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Sounds like you're good! Cats are pretty easy really. If by varied diet you mean dry + wet that's fine, but for the record most cats don't really enjoy a lot of variety in food and their stomachs can get upset easily if they eat something they aren't used to, so probably stick to one brand/flavour for each.
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Apr 5, 2022 00:54
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Organza Quiz posted:Sounds like you're good! Cats are pretty easy really. Yeah, I thought that, but then I read that it would be good to provide a variety of high-quality wet food in case of ie food being discontinued or having to switch to a medical diet? I figured that if the wet foods are varied from early on and aren't garbage it'd be okay. Also the brand I'd mainly like to use (Blink) has 4 kitten flavours and I think 6 adult flavours.
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Apr 5, 2022 01:23
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eating only apples posted:Yeah, I thought that, but then I read that it would be good to provide a variety of high-quality wet food in case of ie food being discontinued or having to switch to a medical diet? I figured that if the wet foods are varied from early on and aren't garbage it'd be okay. Also the brand I'd mainly like to use (Blink) has 4 kitten flavours and I think 6 adult flavours. Switching foods often will result in a lot of diarrhea and vomit around your house. Find a brand it likes and stick to it. Switch to something else if it's discontinued, but not before. Don't try to solve a problem that doesn't exist. I think the other thing you need to do in preparation is relax. You're way overthinking things. Cats are chill and are happier when you are, too.
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Apr 5, 2022 01:32
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Yeah you’ll be a great cat parent. Maybe take some time to mentally prepare for the cat to turn its nose up at all of your toys and immediately go play with a piece of trash.
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Apr 5, 2022 01:38
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Deteriorata posted:Switching foods often will result in a lot of diarrhea and vomit around your house. Find a brand it likes and stick to it. Switch to something else if it's discontinued, but not before. Don't try to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Noted! Thanks from an overthinker. He's not even here yet and I'm flipping my poo poo. Will try to chill out. Hawkperson posted:Yeah you’ll be a great cat parent. Maybe take some time to mentally prepare for the cat to turn its nose up at all of your toys and immediately go play with a piece of trash. Already hanging onto cardboard boxes just in case 
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Apr 5, 2022 01:58
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eating only apples posted:Noted! Thanks from an overthinker. He's not even here yet and I'm flipping my poo poo. Will try to chill out. You really remind me of my posts here when we first got Quill in August (look at my post history in the thread at the beginning). It's been so amazing, best decision of my life, it's been a lot easier in some ways than I was ever expecting. Sometimes she'll come over and put her head down right on my hand and purr and it makes me super happy.
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Apr 5, 2022 04:09
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Yeah the joy of cats is they're really easy, give them food and water and stuff to do and love and that's it, you got yourself a little fuzzy independent creature that lives in your house and keeps you company.
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Apr 5, 2022 04:23
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eating only apples posted:Hello. I'm about 4 days out from welcoming a 9-week-old kitten into my second floor flat (third floor apartment in the US). To justify: outdoor cats are the norm here in the UK, and shelters and rescues will absolutely refuse to rehome to indoor homes. We absolutely didn't want to adopt a cat who has previously had free access to outside and would suffer from being permanently inside. I wanted to go for two kittens, but was shut down by landlord. Fortunately, I'm in a situation where someone will be home with cat pretty much all the time. That said:  xzzy posted:Sorry, wasn't being accusatory. Just spouting general advice that no one asked for. 
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Apr 5, 2022 07:46
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Faffas if you don't stop pissing on the couch I'm gonna piss on you you fat little sweatercat
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Apr 5, 2022 14:52
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If there is a place in your house where a cat can get stuck and not be able to get out (like behind a 5ish foot tall hot water heater that is caddycorner to a wall) they will go in there multiple times.
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Apr 5, 2022 15:01
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We live in an old creaky house, and in the winter when the air gets dry the basement door shrinks sufficiently that one of our cats can push it open (the other one could too, she just hasn't figured out cause and effect yet). This is funny and cute, except sometimes she pushes from the other side and gets herself trapped in the basement overnight. The look of fury on her face when we let her out could rout armies.
