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Old July 10th, 2011, 01:13 PM
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dbg10 dbg10 is offline
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Location: Ajax, Ontario
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Quote:
Originally Posted by growler~GateKeeper View Post
Would be nice/easier to be able to get most/all of them on the same food

Perhaps with the canned out a little longer they will choose to eat that instead of the dry food You can always add a bit of water to soften the canned back up too.
It certainly would be easier but I find the others will eat almost any wet I give them Smokey barfs after most of them. I did start adding water to the food when I decided to leave it out for a few hours and that has helped it remain soft with no crusty layer on the top.

Quote:
Originally Posted by growler~GateKeeper View Post
Has the vet ever mentioned the possibility of Smokey having IBS or IBD or just a sensitivity to a certain food type? Perhaps you can talk to the vet about the advantages/disadvantages of xray vs ultrasound for diagnosis.

Have you noticed a pattern ie just when he eats beef or turkey or food with rice in it for example or is it anytime something is "different" from what he had the day before?
Smokey has had this problem since I adopted him at about 13 weeks old. He was very small appeared to only be about 7 to 8 weeks old but when examined he definitely was older. He and his sisters had been found in the bathroom of a hockey arena abandoned. That is the reason I think he will eat anything and everything that he finds that might resemble food. When he was full size he was a very large boned cat and weighed 16 lbs without any fat on him at all and stayed that way until he was about 4 1/2 years despite all the vomiting and spitting up food he did, so we thought there wasn't a major problem.

Then about the time Pepper got sick he seemed to start losing weight and I took him in for a weight and exam. Blood work was done each time I took him in and exam revealed absolutely no reason for his weight loss. The blood work was all absolutely normal with no even hints of what might be going on. Urinalysis also normal each time. His weight dropped over a year to 11 lbs but I had found that if I fed him Merrick's Grammy's Pot Pie he didn't barf after it and rarely ate anything else.So my vet recommended I bring him in for an abdominal Xray but at the time I had Pepper's surgery and Sam's issues and since I had appeared to have found an answer I haven't taken him back. I did find out at one point that he couldn't tolerate the Urinary SO when I ran out of both dry and wet food and he ate it for a couple of days. He gained weight back to 12.5 lbs and I thought we'd found part of the answer. So then Pepper passed and Raggs came, Smokey has always liked dogs much better than cats. Raggs rejected him for awhile but has now accepted Smokey's affection and returns it at times. Then Smokey decided about 3 months ago that he wasn't going to eat anymore canned food of any kind, including the Grammy's. I have no idea why but he won't touch any of it and I have at least 4 varieties of canned food out every day for them including the MC Lo Prot for Sam. Smokey seemed to like the Innova Dry, but now he;s barfing again and losing weight. I know it;s time to take him back but money has been an issue recently and I haven't had the extra cash to take him in with Sam needing care. I hope to have this straightened up by August and take him in then.

As for a pattern I did notice he does better with Chicken but won't eat Turkey after enjoying a few cans of it. I tried Wellness Turkey and it bombed with him but I am about to try it again with all of them especially Sam. Fish seemed to upset him but then again he wasn't really eating enough of it to tell if it was the Fish. I don't remember what happened with the beef because I had found the Grammys and stuck to it when he liked it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by growler~GateKeeper View Post
He didn't give a % of protein number, just that you can feed a regular protein value raw diet to a kidney cat. You wouldn't necessarily want to always feed something that is very high or very low in protein, somewhere in the middle is best. In moderation as they say.
So basically stay away from the really high protein foods even if the protein is animal origin and try to stay in the middle range. That's what I thought.

Quote:
Originally Posted by growler~GateKeeper View Post
Duffy's blood protein value was always mid normal & she was not leaking protein into her urine, so I never considered restricting the amount. If Sam's blood protein level was high or if he had proteinuria then it would be wise to look to the mid-lower end of the protein values. The problem with restricting protein is the cats rely on protein for energy as well as building/maintaining muscle mass, also when on the low end the taste is restricted or enhanced with higher fat content.
I know that restricting protein allows them to catabolize their own muscle and that isn't a good thing, I am trying to stick to animal protein but reduce the carbs which nowadays seems to be a problem. However I had forgotten to look at the guaranteed analysis of the foods and that really tells the story on how much carb there is in each food.

Quote:
Originally Posted by growler~GateKeeper View Post
When I started raw, it was from Natural Instincts a BC local produced commercial ground raw that had meat/bone/organs already in it. While recovering from a severe allergic/IBD reaction to duck (weekend stay @ the ER Vet) it was apparent she was also becoming intolerant to bone (even ground bone ~ mild IBD diagnosed via ultrasound) so I switched for a short time to just chicken breast meat on the advice of her H Vet. After that I fed her TC Feline Plus Premix with ground chicken.
A normal home prepped prey model or ground raw or commercial ground raw diet is fine. There is a site from the USDA that allows you to check the nutrient analysis for any food so you can decide if the phos/protein/fat/etc content is appropriate. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/index.html
I think they have raw food at the Global Pet Foods near me their website shows 4 different brands and I can check it out. However, they don't carry a lot of the food their website says they do, but will order cases when you ask them to. I'll check out the raw food brand they have there but I think it's Natural Instinct.

Thanks so much for all the links and information, from what I read about Duffy you definitely became an expert on CRF and diets to treat them. So glad you had some reimbursement from RC for all the tests you had to run.
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Willing Slave to: Sam 17 yrs; Bailey 14 yrs; and Smokey 10 yrs.
R.I.P. Raggs 1997-2012 ; Pepper 1997-2009 ; Tiger 2000 - 2014;
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