Sick cat, raw food (part 1 of 3)

When I adopted the Tweeb as a companion to Shadow (my other black cat), there was no reason to think that she had renal failure--a slowly progressive disease that is fairly common amongst elderly cats. Now, I knew she was old, as she'd been in "foster care" for six years. But she was healthy, for all her physical shortcomings--she has had no less than five broken bones in her little tough life, and most of them healed at odd angles, giving her the appearance of a Cubists' cat.

I'd been feeding Shadow a raw diet. Shadow was doing incredibly well on it, growing in leaps and bounds, and miraculously not getting fat despite my studio apartment being barely big enough for the two of us. The Tweeb took to raw instantly, too, much to my relief, chowing down enthusiastically on her bloody morass of ground chicken and organ meat.

But she was still drinking water.

That was the key: had she remained on her kibble diet, I would have thought nothing of the Tweeb drinking water, and would never have brought her in for the tests. Had she remained on kibble, I would not have realized that something was wrong until much, much later--possibly too late, when the sole choice remaining to me was not if euthanasia, but when.

Now, two years post-diagnosis, the Tweeb is doing quite well. She is energetic--perhaps even more so than Shadow, trotting after us when we go to the kitchen in hopes of begging a morsel out of us, and skittering through the apartment in a bout of the cat-crazies--and her appetite is undiminished. Far from losing weight, she's actually gained a significant amount of muscle and fat (not so much as to be anywhere near obese, but she's no longer the skin-and-bone kitty she used to be). She's quite personable, too, loving nothing better than to curl up on me when I sleep. You'd be hard-pressed to believe that she has renal failure, unless you were at the vet's with us.

I do not attribute this entirely to the raw food. Renal failure progresses differently in every cat, and it could simply be that she had the fortune to get the long-term variety. At the same time, though, it's hard not to believe that a diet of easily-synthesized protein, minimal carbohydrates, and plenty of water (in the form of meat and canned food) has nothing to do with her good health. I realize that the disease is progressive--that eventually we will have to give her more intensive care, along the lines of subcutaneous fluids and medications, and may even have to make that hardest of decisions concerning a rainbow bridge--but for now her renal failure seems to have been beaten into a sort of remission.

Next: the Great Protein Debate

Pets au natural

I've never been able to understand why people who think about GMOs, certified organic produce, free-range eggs--people who drive Priuses, use canvas shopping bags (ours are made of something like Tyvek), recycle, and have programmable thermostats, will think nothing of feeding their pets Purina.

I'm talking mostly about dogs and cats, of course. But the same is true for most other pets: why do people feed generally-species-inappropriate diets?

You don't see wolves at the zoo being fed kibble, which should, in my opinion, ring a few bells--if wolves are, essentially, wild dogs, then why shouldn't they be fed kibble? If they're not, could it be because kibble isn't actually a good food for dogs? And ditto for cats, and tigers.

Links here and here deal with raw diets for cats and dogs--it's all been written, and I'm not going to go into the supposed benefits for them, in part because I myself do not believe many of the claims. I do believe that raw diets have dental benefits--Shadow's teeth are still as pearly white as they were the day I got her--and that they are healthy and at least as good as if not better than prepared foods, when done right. I do not believe that a raw diet will cure diseases such as renal failure, although I do believe that they can mitigate the effects for quite a while. I am skeptical of claims that it helps mitigate behavioral problems, but willing to give the benefit of the doubt in most cases--but not because of "toxins" or any of that crap. I do not believe that feeding a raw diet is without risk--for me, with my biochemistry background, it's pretty much a practical application of my undergraduate degree, but for others, who have not bothered to look up things like the urea cycle online, it can be difficult to separate the information from the misinformation out there.

But I do believe that feeding a species-appropriate diet, or as close to it as one can get, is, in fact, what is best for one's pet. We humans have come a long way since the days "food safety" meant "let the other monkey eat those berries first", so it's hard to say exactly what a "natural" diet is for us. This is not to disparage the modern diet--nutritious and plentiful--but to point out that for humans, culture and environment are far more important dictators of what we eat than they are for animals, who not only are completely dependent upon their environment for their food, but also cannot be said to have any culture.

Pet food companies make a killing out of selling "Natural" stuff, but if you look at the ingredients' list, well--good luck finding any of that stuff outside of a chemistry plant. Some of the better companies actually do sell pet foods made of meat--and I don't want to know how much that costs, especially when the cost of adding one portion of meat to the weekly grocery list is so low.

That's the other thing: feeding a raw diet doesn't have to take a lot of money. It can, if you like buying those hamburger patties filled with "wholesome goodness". But my cats get mostly chicken, or whatever's cheap that week, and a bit of canned food if the drumstick is unusually small. It works out to about 1 euro/day to feed them, which is actually less than feeding them a brand name cat food.

If done properly, I do believe that feeding a raw diet is better than any brand of dog or cat food out there. Going natural, for them, makes as much sense as it does for you.

Disclaimer: I do not make any money from any of the pet food websites that I have linked to. They are merely the most prevalent brands that I can think of, and most likely to be universally available.

Speutering

The pet communities that I'm part of are pro-speutering (a conglomerate of "spay" and "neuter"). You might think that I'd be against speutering, since it messes up the natural order of things. But I'm not, actually. I'd argue that speutering actually allows your pet's true personality to come out.

Why? Because hormones are powerful. Ask any woman with PMS. Or better yet, don't ask, and just let her be. Now just think of what they do to an animal with much less conscious control over its own actions--animals don't think so much as follow engrained behavior patterns that are laid down through eons of genetics and years of training. Hormones control just about everything in an animal, from its blood glucose levels, to hunger, to sex.

Removing the need to reproduce (and in animals, it's a NEED) allows the pet to concentrate on pleasing its owners (dogs), or cuddling on laps (cats). It lowers their tension levels, making them calmer. It's not a cheap way to get a calm pet. It's a good way to get to know your real pet. Let's face it--it's a lot easier to train a dog when he's not thinking "SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX", and that goes triple if there's a bitch in heat nearby.

One common speutering myth is that it makes the animal fat. This is not true. Sure, if you speuter your pet, it's not going to spend as much energy trying to have sex. But that just means you have to feed it less. Too much food, not enough exercise, is what makes pets fat--and with the amounts of food some people feed, I doubt neutering would have made any difference with respect to how fat the pet got.

Animals do not, in fact, change their personality after the procedure. If anything, their personalities become more clear, because they're not always going batsh!t crazy from their hormones. Shadow is a sweetheart, Boobies (yes, we actually have a cat named Boobies) sulks and won't love anybody but her cat-mommy, the Tweeb is a grumpy little old lady. Pokey is a sweet but fiercely protective Doberman. And so on.

And before you write me about the other two big points I've "forgotten": I haven't. Cancer risk and pet overpopulation are also very serious issues, but they tend to be more abstract and less tangible. We know, intellectually, that they are good things, but it's hard to know how much of a problem those issues are unless you are the one sticking animal after animal with euthanasia. But everybody (or almost everybody) has dealt with a yappy dog or a cat in heat before--it's not fun--which is why I chose to stick with the personality issue.