I draw the line at pumpkin spice kibble
My boy cat has multiple health problems at this point, and one of the more intractable ones has been constipation. He's got kidney disease, and he isn't concentrating urine very well -- although the advantage to that is that when he's peed on the floor, it doesn't smell. I mean, when I brought a urine sample to the vet, she took one look at the vial of liquid and said, "Oh, that's water."
But constipation is not only a side effect of that, it's a problem in itself; it's unpleasant for him, of course, and it also tends to make him vomit, which is unpleasant for everybody. Plus feeling crappy ruins his appetite, reasonably enough, and the vet has told us that he'll more or less live as long as he keeps eating, but if his appetite fails, so will he. But he's already on a high-liquid diet and a laxative; what else could we do?
"Feed him pumpkin," said the vet. "There's something about the fiber in puréed squash that's really good for their bowels, plus cats generally love it."
Sounded good! And I generally have canned pumpkin around, or what's left from a can in the freezer, because I cook with it sometimes; so I plopped a half-teaspoon in each cat's bowl.
They recoiled.
However, since we feed him special canned food mixed with water into a slurry, it was easy to mix a little pumpkin in, and he deigned to eat it. And it's working! With pumpkin plus another mix-in of venison cat food (harder on his kidneys than the kind he's supposed to be on, but he loves it), he's eating up a storm, and much less constipated.
His sister, however, obstinately refuses to eat anything except dry kibble, and she's been off her food lately too. We're trying a different kind of dry kibble.
Troublesome little furballs. It's a good thing they're adorable.
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But constipation is not only a side effect of that, it's a problem in itself; it's unpleasant for him, of course, and it also tends to make him vomit, which is unpleasant for everybody. Plus feeling crappy ruins his appetite, reasonably enough, and the vet has told us that he'll more or less live as long as he keeps eating, but if his appetite fails, so will he. But he's already on a high-liquid diet and a laxative; what else could we do?
"Feed him pumpkin," said the vet. "There's something about the fiber in puréed squash that's really good for their bowels, plus cats generally love it."
Sounded good! And I generally have canned pumpkin around, or what's left from a can in the freezer, because I cook with it sometimes; so I plopped a half-teaspoon in each cat's bowl.
They recoiled.
However, since we feed him special canned food mixed with water into a slurry, it was easy to mix a little pumpkin in, and he deigned to eat it. And it's working! With pumpkin plus another mix-in of venison cat food (harder on his kidneys than the kind he's supposed to be on, but he loves it), he's eating up a storm, and much less constipated.
His sister, however, obstinately refuses to eat anything except dry kibble, and she's been off her food lately too. We're trying a different kind of dry kibble.
Troublesome little furballs. It's a good thing they're adorable.
read
comments | post a comment at Dreamwidth
How to use OpenID (optional unless you are commenting on a locked post)