooped him up.

I was unemployed at the time, so I took Jack with me everywhere.  I fit him with a harness and leash, and we went to get ice cream, to visit friends and family, and many trips to the pet store - simply because I knew he would be welcomed there.  He basked in the attention and loved going out.  He would run to the door when ever someone would start getting ready to go out.  After a few months I found a job and he had to stay home.  He lost his love of going out, but he has not yet lost his love of being the center of attention.  When ever we have company he has to be right there.

He grew into his gangly looks.  He's now a very long sleek boy with medium length blue hair. He does have quite a bit of a belly hang though which waddles when he walks fast or runs, but it does not detract from his beauty.  He has a gorgeous mane as well which has a small white dot in the middle of it which developed after he became an adult.  Unfortunately he does NOT photograph well at all.  I think it is because you can't see him in three dimension and that is a pure shame.

Jack has had several medical issues, including a lump removed from his back when he was young.  He wasn't even a year old, and the vet was concerned that it might be a VAS because of it's location (near the scruff where the shelter vaccinates) but we were very fortunate it was a just a cyst. A couple of years ago he developed another cyst on his back leg, but we've chosen to ignore it until he needs to be sedated for something else. We also had the great FIP situation over the holidays of 2002.  As a result of some bad advice and true lack of knowledge I went through several months with a huge black cloud over our heads (but more of that with Muffin and Eli's profile) and in the end it turned out that Jack tested positive for FeLV.  I had him tested eight weeks later and he was still positive.  I started giving him Vitamin C, and when I had him tested a year later he came up negative.  I should probably have him tested again just to be sure, but I haven't.  THEN Jack started having urinary problems.  Eli had already gone through them, so I knew what I was looking at, but I still didn't get to him in time.  He blocked.  After going through the surgery and several round of "prescription" foods, he blocked again.  At this time I was facing problems with Em and her diabetes, so I was open to learning anything that would help, and I learned that diet is incredibly important in maintaining the right PH balance in a cat, and that the "premium" dry food he had been on was keeping him so dehydrated that the crystals were able to form a blockage.  I started making my own raw food, and while he ate it he didn't have any more problems.  Well making cat food for six cats was a stretch, but when the household got larger, I started buying it.  When we started buying Oma's Pride, it caused problems.  I didn't really notice until Jack got into quite a bit of dry one day and then ended up peeing in the bathtub.  I tried to work with the issues Oma's caused, but when just about all of the cats became ill on their food and they simply did not care, I then went to Bravo Raw.  Jack's issues pretty much cleared up, including his cruddy ears.  The only other issue with Jack so far is that he actually sprayed.  We had a foster cat who was not leaving, and this upset Jack.  I had seen him making spraying movements before, but he had never sprayed.  Fortunately he did it right in front of me, so I was able to make arrangements to get the foster re-situated, and I was able to work with Jack to ease his fears that other cats might be joining the household.  According to Jack, eight is enough!!!  A few medical things that are on the side of good, Jack has great teeth.  Even at 8 years (OMG he's eight??!?!) of age his teeth are still sparkling white.  He also had a strong heart murmur as a kit and young adult, but that closed up and is no longer around.

Jack is EXTREMELY food motivated.  He has never wanted for anything in his life, but you would have thought he spent many a moon starved and alone.  I jokingly call him and Muffin my garbage disposal and my dishwasher.  He also has this incredibly high pitched meow when he wants you to give him something... very much like nails on a chalk board. I don't doubt for a second if I could work with him alone, I could easily train him to do tricks.  He loves food and loves praise, but it is very hard with other cats distracting both of us.

He is also the Beta to Ollie's Alpha.  Ollie often feels the need to put Jack in his place, which is kind of interesting to watch because I do not see Jack competing for Ollie's status but my affection - which for the most part Ollie doesn't want.

Jack has outgrown his *need* for me, and stopped nursing on me a little after six months.  For the next six months he would nuzzle my ear, and give it a little lick from time to time, just to make sure he still could.  For the most part now that he is a "big boy" he acts very independent, but at night he is still curled up by my right side.  He loves it when I rub his chest and chin because he gets to sit up all regal like and accept praise.  My husband is able to give him full contact rub downs which include messing his fur all up so he looks like just came in from a hurricane.  Why it is OK for him to do that and not me I have no idea.  His fur is very fine, almost like a rabbit, and I think as a result of that Frontline does not work on him.  Fortunately Advantage does.

I love Jack very much.  I often whisper in his ear that he is my favorite.  I don't quite know about that anymore, but he is definitely the kitty of my soul.

The Crew - Ollie

I thought it would be nice if I did posts for the kitties.  I did pages for them years ago, but they are kind of out of date, so....

Ollie:

 

 Ollie came to us as the product of a mating between his mother and his brother.  My husband's coworker thought they had "Maine Coons" and were breeding them.  This was when I was very new in the world of cats, and I believed what I was told.  They were apparently unaware of certain biological facts, and one of Ollie's Mom's previous litters hung around a little too long and became sexually mature.  As a result, Ollie and his litter mates.  Since they couldn't sell this litter, they offered one to DH.  He, always wanting a "coon" said yes.  He was born around mother's day 1999.  I agreed to a new kitten on the condition that we could return him if Emerald had problems with him.  Em had been an only kitty for a while, and because of her reaction to neighborhood kitties, I was certain it was never going to work out.

