Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:
A little over a year ago, I adopted a 3-month-old black kitten, As she grew, she started to have more and more health problems. Gluten intolerance, severe allergies to most plants and insects, and a recurring skin condition triggered by her allergies that causes her to lick her fur out. I’ve done everything I can for her throughout the year. I am a young college student who does everything on my own. I have come to a crossroad. I am no longer able to afford her healthcare. I’ve gotten the advice of both vets and shelters and have had mixed responses. The consensus seems to be that I can either find a new home for her that will be able to afford her vet care and high needs, or put her down. She is only a year and a few months old, and is loving. I lost my cat of 11 years in February to liver failure, and do not wish to see another cat leave so soon, but I need to do what is best for her. Shelters are not willing to take her in her condition–she is currently in a phase of illness, which I cannot currently afford and cannot find help to fund or reach a payment deal with vets, and if I cannot find a person willing to take her in and care for her, I am afraid of what will have to come to pass. Please help me!
~ Angelica
Thomas: Oh, Angelica, we feel for you! Especially Mama, because she put herself through college, too, and she knows how hard it is, especially when you have a cat relying on you.
Bella: We’re going to do our very best to help you!
Tara: Before we start, we’re going to stress that we’re not veterinarians, so we recommend that you follow a vet’s advice if it’s different from the advice we give.
Thomas: With that in mind, the first thing we’d recommend, if you can find a way to afford it, is to consult with a holistic veterinarian. Often, they have a lot of knowledge about nutrition and non-drug ways to treat cat allergies.
Bella: From what we understand, allergies can be milder or more severe, depending on environmental factors.
Tara: What we mean is, sometimes when there’s a mild food allergy combined with mild environmental allergies, those things can add up and create serious problems like your kitty is having.
Thomas: You may be able to help your cat’s symptoms subside by eliminating one or more of the allergens in her environment.
Bella: But how do you do that?
Tara: We recommend that you start with the food issue. A lot of times, cats that have gluten intolerance can be helped by changing their diet.
Thomas: It sure helped me once. I used to always get the runs, really bad. So bad that it hurt when I had to poop and I even cried out in pain sometimes! Poor Mama was beside herself worrying about me, because she’d tried everything the vet recommended.
Bella: But then, Mama switched him (and all of us) to a raw food diet. And Thomas got better literally overnight!
Tara: Now, the thing with raw diets is that you can either make them or buy them pre-made.
Thomas: We recommend a pre-made raw diet because they’re created to meet all of a cat’s nutritional needs. If you make your own raw food, you might find you’re missing some crucial nutrients.
Bella: We’re not going to lie–a raw diet can be more expensive than kibble or canned food. But hopefully your cat’s good health will make up for the expense because you won’t have to go to the vet as often.
Tara: The raw food we eat is a dehydrated mixture that Mama moistens with water to about the consistency of canned food.
Thomas: There are three brands we recommend, not just because of the quality but because they’re tasty and we like to eat them!
Bella: Those are Primal, Stella & Chewy’s, and Northwest Naturals. (By the way, we’re not getting paid for these endorsements; they’re really what we use and recommend.)
Tara: They’re available in most pet stores these days, and if you can’t find them at the pet store you can order them online.
Thomas: We recommend poultry and/or fish products because some of the red meat-based products can be too rich. We’ve tried some of them–beef, venison and the like–and they make us urp, which makes Mama sad.
Bella: But we love the duck, goose, turkey, rabbit (when we can find it) and chicken formulas!
Tara: Now, as for how you can get the money to help pay vet bills–we wrote a post a while back, answering a letter from someone whose cat has dental disease that he couldn’t afford to treat. In that post, we had some links for financial assistance.
Thomas: This financial assistance is given to people who meet income guidelines, and as a poor college student, we’re pretty confident that you would.
Bella: It’s possible that if you change your kitty’s diet, the rest of her allergies might calm down, too.
Tara: In the meantime, if you need to rehome your kitty, it’s possible that even if the shelters can’t take her, they may be able to help you find her a foster home where she can get treatment and get better.
Thomas: If you belong to a group like a church or if you volunteer for a nonprofit, you may be able to ask them for assistance in finding your kitty a good home where her medical needs can be met.
Bella: If you can give us a general idea of where you live–the state and/or metro area–we could put a call out to our fans to see if there’s someone who might be willing to help you find her a good home.
Tara: Please keep the faith, Angelica. See if you can qualify for some financial assistance, find a holistic vet if you can, and try feeding your cat a raw diet to see if that helps her allergies.
Thomas: Do you other readers have any ideas about how Angelica can help her cat? We’d love to help her keep her feline companion if at all possible. If she can’t, we want to help her find a good, loving home for her kitty where she can get the care she needs.
JaneA Kelley is a punk rock cat mom and award-winning blogger. She is a regular columnist for Catster Magazine, and she and the Paws and Effect Gang share a home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
Great discussion, thank you!
Hi,
I have to agree with Tara, Bella & Thomas: the first thing that came to my mind was “food”.
Unfortunately, most kitties these days are fed a dry diet of kibble.
1) cats evolved in the desserts of Egypt where there wasn’t a lot of surface water. They evolved to get most of their water from the food they ate i.e. bugs, insects, mice and other rodents. As a result they have a low thirst drive and you will not see them lapping up water like dogs do. Even the way that they drink (check Youtube for a slow-motion video on their technique) reflects that the water sources they mostly found were shallow.