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Apr 5, 2022 15:05
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quoting myself from last night in the pet health thread in case someone in here might have some experience with this: our manx cat bobby, who is severely overweight, is straining to poop and is unable to. He's been trying for a couple hours and hasn't gotten anything out. He peed quite a bit right before he started trying. He has been starting to have some trouble with this lately, and it looks like it may have come to a head. It's been tough for us to be able to address his weight because prior to the last few months we were living paycheck to paycheck and barely making it so big vet bills were out of the question. We now have the resources to take him to the vet and get this taken care of, but of course we have been foolish and probably waited too long. We're worried he has feline megacolon, which I wish I had heard of before tonight. Does anyone have any familiarity with this? What would be good ways to help him if that's what is going on with him? We currently feed our cats wet food once a day, always containing either some pumpkin or a high-fiber brand, and some dry food throughout the day. They have several purifying fountains around the apartment and I saw bobby both drink a lot today and pee a lot today. Bobby was excited for wet food and ate it excitedly as usual, but then about an hour and a half later started not being able to poop. I'm trying not to panic about it, I know one night of constipation isn't going to kill a cat. Last time I saw him poop was this morning. Last time I saw him pee was just a couple hours ago. He's eaten recently, he's drank recently, and he hasn't made any distressed sounds. I'm typing this out to keep myself grounded, because we even called the e-vet to see if they thought we should bring him in and they simply didn't answer so we just have to wait till morning to get him seen by anyone regardless. e: he's thrown up a couple times because he keeps pushing. didn't throw up any food, just a small amount of liquid. I'm worried he's gonna hurt himself straining. - double posting, but just came back from the vet with bobby. x-rays showed he does have impacted feces, but besides that and his weight he is very healthy. he's getting enemas done today to clean him out and we'll be having him on a special diet to make sure this doesn't happen again + get his weight down. it'll be a long process but it's been a long time coming and it's time to get serious about getting him healthy so we have him for another 15 years instead of another 2 or 3. and so that he is happy. the vet visit will cost us $519 but honestly, that's not that bad, it could be way, way way worse and we can afford it so it's all good. just glad we were able to get him help. He ended up weighing 25.1 pounds, which is actually less than we thought he'd be. He's a big, big boy and it's time to change that. Anyone with advice about feline megacolon or cat weight loss, I'd love to hear it.
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Apr 6, 2022 21:29
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25.1 pounds sounds less like you have a cat and more like you have a small mountain lion
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Apr 6, 2022 21:57
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drunken officeparty posted:25.1 pounds sounds less like you have a cat and more like you have a small mountain lion Yea, he started gaining weight more and more quickly over the past few years. We've tried various things to get it under control but nothing has worked and we're ready to take more extreme measures. He's a big cat, and would probably be around 13-15 pounds optimally. We're gonna be doing whatever the vet recommends here, we really want to finally get this under control.
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Apr 6, 2022 22:09
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The basic cat weight loss tips are be strict about portion control, don't let them free feed, try to incorporate exercise in to meal and treat time (there are food/treat dispenser ball toys that you fill and the cat can get their food out by batting it around) and get ready for the fact that your cat is going to act like you are starving it to death any time it is not sleeping and there's nothing you can do about it unless you give in and you must not give in. Considering how overweight your cat is your vet may be able to prescribe a diet cat food to help with the weight loss.
