With Cow Mau and Indy gone now, I have to get back to certain issues which I had shelved because I had to give priority to looking after Cow Mau and Indy in their respective final weeks.
One is getting the Blondies to eat more raw food failing which, then wet food instead of depending too much on kibble as snacks. They definitely need more water in their daily diet. I must also mention that Indy drank a lot of water all his life. Perhaps it was his body’s natural way of managing his reliance on only one kidney (for new readers, Indy most likely lived with just one kidney all his life).
Another is also to move everyone more to a cat’s ancestral food like birds and rodents instead of fish. From what I understand, fish is not an ancestral food of the cat because their ancestors come from the arid deserts of Persia. Animals do not evolve much biologically or rather, it takes an incredibly long time for them to evolve. That is why there are humans who opt for the Paleolithic Diet, aka the Caveman Diet. Our cats are on the raw diet, which contains chicken, duck, quail, turkey and rabbit. But I also give them canned fish. I wish more cat food manufacturers would use smaller fish like sardine, mackerel, anchovy and herring, but most canned fish available on the market uses tuna. The tuna is a large fish and I worry about the content of heavy metals and toxins in big fishes.
The other reason I worry about fish is the content of natural salt in them because they come from the ocean.
Maybe I am so phobic of chronic kidney disease by now. We have had so many cats who passed away due to CKD – Vincent (he was a street cat, so of unknown age, but elderly), Pole (at 16), Bunny (at 17), Cleo (at almost 17) and Indy (at 16). CKD is so common in cats because they do not have a natural thirst drive, unlike dogs. 33.3% of cats will end up with CKD, compared with only 10% of dogs.
As far as research tells us, the CKD diet is usually one that has lower protein (lower but of quality), no added salt and low phosphorus. There may be other nutrient restrictions too, but usually these are the ones mentioned.
I actually taste the canned food that I feed our cats. I have already checked with the importer about the content of sodium and phosphorus in their canned food too. For example, there is no added salt in Cindy’s Original. But if you taste their tuna-based canned food, it is a little (just a little bit) salty. That’s the natural salt in the fish. Just as if you were to steam fish and eat it without adding any salt or soy sauce, it would still be a wee bit salty.
So, is that little bit of “natural” salt acceptable for cats if the food is consumed over the long term? I don’t know, especially when cats are not supposed to eat fish.
But if you were to taste Cindy’s Original Tender Chicken, it is totally bland. Chicken meat may have some natural salt as well, but it is surely much less than in fish simply because fish live in the ocean.
I know, I’m OCD right now. Maybe it’s because I’ve just lost Indy to CKD.
The vet did tell me that some cats are more predisposed to CKD because of their genes. I guess that’s true.
The Blondies, as you know, are very picky eaters. They only eat one proper meal once in two days and between that, they snack. My plan now is to reduce the kibble and instead, give them canned chicken as snacks, but I will add water to the canned food.
Because they are so picky, they don’t eat immediately. That is why I cannot leave raw food out for them, raw food doesn’t last as long as canned food. I know they don’t like it when I add water, but girls, you will have to learn to drink more water.
For the Monsters, it works very well. I add water to canned food for them daily. They sapu habis. Actually, they sapu the water first, then only the chicken.
I might make my chicken soup for them again, but if water works, isn’t that better?
Tabs is also a very fussy eater now. I need to check whether she’s just fussy or it’s her PKD/CKD progressing. I will know when I take her for her check-up. But this evening, she refused to eat that bowl of raw meat in the kitchen.
When I moved it to the dining table, she ate.
Imagine that. It’s exactly the same food using the same bowl. Just a change of location and that got her eating.
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