2) their natural food source provides them with about 72% moisture whereas kibble is about 7% moisture. To meet their water needs, they have to drink about 7 times as much water as the kibble in order to make up the moisture, but they can’t/don’t drink that much. Sadly, kibble-fed kitties spend their lives in a constant state of dehydration to varying degrees. Ergo, high levels of kidney and urinary illness and disease in modern-day kitties.
3) Kitties need a high percentage of MEAT protein ie/ while we homo sapiens can use protein in pulses and plants, kitties need MEAT protein.
4) There are many qualities of kibble and the cheapest has a high percentage of corn and other grains / carbohydrates (rice, wheat, peas, potato, etc.). Since cats evolved to eat meat protein, high levels of carbohydrates (naturally they should be eating about 8 -10% carbohydrates at most), this type of kibble is the most harmful to a cat’s system. Corn has a high glycemic level and is a main contributor to the development of diabetes in our modern-day kitties. [We don’t expect cows to eat pork chops, so why do we expect cats to eat corn and rice?] These carbohydrates are also a leading cause of obesity in kitties. I once read that feeding kibble, especially the cheap stuff loaded with corn, is like feeding your child Captain Crunch cereal for every meal!
Like Bella, Thomas & Tara say, spending more for high quality, species-appropriate food pays for itself and more in:
1) a happy, healthy kitty,
2) a kitty who is not overweight (check out Discovery Channel or Youtube for videos of tigers, leopards, cheetahs, bobcats, lynx, etc in the wild to see what our kitties should look like)
3) reduced stress for the Cat Parents,
4) healthier teeth (carbohydrates create a lot of the “fuzz” that leads to tartar on cats’ teeth which can lead to high dental bills and lots of pain and possibly tooth loss which leads to more complicated feeding for the toothless kitty)
5) reduced vet bills (for illness and teeth cleaning and other dental work)
6) what many people don’t realize is that when kitties are fed appropriate food, they eat less of it because the food they are eating is better meeting their nutritional needs i.e./ they are not eating so much “filler” — cheap corn, rice, potato etc. so you may spend less on the high quality food than you may at first think.
While many kitties do survive with inappropriate food, some kitties can be more sensitive to the inappropriate food and have allergic reactions. This may be the case with Angelica’s poor little kitty. Because of her severe allergies, a holistic vet would be great to consult. In the meantime, ensuring that her kitty is getting grain-free canned/wet food with a high percentage of meat protein is a good start. Raw food is even better. Switching from kibble to wet food or raw food will take some time (it’s a process), but Angelica shouldn’t be discouraged. It will take time and there are online sources providing guidance on how to make such a change — Thomas, Bella and Tara might have some suggestions.
With my own kitty I found that she liked canned pate food better than chunky and she liked pate better once I added warm water to it so that it was very smooth and closer to “mouse temperature” ie/ not a solid chunk of cold pate out of the fridge. Angelica’s kitty may thrive best on a raw diet because she is so sensitive that the additives and carbs in canned food may also affect her. Note: I was really surprised to find that canned food can also have grains in it, so watch out for that if using canned food — be sure to get the grain-free. Get as much meat and as little filler/ carbs as possible.
Using wet or raw food, it is harder to just leave the food out which makes the kibble convenient to the cat parent if not to the cat. However, remember that kitties do not need to eat throughout the day. Kitties are hunters — in the natural state, they have to hunt to eat and they only catch a relatively small portion of the prey that they hunt, so they evolved to eat at spaced out periods, but eating very nutritious, protein-rich meat, blood and bone — food with all their needs met in one, including water. They did not evolve to graze all day like cows. That said, if a kitty has been taught to graze throughout the day, they may complain if they are no longer fed the same way. As with all things with kitties, you need to have a plan and patience and gradually introduce the change.
I do hope that Angelica can find the answer to her kitty’s allergies. In many cases, they are food-based so this is a good place to start. Because making a change with a kitty is a slow process, and because her kitty appears very sensitive, Angelica may want to make the change directly to raw food so that her kitty doesn’t have to change to canned and then, if that doesn’t work, to raw food.
I am not a specialist in cat nutrition, but have tried to share some general information that I have learned about feeding kitties because I wanted to do what is right for my kitty. I strongly recommend consulting **** http://feline-nutrition.org ***** and http://www.catnutrition.org and http://www.catinfo.org (etc) for more and better info.
Good luck, Angelica! I do hope that you can keep your kitty or at least get her well enough that you can find another good home for her if you can’t keep her.
While we do not have vet experience, we would recommend going simple for her diet if you have the time. It would be ultra cheap for you to cook your kitty her own chicken without any spices. Buy quality raw chicken and cook in a crock pot (or boil if no crockpot). This meat will stay fresh in fridge for days or can be frozen to maintain freshness. By starting over with basics, we believe you may avoid whatever irritants she may be getting in lower quality food.
Also, her skin may itch which could be encouraging her to lick and pull hair. You could try adding a little olive oil to her diet or put her on omega 3 vitamins.
**The best of luck – we are pulling for you and your kitty! ~~
https://pethangout.com