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Apr 6, 2022 22:50
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Anyone have any experience with transdermal Fluoxetine for treating anxiety in a cat? I need to figure something out about our girl because she's still having random outbursts of aggression towards us and if you've followed my posts through the years we've tried every method of giving her this medication and it never really works out for one reason or another. I see Chewy has this compounded cream that goes in/on the ear and the reviews seem generally pretty positive.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:06
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explosivo posted:Anyone have any experience with transdermal Fluoxetine for treating anxiety in a cat? I need to figure something out about our girl because she's still having random outbursts of aggression towards us and if you've followed my posts through the years we've tried every method of giving her this medication and it never really works out for one reason or another. I see Chewy has this compounded cream that goes in/on the ear and the reviews seem generally pretty positive. No personal experience, but some friends of ours used subdermal ear cream to dose their neurotic cat (with Valium, iirc?), and they said it worked well and wasn't too difficult. They used a local compounding pharmacy, but if they sell it straight from Chewy now, all the better.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:27
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Nothing like a 2 am emergency vet visit because your dumbass chonk sat in silly putty that your own dumbass left open when you fell asleep on the couch  At least the tech took care of it and didnt charge but a cut and clean fee instead of a whole emergency visit.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:27
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Antivehicular posted:No personal experience, but some friends of ours used subdermal ear cream to dose their neurotic cat (with Valium, iirc?), and they said it worked well and wasn't too difficult. They used a local compounding pharmacy, but if they sell it straight from Chewy now, all the better. Thanks, this is reassuring. Going to have to reach out to the vet and see if they can write the prescription.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:30
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Sydin posted:The basic cat weight loss tips are be strict about portion control, don't let them free feed, try to incorporate exercise in to meal and treat time (there are food/treat dispenser ball toys that you fill and the cat can get their food out by batting it around) and get ready for the fact that your cat is going to act like you are starving it to death any time it is not sleeping and there's nothing you can do about it unless you give in and you must not give in. yea this is part of what's made it hard. we both work from home taking phone calls all day so sudden adjustments to diet are difficult for exactly this reason. At this point though, I'm willing to take some dings from work over it if I have to, I think that concern is nothing compared to how important it is to get him to lose weight. We talked to the vet some more about it when we picked him up, and from looking at the xrays it's clear he's been very uncomfortable for quite a while, probably akin to if you ate a really huge meal and felt super bloated afterwards, but for months. Once we get him to poo poo all this out he will likely feel vastly better immediately and that will make it easier to get him more active, though that's not as important as controlling his diet better. We'll start the serious calorie counting with him as soon as we get this impaction cleared, the vet said not to worry about getting that going until this is dealt with. They weren't able to get it all with the enemas today so we're bringing him back tomorrow, though we're hoping it winds up coming out tonight. We've given him miralax just now and hopefully that'll shake it loose. The vet seems confident that it may take a little time, but eventually this will work. Once it does we'll get him losing weight and hopefully this time next year he's close to a normal weight.
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Apr 7, 2022 01:11
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I finally did it you guys. I took out the cats and closed the bedroom door. I slept great.
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Apr 8, 2022 13:30
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dpkg chopra posted:I finally did it you guys. I took out the cats and closed the bedroom door.  Despite being allergic to my cats, their pretty good about going to sleep when we do in bed or at the foot so they don't normally wake me up ...except for Sage who, ever since he was a kitten, has had a vendetta against my feet if they dare to poke outside of the blankets
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Apr 8, 2022 13:50
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Jet naps peacefully alongside me, he just has a horrible habit of zooming into my room and onto the headboard around midnight. I’ve considered earplugs.
