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Post by smilesbetter on Nov 24, 2013 21:19:02 GMT
Hello! This is my first post so bear with me...
I am looking after a cat for someone at the moment as the owner can't look after it. The cat is as small as my own 3kg cat height wise, but weighs 5.3kg which shocked even the vet who I'm sure has seen his fair share of fat cats. Obviously she has been on a diet since I got her, and she is very active, running around with my cat loads. She's clearly been obese for a long time (the owner thought she was slim).
When I first got her she was eating huge amounts of Purina dry cat food, as the three different people who have looked after the cat in the last half year have just given her everything she will eat. As she has received virtually no human contact in all this time and had no stimulation, it's hardly surprising that all she did was eat.
anyway since I've had her, I weaned her onto wet food with a high meat content as the dry food is virtually all grains and I don't feel that is good for a cat (dry food makes my other cat sick), but she was regularly vomiting mostly water, and I noticed that she had a habit of gulping up huge amounts of water getting through a whole bowl a day (my own cat rarely drinks water as she gets enough from the food). The vet suggested putting her onto dry food and to monitor the situation. For about two weeks she only vomited a couple of times on the dry food, but has today vomited a dark brown liquid that has the consistency of a chocolate sauce (sorry!) but also had what looked like some sort of thicker faecal matter in it. It didn't particularly smell, surprisingly and I have no idea what it was. She hasn't eaten since this morning and it's now 10 at night. She can't have eaten anything else throughout the day, but as usual she has drank a huge amount of water. She is fed separately from my own cat so she has only had her exact allocated mornings food...
Anyway I am of course taking her to the vet as soon as they open tomorrow morning, but I wanted to know:
- how can I wean her onto wet food without it making her sick all the time? - is there anything else I should be looking out for in her behaviour to alert the vet of tomorrow? - is there anything I can do tonight when feeding her that might prevent her from being sick again? I don't think she eats particularly fast (which is my other cats problem with dry food).
Sorry for the long first post! I'm just so worried about the cat, and I'd hate for her to be suffering at all.
Thanks, Erika.
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Post by scallywag on Nov 24, 2013 21:48:05 GMT
Hi smilesbetter sorry to read all this. Sadly I have no experience of cats but theres a couple logged on here spider and gladys hopefully they will see your post soon Welcome to the forum by the way x
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Post by gladys on Nov 24, 2013 21:57:44 GMT
Hi Erika Welcome to the forum. I think a vet visit is best but for tonight could you mix some wet with the dry food? Might make her slow down with the eating as she has to stop and chew the kibble. But cut down the amount as on diet. The only other thing you can do is give food little and often rather than just one or two big meal, say give four small ones. Could the stuff she throw up be hair mixed in with the water and food? Does she groom herself a lot? Over night if she is the only one who can get to her water bowl you might want to measure the amount of water you give and then see how much is left in the morning, this can tell the vet a lot. They may suggest blood tests tomorrow for thyroid, kidney, diabetes to name a few. Not sure if that helps you but please keep us posted.
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Post by spider on Nov 25, 2013 0:06:19 GMT
dont think there is much i can add to gladys advice i see our cat sometimes just gulps down wet food and seconds later its back up same as it went down sometimes cats seem to make themselves sick hair ball kinda thing how about some light dry food for the larger cat if she prefers dry to wet do let us know how u get on at the vet
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Post by tonib on Nov 25, 2013 2:52:56 GMT
Hi smilesbetter, welcome to the forum. Sorry to read about the cat you're looking after. I think any advice I could give is too late for tonight but I would suggest not feeding her in the morning before the vets visit & remove her water around 7/8 am so that if they do decide to give her any anaesthetic there can be no delay - don't panic I'm not suggesting they will but just thinking in human terms of having an endoscopy. One suggestion as regards food in general is are you feeding a jelly food or a gravy? A friend of mine's cat has been sick on eating jelly but not on gravy. One of our cats hardly drinks (that we see - he goes outdoors) but when he does he takes long drinks. He also has wet food but also dry. A recommendation for upset stomachs is cooked chicken & rice as its bland on the stomach. Hope you can get this solved successfully. Please let us know how it goes.
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Post by heartpawprints on Nov 25, 2013 18:02:05 GMT
Hmm, yes, the vet is your best bet at the moment. I had a cat who would be sick a lot because he ate too quickly and then it transpired he had a tumour. The dark colour of the regurgitation may just be to do with the colour of the food so may not in itself be a big worry. I applaud your efforts to help the cat slim to a healthier weight - there are several of us on the forum who have fat transitioning to slim cats. It maybe that he is very sensitive to the food he's eating, in which case I'd recommend something called Almo Nature food as it has less allergens in it. If that's not the issue, to help weight loss, I can really recommend Metabolism food which is what Ruppee is eating currently and is successfully slimming down.
Let us all know what happens with the vet, wishing everyone well.
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Post by gladys on Nov 27, 2013 11:40:13 GMT
Just thought I'd see how the cat is doing. Did you got to the vets smilesbetter?
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Post by smilesbetter on Nov 27, 2013 18:27:15 GMT
Oh, so sorry!! I was expecting an email if I#d had any replies haha s I#d assumed no one had. Thank you so much for the advice!!
When we were at the vets Mieze (Visiting fat cat) got two blood samples taken, and the vet has ordered tests for quite a few different things as she is very worried about the drinking lots of water thing. Apparently they should have the results by Friday so I'll let you all know how she's getting on!
