Just a quick update!
The kitties are adjusting to the all wet diet. I still sprinkle a dusting of pulverized dry food (like 2 kibbles worth) on their canned food every now and then, and that encourages them to eat a bit more. They're eating a bit more wet every day, and their dry food is completely gone (except for the aforementioned dusting of dry kibble dust on the canned, which I'm slowly decreasing). They're getting water mixed in with their food (a few Tbsp per 3 oz can), but their water consumption from the water bowl has gone way down. Hopefully they're getting all the water they need from the canned food.
Daisy has stopped waking me up all night for food!!
We discovered that a little "midnight snack" of some wet food right before we got into bed was all she needed to stay quiet until morning - now she wakes me up at 6am and I roll over and poke DH and he gets up and feeds her.
We have an appointment for Friday to get their urine retested at a different vet. Fingers crossed that there has been some improvement! The next step is to slowly transition them onto a wet diet with less phosphorous - the venison is almost twice as high in phosphorous as we'd like.
We're going to do this very slowly and hope that they like one of the low phosphorous, grain-free, turkey/duck diets we've picked out.
And last but not least - remember the vet "nutrition specialist" who was giving me all that incorrect hooey/info? She called me yesterday - she's coming over to our side!!
I had this look on my face the entire phone call:
She told me that after I voiced my concerns about the Rx diet and insisted they be on a grain-free meat-based diet that she started doing some research. To sum it all up, she told me she'd come to realize that a high-protein, low-carb, grain-free, low-phosphorous canned food was the way to go with my kitties.
She even said, "You know, their food in the wild is about 70% water, and canned food is 78% moisture, and dry food is only 5-10% moisture - so canned is definitely the way to go! I just had to share that with someone - I found that so interesting." And "I read a paper about high protein diets and how an all-meat diet can prevent struvite crystals from forming because it naturally controls the pH of the urine."
I'm glad she finally did some research and read some papers by REAL researchers, not hacks paid by Hills to publish fake "results" about their Rx diets. It was such a revelation for her. I feel good about that, at least I feel like I initiated some change, however small, in that practice, since she said that this changed the way she viewed nutrition. But I still think that finding a holistic vet to talk about diet with and a regular vet for vaccines and other things would be a good thing to do. A friend recommended a holistic vet about 2 miles from my house, so I'm going to call there after they have their urinalysis and see if she has any input on diet.
So things are moving in the right direction - slowly but surely. sugarcatmom - Maybe we can slowly help bring the vets over to "our" side - I'm seriously still
at the conversation I had with her yesterday. I'm glad it happened, but I wish she'd had that revelation a while ago.