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Apr 8, 2022 14:41
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dpkg chopra posted:I finally did it you guys. I took out the cats and closed the bedroom door.  You monster.I can't sleep without at least one cat. My wife is having awful insomnia (great during pregnancy) and Bootsy is sleeping in her spot while I'm in bed. Normally Faffas shuffles in at some point and blocks my feet too. Yesterday, my wife had Prinny, Perdy, Chino, and Bootsy all on the bed with her, while Fartie was under the head end of her bed. Life is cats everywhere 
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Apr 8, 2022 15:11
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Is it all right for me to get a bit dismal with recent shelter volunteer experience for a bit in here? Not sure whether that's going to fall outside thread scope - it is just a cat shelter so animals are all on track, but the shelter experience is... quite different from a cat at home, and all.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:35
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We have a master bed/bathroom situation at my house and since we have one of the litter boxes in there we keep the door open. I'm also a pretty hard sleeper and only Lena is really much of bed snuggler and even then conditions have to be just right or else she'll just sleep in the cat tree or on a couch. Katya will come up for a snuggle sometimes in the morning if I've lied back down after feeding them.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:01
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SkyeAuroline posted:Is it all right for me to get a bit dismal with recent shelter volunteer experience for a bit in here? Not sure whether that's going to fall outside thread scope - it is just a cat shelter so animals are all on track, but the shelter experience is... quite different from a cat at home, and all. Vent away, I've ranted on poo poo in this thread before. All of our cats are Humane Society cats so I'm very interested.  in other words.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:57
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I've been working with a local shelter for about 4 years now. Hitting the burnout point, but that's a bit of an aside (more e/n subject). It's about 200 cats (slightly above design capacity), a handful of permanent paid employees in a mix of full and part time, and a handful of us who are volunteers. I care about these cats and I'm sure everyone else does too, but some of the caring is... misguided. There's two in particular I'm concerned about and I'm hoping for a sanity check that I'm not the only one seeing a problem. Purrcilla is our only remaining Siamese as of a few weeks ago. A few years old, beautiful coloration (she's that Siamese-tortie mixture?), and... extremely overweight. She's been called a bowling ball cat more than once. I don't remember the exact number but the last time she was seen by a vet she weighed about eighteen pounds, and it visibly impacts her ability to clean herself. Our setup is several communal "rooms" in the main body of the shelter, plus a handful of single "cat condos", all of which are in use either for cats or for storing stuff that doesn't fit in the closets/storage room. Part of what that implies, because of the lack of permanent staff available to do scheduled feedings, is that everyone in the shelter is on free-feed including the condos. The genius plan cooked up by cat care to get her to lose weight is... to keep her in the communal room she's in during the week and let her out into the hallway on weekends (where she usually just finds a bed and sleeps, as cats do). That's it. No dietary modification, because they can't enforce it without moving her to a condo, and nobody wants to make the call to use another condo especially with kittens coming in every week. No way to make her exercise, since she doesn't want to play or anything. Just... trust that she'll work off the weight by walking up and down the hallway with no incentive or cause. This is never going to work, it's straightforward as it gets, and I feel insane trying to explain this to the people who think it's a great idea. I feel terrible for her, she can't possibly be happy like this. But as just a room parent (and not even for that room) I have no sway. The other one is a murkier picture. Jasper, who I've posted before, is pretty well bonded with me. He's an 11 year old boy with chronic respiratory illness, that he's had all his life. He's not contagious to other cats, he's just prone to sneezing and congestion (I sympathize, little guy). I know he came out of a neglect situation and have bits of the details, but I don't know the full picture. I do know his behavior - he'll stand up and get ready to run if you pet him any further than midway down the back, and he will bolt and run if you try to hold him in any way, touch his face, or do anything. This is after four years of actively working with him, with the person he's closest to and most comfortable to; he's even more skittish with other people. He's at least started approaching visitors and standing on their laps, but he's abjectly terrified of anyone moving within a few feet of him, and he will never go near a carrier without kicking or screaming. All this is setting the picture for the dilemma. He's been to several vets in the area by now. Everyone has reached the same conclusion - he's going to have chronic respiratory issues his whole life, and there's nothing that can be done to prevent that. He's been on every medication a vet was willing to prescribe except one (that's already in his future); he only responded to doxy and he can't be kept on it long term due to other health concerns. A group of volunteers (and possibly some of the paid workers, it wasn't clear) have decided this isn't good enough, and