But Em had lived with rabbits and rodents, and learned to leave anything in a cage alone.  So we adapted the rabbit cage we had to house a kitten.  We gave him bedding, litter and food and gave him some snuggles before safely ensconcing him in the cage.  Em lumbered in, took one look at the little cat thing in the cage thing and let out a very threatening hiss.  She was confused, because she knew it was a cat, but it was in a cage.  We simply told her no, and when she stopped hissing, we praised her for not hissing.  She walked closer, hissed some more, but got another "NO" and then more praise for ignoring the cage - which is how we taught her to leave rodents alone.  After a couple more dirty looks she left the room.  Over the course of the day, we praised her for ignoring the kitten, and she continued to ignore him.  We thought it might be safe to bring him out.  Well she started hissing again, but a stern NO let her know that we were expecting her to accept this new thing.  Ollie tried his best to win her over, which of course was all the wrong things for him to be doing, including jumping on her back and trying to wrestle with her.  We returned him to the cage, and praised her, and the next time he came out, he stayed out for good.

He is quite unique in his coloring.   You can't see it in this photo, but he has a little milk dribble from his mouth to the bib on his chest.  And if that weren't endearing enough, he's always got one white whisker on the top of his head.  Sometimes it is on the left, sometimes on the right. but only ever one.  As you may have been able to tell due to the quotes around Maine Coon, that Ol is not a coon. He is simply a "regular old long haired cat".  But he is his own uncle :)

Ollie was a happy little kitten.  He was so happy to interact with anyone who visited and played happily with us or Em or himself.  We had him neutered after puberty which was the accepted practice at the vet we were using.  But with puberty came his attitude adjustment.  Not to say every cat who goes through puberty is going to end up like Ollie, but this is his story.  He went from a happy child to a grumpy teen.  His play was no longer happy go lucky, but intense and when things didn't go his way he would grumble and sulk.  He never comes out to visit company, and for years no one knew we had a second cat.

But we loved his quirks, and he quickly gained the nick name "Mr. Grumpy Pants"  He hated being groomed, and would often swear like a sailor when I would try to remove the mats from his mane (he only ever matted under his ears)   One time after a particularly trying grooming session, he was beyond inconsolable.   I tried to calm him, but the second he got a chance, he lashed out.  It was the worst experience of both of our lives.  He was able to hit me square on the face, one paw on each of my cheeks.  Fortunately he had just had his claws clipped, but even still I had four red tracks on each side of my face.  That has been the only time I have ever lost my cool with a cat, and I hate to admit I hit him.  I was able to get a hold of him (and myself) and i locked him in the bathroom while my pulse returned to normal.   I was unsure of what to do.  I wanted him to learn that this was not an appropriate way to get what he wanted, but I wasn't sure how to convey that.  I came up with a very unique solution which actually worked.  I dug out the rabbit cage again, and put it in the middle of the kitchen.  He had all he needed, food, litter etc, but he was isolated from us and the other cats.  Cats HATE being ignored, and will modify their behavior to not let it happen again.  He stayed in there for one day, and the change in him was very noticeable.  After that he came to me and acknowledged that I was alpha, and he never again lashed out at me.  However I do need to be very careful that there are no other kitties between me and his escape when I groom him. 

When Em was alive, she was the Alpha cat by default.  But she was much like the Queen of England, a figurehead only.  When she passed, Ollie laid down the gauntlet and proclaimed he was head kitty.  He occasionally bats other cats on the head just for being too near him and not deferring to him.  He eats alone on the plate first, and he sleeps where he wants.  Oddly he likes to sleep between my hubby and myself up by the pillows but not on them.

He has had a few medical problems over the years.  Once when we were about to go on one of the rare vacations we take, he became severely constipated.  He was vomiting all over the place, and needed to be treated by the vet.  Fortunately he recovered in time, and I had a pet sitter I very much trusted.  I also have had to have two growths removed from the same place near his back left leg.  I did not have them biopsied, but I am pretty sure he had Vaccine Associated Sarcoma (aka VAS) due to the location and the regrowth almost one year to the date of the initial removal.

Ollie came to me when I was new to cat care.  He was the third cat I have owned, and I was still unaware that not everything preached as gospel in cat care was true.  It didn't even occur to me to consider differently.  He ate mostly dry food with some canned.  Not being one of my foster kittens, he ate pretty much the same thing most of his life, so he does have a little bit of a problem when trying new foods.  Fortunately since I have learned of the GI upset cats can face when eating the same foods over and over, I have been able to vary his diet so the impact of food changes are lessened.

now that he's older, I lovingly call him my grumpy old man.  He spends his days on top of the fridge watching the other kitties or in the sunroom basking.  I hope he's around for years to come, but I am very carefully watching his side for a possible regrowth of the tumor we've removed.  I hope I never have to decide to have that removed again, because both surgeries were hard on him, but the second was much more so then the first.  He was very slow to recover, and very PISSED OFF that he couldn't continue on with his life as he wanted.  He is not one for change, and I fear that he is one of those cats that are going to be better off facing death on his own terms instead of allowing me to fight tooth and nail for him.  But I will let that decision be his when the time has come - which hopefully will not be for another 10 years :)