Anybody who has cats over 15 PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU FEED!!

roseeden · 05-24-2005, 04:35 PM

Anybody who has cats over 15 please tell me what you guys FEED your furbabies!!!!

I don't trust the new holistic diets and my cats hate them. I am looking for a reputable pet food company that has been around for more than 15 years.

Annissa · 05-24-2005, 04:45 PM

Sabby will be 16 in August. When he was 13 he was diagnosed with diabetes and after much trial and error (mostly error) with several different brands of food, I settled on Wellness canned. He's been pretty healthy since then.

roseeden · 05-24-2005, 04:54 PM

Yeah I give my cats Wellness canned, too. Actually Wellness is pretty much the only holistic brand I trust.

Could you please tell me about your "errors", too???

Annissa · 05-25-2005, 08:46 AM

Mistake 1: free-feeding Purina Cat Chow until he was 13 and my vet insisted I put him on a diet. He was 19 pounds.

Mistake 2: Iams Weight Control - In conjunction with being overweight and genetically prone to diabetes, I believe this was what caused the diabetes. The proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." I knew there was something wrong when he lost 7 pounds in just over a month.

Purina DM - not a mistake, I just really hated the smelly poop. It's hard describe the horror of a DM BM. Sabby would use the litterbox and it was like you'd need a gas mask to be anywhere in the house. The smell defies description. It was bad.

Mistake 3: Eukanuba - In an effort to get away from the smelly poop, my vet (a different vet than the one who insisted I use weight control food) recommended using Eukanuba because, according to my vet, it is the non-prescription dry food with the highest protein content. I've also heard that the carb blend they use is formulated to slowly enter the blood stream and not cause the swing in blood glucose that other dry foods cause. I have no evidence to back that up, though, and I couldn't get Sabby regulated on it.

Mistake 4: Bil-Jac. I'd always heard great things about this food and I was taken in by the sales person's spiel. She said that Bil-Jac had the highest protein-content and that the corn that is one of the main ingredients in the food was actually good for cats. Sabby had horrible glucose swings and several UTIs.

That was about the time I started talking to Dr. Jean about diabetes and got a better understanding of what I needed to do to control it better. She recommended Wellness and I have had terrific success with it. Not only is Sabby regulated, he's also completely off insulin injections. I can't recommend Wellness highly enough.

lilysong · 05-25-2005, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shengmei

I don't trust the new holistic diets and my cats hate them.

What ingredients are you avoiding? What ingredients do you desire?

"Holistic" doesn't really say much.

Lisa

lilysong · 05-25-2005, 09:03 AM

FWIW, I emphatically do NOT recommend Iams. All my vets reassured me that it was best, and I went along with it. My boy ate it until he died just after turning sixteen. He was overweight for most of his life, and in the last years, we found out he had heart problems, renal failure, hypertension (leading to blindness), and a horrifyingly massive tumor in his abdomen.

I have no idea if any of this could be prevented, but he obviously wasn't helped by his diet.

Lisa

roseeden · 05-25-2005, 11:59 PM

I am avoiding potatoes and tomatoes. I am also avoiding garlic, onions, and alfalfa sprouts. I am not too crazy about kelp either even though I am pretty sure it is good for them. It smells too strong for them to eat it.

I am trying to find foods with lamb liver......no luck, though.

Gudewife · 05-26-2005, 08:51 AM

Umm...Wellness contains both garlic and alfalfa, and I am pretty sure that their dry "lite" formula contains tomato pomace.

I figure that canned cat food is sufficiently cooked to destroy the cyanogenic glycosides in any alfalfa included...and based on the labeling and analysis, both are fairly far down in the list and don't make up much of the food anyhow.

I'd probably pick cooked cyanogenic glycosides and cooked nightshades over sodium nitrite, wheat middlings, and a completely by-product diet any day, but I am biased against food dyes, my cat can't eat wheat, and I just personally think that a diet comprised completely of by-products is inadequately bioavailable to be worthwhile. YMMV.

I'd highly suggest making your own food, as then you'd know what was going into it...however, if you want to use any sort of liver, buy only certified organic, because the liver is a warehouse for environmental toxins. With muscle meat, it's not as bad, but everything toxic eventually ends up concentrated in the liver, so it's best to control its quality as much as possible when using it in small animal diets. Also, liver/organs should never comprise the entire diet, only a percentage of it. I'd actually prefer not feeding liver at all to feeding commercially-produced/farmed liver.

Annissa · 05-26-2005, 09:44 AM

I'm not the kind of girl to shy away from big words, but the second paragraph of your post made my head swim, Gudewife.

*goes to dictionary.com*

roseeden · 05-26-2005, 01:05 PM

Hey without sound scientific terms it is impossible to come up with sound scientific knowledge

05-24-2005, 04:35 PM	#1 (permalink)
roseeden Premier Cat Join Date: May 2005 Location: BRAZOS VALLEY, Texas Posts: 5,630	Anybody who has cats over 15 PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU FEED!! Anybody who has cats over 15 please tell me what you guys FEED your furbabies!!!! I don't trust the new holistic diets and my cats hate them. I am looking for a reputable pet food company that has been around for more than 15 years.