they want him to go ~3 hours each way to a university vet lab that we've previously used for severely ill cats to some success. The shelter isn't willing to fund it directly for reasons already given, so this group has decided unilaterally to stage a fundraiser to pay for the vet care and transport. Hundreds of dollars that are needed elsewhere that this fundraiser could just as easily go to without any changes in the actual fundraising. I don't think it's a good idea. I love Jasper more than I love most humans in my life - hell, most humans in my family. I want the best for him. But sticking him in a carrier for a 6 hour round trip to get poked and prodded by a vet for what's almost guaranteed to be nothing, at a price tag of unknown hundreds of dollars, seems... wasteful. He's adapted to life like this as well as you can expect him to, but ultimately - he's a frail, old, traumatized, and bored cat in an overgrown cage. I would love for him to be healthier, but it's not going to meaningfully improve his quality of life, especially when we have 200 other cats to consider who have their own myriad issues. The whole situation feels bad and I have no good answers. I'm not even sure if I'm not the rear end in a top hat in this arrangement. Just trying to navigate a dysfunctional shelter arrangement and do the best I can for my guys.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:30
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For the obese cat, it sounds like no one wants to make the call to dedicate the resources needed to make her lose weight, and that's the rub. There's likely a manpower issue of making sure there's a feeding schedule since she can't freefeed, space issue because the shelter seems to prioritize the condos for other purposes, and motivational issues with the cat herself which means it requires extra work by someone to get her to move and burn calories. I don't think there's a good answer here for you, and you're probably gonna drive yourself crazy with something that you don't have the power to change. For your sneezy boy, I agree it's a bad idea. The visit itself will be highly stressful, the actual condition is not life-threatening and can only be managed, the money can be better spent. Even leaving the cost aside, I'd feel terrible subjecting a senior cat to such an experience for little gain to either life expectancy or qualify of life.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:54
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Hey guys, quick question about the potential health risks of eating mice whole. So we have four cats at our house here, the youngest and most recent resident being a semi-feral cat named Mini-Scratcher whom we trapped and brought in last winter - after his previous owners declined to come and get him, we adopted him and he’s been a wonderful addition to the household - a total sweetheart, even though I’m the only human he allows to pet and cuddle with him so far, he’s made a lot of progress and is very friendly with the other 3 cats. Anyway, a couple weeks ago he got extremely interested in the cabinet under the sink, and we eventually deduced that he sensed mice in there so we started leaving the cabinets open, which of course intrigued him further, and about a week ago Mini-Scratcher caught his first indoor mouse! He was very proud of himself and so were we, and after playing with it for a while, Mini went ahead and ate the entire mouse - took the head in one bite and the body in several and are the entire drat thing tail and all - not a hair left behind. He was an outdoor feral cat for the first 6-12 months of his life though, and probably had to survive on a diet of such things for a while, so I didn’t worry too much… but that was a week ago, and Mini has proceeded to catch (and eat) a mouse from the exact same place (cabinet under the sink) for seven straight nights now! Well, actually he failed to catch a mouse one night and then caught two the next, but still. Seven mice in seven days, and he’s eaten every trace of all of them. Aside from being an extremely efficient and tidy pest remover, should we be at all concerned about this? Is a visit to the vet warranted because of any nasty parasites/infections a live mouse might carry? Anecdotally he seems fine - he’s pooping normally and is his usual happy ebullient self. My roommates seem just thrilled and impressed by this, and I am too, but I cannot help but feel a little worried,, too.
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Apr 9, 2022 13:05
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kaworu posted:Hey guys, quick question about the potential health risks of eating mice whole. Use a tiny knife and spatchcock them first.
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Apr 9, 2022 14:01
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kaworu posted:Mice. Mice are one of the most normal things for cats to eat. So in terms of nutrition, bowel obstructions and so on there's really nothing to worry about. There is a danger that the mice (or especially rats) might have been poisoned and pass the poison on to your cat, but if they're mice from your house and you haven't been putting out any poison that's not very likely. The big problem mice can bring is worms and parasites. Cats that eat mice should be dewormed regularly, at least every 3 months, even if they have no symptoms. Mice don't carry rabies (out of cat prey animals, practically only bats can), and I'm not aware of other diseases that mice could pass to cats. So if there are any, it's probably pretty rare.
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Apr 9, 2022 15:39
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If it's a fairly dense suburb/urban area (I don't believe it is, but want to be sure) you may have to account for your neighbors trying to poison rats, so that'd be the biggest concern by far.