She has been fine since her vet visit, still drinking loads but she hasn't been sick again thankfully. Oooh and the vet weighed her, she has lost quite a bit of weight on her diet, she has gone from 5.3kg to 4.5kg in just two weeks. is that too much too fast or is it okay? The vet seemed quite impressed, but I've heard many people on diets saying that it's important not to lose too much too fast. Haha, I have no idea!
Also I did wonder about he vomit being to do with hairballs, but there was never any hair in the vomit. The vomit was mostly just water and undigested food normally, and the strange brown vomit was definitly not hairy at all either. i've only ever seen one cat cough up a hairball in my life though so I'm not totally sure what to look out for. My own cat is a Turkish Angora so she only has one layer of fur and rarely moults haha, she doesn't have a hairball problem thanks to this so I have nothing to compare it to.
Thanks so much for the replies!
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Post by smilesbetter on Nov 27, 2013 18:39:48 GMT
Oh, and yeah Mieze currently eats Purina dry food which is what her previous owner fed her. She gets an exact amount measured out for her every day and then I give her at least two meals a day from that. I'd like to change her to wet food though as the purina food is mostly grains and I've heard that cats can't really digest that so well. I have now tried adding a small amount of wet food to Mieze's morning meal instead of some of the dry food and so far so good.
My own cat, Carlotta, eats Sheba wet food only and is fed separate from Mieze to make sure there is no food swapping haha. I used to give her a small amount of dry food which I'd hide around my flat, or put in a food ball or in a toy that I've made for some behavioural enrichment, which she loved, but I can't do that at the moment with Mieze and Carlotta actually gets far more fun and enrichment from having Mieze around than the food games could ever give her. Carlotta is sick almost straight away if she eats dry food from a bowl, I guess she eats it too fast but she doesn't seem to miss it anyway and is happy with a pure wet food diet.
What complicated cats, haha!
I know there are brands of dry food that have less grains, but i live in Germany and its really difficult to find any that doesn't have grains as one of the top two ingredients.
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Post by tonib on Nov 27, 2013 22:04:13 GMT
Glad to hear that Mieze's not being sick any more & hope that the vet gets good information from the blood tests. I must admit that I would have thought that 0.8Kg in 2 weeks was a little fast but the vet would be the best to comment on that. If she's been sick during that period that may have contributed to the weight loss. As to dry food we feed James WellBeloved its hypoallergenic but not necessarily cereal free though having checked their webstite they do have a cereal free it has pea & potato instead. www.wellbeloved.com They also have a website for Germany but looking it seems to be dog only. Interestingly I've checked zooplus online store & they have JWB on the UK site but not the german site only the dog food. I've heard Orijien get good reviews with our dog owning members & I see they have cat food & it is available in Germany or at least through www.zooplus.de don't know about shops. Hope all goes well & thanks for updating us. As to email notifications of replies you need to alter your profile so that you get the ones you want. Click on the profile menu option Click on Edit Profile - to the right of the screen displayed Click on Notifications tab You will get a choice of Forum or Email tick boxes for different types of notification - if you leave them both blank against a type you won't get any. When you've changed what you want then click on Save Notification Setting at the bottom of the page.
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Post by smilesbetter on Nov 28, 2013 17:09:34 GMT
Hello! Yeah I thought it was quite a lot of weight to lose, I hadn't actually realised she'd lost any (she doesn't feel any lighter in her carrier on the walk to the vet unfortunately, haha). She was only sick a few times in the two weeks that I know of, but she has been getting a huge amount of exercise with my cat. Carlotta seems to love being chased and so the two of them spend a lot of time running around after each other and running together in general. I've never seen two more active cats, but I think it was a different story before Mieze came to stay with me as there was no other cat to play with. Thank you for the links, I will check them out now and see what's available in Germany. And thanks for the advice for getting email notifications, I'm just going to try and sort that out now
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Post by tonib on Nov 28, 2013 23:49:43 GMT
Nice to hear the 2 cats are playing well together & you're right it could just be exercise helping to get the weight off. However if they are being energetic then they will possibly need extra food even though you're aimin for a weight loss. As you said a gentle weight loss is best. Having said that as long as the weight loss steadys then I'd keep on as you are.
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Post by smilesbetter on Dec 3, 2013 0:45:47 GMT
I hope it's the exercise! She has an appointment at the vets on the 10th for her booster so I'll see what her weight is then and ask advice.
Vet got the blood results back except one, he said "cells are displaced" and said he'll explain on the 10th and that it's nothing to worry about. No idea what that means but glad it's nothing serious. She hasn't been sick again thankfully so the only thing left over from her recent sickness is that her poops are still very light and watery looking, but that seems to be getting better and she's been drinking less which is probably why. Cats are so confusing! They display one behaviour for a few weeks and then suddenly go back to normal (apparently). Will be interesting to see what the vet says and what displaced cells are.
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Post by tonib on Dec 3, 2013 1:26:59 GMT
Glad you've had good news from the blood tests smilesbetter. I must admit I've no idea what "cells are displaced" means but I'm not in the veterinary profession Sounds like what was upsetting her digestive system is gradually clearing itself out of her system. Hope that continues. Good luck at the vets on 10th - let us know how you get on.
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Post by smilesbetter on Dec 6, 2013 23:34:39 GMT
Thanks tonib Mieze is now fully on wet food which she seems to enjoy a lot more. She hasn't been sick at all on it so I guess I did it right. Poet appointment is still a few days away, looking forward to hearing what he has to say and getting a further update on her weight to see how her diet is going. I got a photo of her today and realised that in the phot her fat belly bulges out a bit even as she lies in the "lying down but ready to leg it" position (is that a rubbish description? You know, when they lie down but are still on all four feet). Poor thing haha, she feels lighter to carry now though.
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