05-24-2005, 04:45 PM	#2 (permalink)
Annissa Cat Addict Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Northeastern Ohio Posts: 3,168	Sabby will be 16 in August. When he was 13 he was diagnosed with diabetes and after much trial and error (mostly error) with several different brands of food, I settled on Wellness canned. He's been pretty healthy since then.

05-24-2005, 04:54 PM	#3 (permalink)
roseeden Premier Cat Join Date: May 2005 Location: BRAZOS VALLEY, Texas Posts: 5,630	Yeah I give my cats Wellness canned, too. Actually Wellness is pretty much the only holistic brand I trust. Could you please tell me about your "errors", too???

05-25-2005, 08:46 AM	#4 (permalink)
Annissa Cat Addict Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Northeastern Ohio Posts: 3,168	Mistake 1: free-feeding Purina Cat Chow until he was 13 and my vet insisted I put him on a diet. He was 19 pounds. Mistake 2: Iams Weight Control - In conjunction with being overweight and genetically prone to diabetes, I believe this was what caused the diabetes. The proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." I knew there was something wrong when he lost 7 pounds in just over a month. Purina DM - not a mistake, I just really hated the smelly poop. It's hard describe the horror of a DM BM. Sabby would use the litterbox and it was like you'd need a gas mask to be anywhere in the house. The smell defies description. It was bad. Mistake 3: Eukanuba - In an effort to get away from the smelly poop, my vet (a different vet than the one who insisted I use weight control food) recommended using Eukanuba because, according to my vet, it is the non-prescription dry food with the highest protein content. I've also heard that the carb blend they use is formulated to slowly enter the blood stream and not cause the swing in blood glucose that other dry foods cause. I have no evidence to back that up, though, and I couldn't get Sabby regulated on it. Mistake 4: Bil-Jac. I'd always heard great things about this food and I was taken in by the sales person's spiel. She said that Bil-Jac had the highest protein-content and that the corn that is one of the main ingredients in the food was actually good for cats. Sabby had horrible glucose swings and several UTIs. That was about the time I started talking to Dr. Jean about diabetes and got a better understanding of what I needed to do to control it better. She recommended Wellness and I have had terrific success with it. Not only is Sabby regulated, he's also completely off insulin injections. I can't recommend Wellness highly enough.

05-25-2005, 09:03 AM	#6 (permalink)
lilysong Premier Cat Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: California Posts: 3,774	FWIW, I emphatically do NOT recommend Iams. All my vets reassured me that it was best, and I went along with it. My boy ate it until he died just after turning sixteen. He was overweight for most of his life, and in the last years, we found out he had heart problems, renal failure, hypertension (leading to blindness), and a horrifyingly massive tumor in his abdomen. I have no idea if any of this could be prevented, but he obviously wasn't helped by his diet. Lisa

05-25-2005, 11:59 PM	#7 (permalink)
roseeden Premier Cat Join Date: May 2005 Location: BRAZOS VALLEY, Texas Posts: 5,630	I am avoiding potatoes and tomatoes. I am also avoiding garlic, onions, and alfalfa sprouts. I am not too crazy about kelp either even though I am pretty sure it is good for them. It smells too strong for them to eat it. I am trying to find foods with lamb liver......no luck, though.

05-26-2005, 08:51 AM	#8 (permalink)
Gudewife Cat Addict Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 2,159	Umm...Wellness contains both garlic and alfalfa, and I am pretty sure that their dry "lite" formula contains tomato pomace. I figure that canned cat food is sufficiently cooked to destroy the cyanogenic glycosides in any alfalfa included...and based on the labeling and analysis, both are fairly far down in the list and don't make up much of the food anyhow. I'd probably pick cooked cyanogenic glycosides and cooked nightshades over sodium nitrite, wheat middlings, and a completely by-product diet any day, but I am biased against food dyes, my cat can't eat wheat, and I just personally think that a diet comprised completely of by-products is inadequately bioavailable to be worthwhile. YMMV. I'd highly suggest making your own food, as then you'd know what was going into it...however, if you want to use any sort of liver, buy only certified organic, because the liver is a warehouse for environmental toxins. With muscle meat, it's not as bad, but everything toxic eventually ends up concentrated in the liver, so it's best to control its quality as much as possible when using it in small animal diets. Also, liver/organs should never comprise the entire diet, only a percentage of it. I'd actually prefer not feeding liver at all to feeding commercially-produced/farmed liver.

05-26-2005, 09:44 AM	#9 (permalink)
Annissa Cat Addict Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Northeastern Ohio Posts: 3,168	I'm not the kind of girl to shy away from big words, but the second paragraph of your post made my head swim, Gudewife. goes to dictionary.com

05-26-2005, 01:05 PM	#10 (permalink)
roseeden Premier Cat Join Date: May 2005 Location: BRAZOS VALLEY, Texas Posts: 5,630	Hey without sound scientific terms it is impossible to come up with sound scientific knowledge

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