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Apr 9, 2022 15:44
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kaworu posted:Mouse stuff Sounds like you have (or had) a mouse infestation and should keep an eye out for droppings on your countertops and such.
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Apr 9, 2022 16:38
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From what I remember you live in a rural area? Then I'd say it's fine. I've lived in city apartments where mice were freely moving between the century-old houses and even thought we never put out poison, other people definitely did. Don't ask me how I know, it would get pretty gruesome.
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Apr 9, 2022 20:20
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Anyone have any experience with microchip feeders? Current situation is our younger cat is eating the older cats portion of food and has ballooned in size. She is very chunky for her size and kicks her pouch around as it drags beneath her. They run and play still frequently but the older cat has lost considerable weight (dropping from 13lbs to 10lbs, she is a very large rag doll cat) and now we just want to make sure she’s getting her portion of food and the younger one needs to stop eating the older ones food. So now we need to look into a feeder only the older one has access to. Any recommendations? Things to watch out for with some brands? Quick edit to cover this suggestion before it’s suggested. I have tried multiple times to feed them in separate locations. Problem is the younger one will NOT touch her food without the older one around. I have sat with her in the bedroom while I watched a two hour movie. She just laid on the bed and ignored her food until I opened that door and the older one came in, then the younger one starting eating. I’ve tried multiple attempts with varying times and locations. She just refuses to eat without the older one around. dorium fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 03:42
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dorium posted:Anyone have any experience with microchip feeders? Current situation is our younger cat is eating the older cats portion of food and has ballooned in size. She is very chunky for her size and kicks her pouch around as it drags beneath her. They run and play still frequently but the older cat has lost considerable weight (dropping from 13lbs to 10lbs, she is a very large rag doll cat) and now we just want to make sure she’s getting her portion of food and the younger one needs to stop eating the older ones food. So now we need to look into a feeder only the older one has access to. Plan to get enough for each cat, SurePet is the only good option. If you get only a single one, you'll end up with one stealing from the uncovered bowl that isn't theirs, then the cat who's food was stolen will go hungry and starve since they can't steal from the other one.
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Apr 10, 2022 04:25
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Thanks for the rec! Katya just had his first adult exam and the vet wants to keep him at 15 lbs, which he's at, or have him loose a little weight. Lena is pretty small still and they both switch up bowls all the time whenever I feed them and I know Katya pushes her out sometimes. The vet did suggest trying an auto feeder first but I'll look at the Sure Pet option too.
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Apr 10, 2022 05:08
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Thanks for the replies, guys! Yeah we definitely live in a fairly rural area - up in the mountains, and we’re also the only house on about an acre and a half of land, so I’d honestly be kinda shocked if we didn’t have at least a dozen or so mouse squatting every winter. I can actually hear them skittering around behind the ceiling in a certain area of the basement, which just happened to be right below the sink where Mini-Scratcher has been making all of his kills. I wouldn’t really be worried if he were just like, eating the heads and disemboweling them like them most other cats I’ve known, or if he had just eaten like 1-2 of them over the same period of time. It’s more the consumption of 7-8 *whole* mice over as many days that makes me slightly concerned - that just seems like a lot of hair and bone to be consuming, but then again I’m not a formerly feral cat. I have to add that my longtime 15-year-old cat Jackie (who was born amongst humans and has never killed nor eaten a single mouse) has the funniest reaction to all of this! When Mini caught his first one and was releasing it and catching it repeatedly for fun, we tried to get Jackie interested with absolutely no success. In fact, she repeatedly *turned her back* to Mini’s antics with the half-dead mouse several times before just stalking out of the room with an annoyed meow! I’d never seen anything like it, if I didn’t know better I’d say she was morally repulsed. And she’s stayed consistent, hasn’t shown any interest in any of the successive mice Mini has caught.
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Apr 10, 2022 08:13
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Buff Hardback posted:Plan to get enough for each cat, SurePet is the only good option. Any idea why it is so small? I wish they had a model with an auto-dispensing tower attached. SurePet looks like you need to constantly refill it.
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Apr 10, 2022 11:48
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