Tragic Turn of Events Today… Opinions Anyone?

[Falcolf]

First, I want to say that I really feel for you. 🙁 I lost my cat Sunny very suddenly to a stroke a couple of years back and it isn’t something that I have yet entirely recovered from. It really sucks losing a pet and it’s horrible that you have been hit with such a horrible double whammy. 🙁 I’m keeping you in my thoughts!

Now for my two cents and I really hope that none of this is taken as thoughtless under the circumstances: I don’t think that it makes you feel any better, but absolutely I do not think that her age had anything whatsoever to do with her death. 🙁 I have worked in pet supply for years now listening to customers talk about their pets, long enough to know that a cat is only old around the age of fifteen – I have tons of clients with 18, 19 and even 20 year old or older cats. My own cat Smoky is 17. 13 going on 14 is certainly starting to go over the hill for a cat, but I would say that it is her weight that got her – I would say heart attack or stroke, since her death was so sudden. I feel a bit harsh saying this, but an overweight cat is absolutely not a healthy cat – a single extra pound on a cat is like ten on us. Fat cats don’t feel good, no matter how they hide it!

With respect, I would guess from my own experience having lost two of my own cats young (Mama Kitty at 12 and Sunny at 13) that diet (though I assume since she was catching mice that she was eating mice) probably played a very major factor in Lily’s untimely demise. Grocery store cat food is not healthy at all for cats – it’s full of corn, wheat and artificial colourings that cats (which are obligate carnivores meaning that they eat meat and ONLY meat) cannot easily process biologically – in fact these ingredients are junk food which is what makes them fat. (Think of cats as being vehicles which take gasoline – and plant ingredients as being diesel. They don’t mix.) When a food is corn or plant based (that being the first ingredient) the animal eats more of the food (good for money hungry pet food companies because plant ingredients are cheaper than meat – note that ‘corn’ can mean ANY part of the corn plant, not necessarily the edible kernel) because the cat is not getting enough of the meat that it needs. (Note: I say ‘meat’ here, not ‘protein’ – fats and other parts other things in meat are important too, contrary to Whiskas commercials – and I question thoroughly where the protein in Whiskas comes from, because protein can come from plants too. Plant protein cannot be utilized by cats – their anatomy is hardwired for meat. If you don’t believe me, I suggest reading the website Little Big Cat which is written by a veterinarian and explains this stuff better than I can.) It’s great for Lily’s health that she was eating mice (as I am assuming that she was,) but they probably were not her primary food source. If all she was eating was kibble as her primary food source, then she was probably chronically dehydrated as most house cats that do not eat moist cat food are. (I say moist here, not necessarily canned. The mice helped!) Cats that eat dry food actually drink LESS than cats that eat wet – so finding a way to moisten their dinner is very important. It doesn’t have to be canned. You can moisten kibble with chicken or other meat broth – just make sure there is no garlic or onion in the broth, because those are deadly poisonous to kitties!

When my cat Sunny died, I had only just managed to get my mom to switch his diet to a healthier (meat first, less plants) diet months before. He was pretty overweight and sadly, the diet switch (with came sadly without wet food, as I was only just starting to educate myself about proper feline diets back then) came too late for him. He suffered a stroke and while I will always believe that he could have lived if only I had moved back immediately then to take care of him, he was in such critical condition, needing a great deal of care that my dad opted to have him euthanized. Sunny’s obesity absolutely, 100% came from his diet. Today, with my ‘second generation’ of cats and his unrelated older sister Smoky, I am now raising my cats with as much meat in their diet as possible. I believe that if I had not switched Smoky when I did (the same time as Sunny,) she would not have lived to 17 as she has. Copernicus (4) and Casper (3), my younger cats who I have always kept on a meat-first diet supplemented with wet food to ensure their proper hydration are sleek and trim with easily noticed waist lines – everything Sunny deserved to have. They play everyday and they never suffer low energy except when it is hot out. They have never eaten anything with corn, wheat or fake colouring, stuff that is only in pet food for our comfort, not our animals. Corn and wheat when sourced properly can be very good for us, but they are never good for our cats (or dogs.)

From the way you describe her staying indoors, it’s quite possible that she was not feeling well proceeding her death. 🙁 With cats, any abnormal variation in behaviour should be cause to take them to the vet because it often means that something is very wrong. They are experts at hiding that they are sick, so we really have to pay attention, because they will pretend to the death that they are okay when they are not! That said, cats are so subtle that it’s pretty easy to think nothing of a slight behavioural change. I didn’t realize my youngest cat Casper had struvite (urinary) crystals until he very pointedly peed on my bed in front of me – “Help Mom!” I took him to the vet that very day and he was immediately started on a course of antibiotics to get rid of the infection in his urinary tract. The cause of his urinary crystals? Not enough hydration – I have fed him wet food every night with dedication ever since and I make sure that the kibble that I feed him (I’m poor) has either blueberries or cranberries in it to acidify his urinary PH. Struvite crystals cannot form in an acidic body and cats are supposed to be acidic because their octane is meat.

I would also say that it is possible that depression over Poopie’s death played a part in Lily’s demise too and it could have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Sadness and depression can kill and I recently lost my grandmother only two years after the death of my grandpa, her husband. She was a pretty unhappy woman and it was actually a huge relief to me when she passed on, because I no longer had to worry about her being miserable and hating life anymore.

I hope you’re okay! I’m really sorry that this happened to you. 🙁 I don’t know if my thoughts and explanations helped at all. So you know where my information is coming from, I’ve been doing pet supply and researching the dietary needs of carnivorous animals for at least four years now, both to help my clients, help my own pets live to their full genetic potentials and to do research for the series that I am writing, which features obligate carnivorous characters whom I needed to fully understand biologically from nose to tail in order to properly portray. I have listened to scores of reps from different pet food companies try to brainwash me, read the health/nutritional blurbs on at least a hundred pet food websites featuring all sides of the issue of cat/dog nutrition and weighed every idea until I came up with the most logical conclusions. Diet is the root of health, be that good health or bad.

RIP Lily. 🙁

Check out my finished artwork at http://falcolf.deviantart.com/ and my sketch/studio blog at http://rosannapbrost.tumblr.com/

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