fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2951 ]

[ SECRET POST #2951 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2951 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[The To-Do List, Brandy/Willy]

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03.

[Avatar: Legend of Korra]

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04.

[The Amazing World of Gumball]

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05.

[Agents of Shield]

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06.

[Game of Thrones]

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07.

[Galavant]

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08.

[Soukyuu no Fafner Exodus]

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09.

[Jamie Dornan from "The Fall"]

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10.

(Neil Gaiman)

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 054 secrets from Secret Submission Post #422.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not knowing much about the needs of my first cat. I fed her dry food every day for the ~19 years I cared for her.

I was only a kid when I got her, and no one ever mentioned that this wasn't ideal. So, when she got to be an old girl and developed kidney failure it was my fault. I should have done more research, or something.

Now I make sure my new cat gets enough moisture with his food every day, but I still feel bad about being so irresponsible before.

Same. I got my cats when I was around 12, and my mom didn't take care of them well. It was a lot of dry food and declawing. I really regret not fighting her harder on those issues, especially since two cats were severely overweight, one had diabetes, and the oldest lived to only thirteen.

Declawing...

Well, that just made me feel a bit better. At least I never let that happen to my cat.

I hate that vets even offer it, now that I know better. At the time, I thought it was just unnecessary. The only reason for declawing is, I don't know, a poorly-implanted claw that would get infected and cause gangrene, or something. Same as with any other amputation.

Most vets around here will no longer offer it. I don't even think you can get it done unless there's a medical reason for it (eg. impacted polydactyly). Animal welfare laws have caught up to it.

Now I just wish they would stop allowing the docking ears and tails as well.

My vet - well, the asst/person i spoke to on the phone about getting one of our cats fixed - said 'okay, so, appoint for blah day, and was there anything else? Declawing?'

I went *off*. I was just so shocked and disgusted and horrified. I hate that it's legal here, and that that person just...offered it, like 'spay? flea treatment? mutilate your cat's paws?'
Arrgh.

I have a kitty who had a deformed claw that was removed when she had to have surgery for her teeth. It grew out at a 90 degree angle, blackened, and calcified. It could not be cut without intense pain on her part, and if it was left uncut, it would catch on things and cause her pain. It wasn't life-threatening, as you're mentioning here, but it certainly affected her quality of life.

But, knowing what declawing does, I wasn't sure for years if that would be better. When we brought her in for the dental work (because other vets had pretty much ignored it despite my asking them to look at it; we had shitty vets), my vet examined it, and she agreed that removing it was really the best course of action. Kitty has been doing much better since then, and it's helped her to be able to walk more evenly; her other leg was broken as a kitten, when she was feral, and never healed right, so she'd favor that leg and put weight on the paw with the bad toe, and... yeah. Even with all this, I was still really worried about having that surgery done, and I'm very glad it's actually helped her with that paw.

The average lifespan for a housecat is 15 years. I think you did well enough by her.

Well, I never withheld medical treatment and I always made sure she was healthy as best I could. I spent a lot more money than I would have otherwise treating her thyroid problems, to make her last years a little less painful than they could have been.

I still feel bad that I let it get to that without fact-checking though. Well, lesson learned I suppose.

To be fair, all cats are prone to kidney trouble as they age. An elderly cat's kidneys might fail regardless of whether the moisture content is available to consume. If your cat lived to 19+, that's an extremely long life!

For us with our now almost-15 year old, it's been an issue balancing the needs of his skin issues (wet/high protein recommended) and his now aging renal system (LOW protein is the way to go, and he couldn't stand the renal formula wet foods).

Yeah, she was the pickiest eater for most of her life. One brand of food, one flavour of that brand type of thing.

It relaxed a little as she got older, and she seemed to take well to the low protein dry formula Royal Canin food brand. Expensive, but she ate like a bird, so it wasn't all that bad.

this is making me slightly worried for my parents 10 year old cat, who flatly refuses to eat anything except dry food and has, in the past, actively chosen to go hungry for an entire day rather than eat the wet food she was given when we ran out of dry.

This is exactly how mine was. I should have introduced her to wet food or started soaking her dry food when she was a kitten, like I do with my new boy, because after a while they just get set in their habits.

Thing is that the wet food thing happened YEARS ago, when she was a young kitty. She's just never ever wanted to eat anything but her dry food (and tuna fish - it;s the only person food she will touch.)

To be fair, 19 years is decent for a cat.

Yeah it is. I can't help but feel she could have had a nicer time of it in her golden years though.

Maybe...but what I'm saying, at an age like that, you really don't know if that's what contributed to her death or if it would have made any difference, really.

The average lifespan of an indoor cat is about 12-15 years. So you obviously took good care of her.

Ginainthekingsroad has it right. Kidney failure is a very common problem in cats as they age. We lost one of our younger boys almost a year ago because of it ("younger" being 14 or 15--most of our cats stay for a ridiculously long time). My cat is the oldest of the bunch and began undergoing the early stages last summer, and both of them had wet and dry food through their whole life.

I would have liked both of them to live to their twenties, but sometimes you do your best. It sounds like your first cat did well.

19 years is a pretty long time for a cat. You shouldn't feel guilty about not knowing everything when you were a kid.

Wait, you aren't supposed to only feed them dry food? I never knew this. My roommate feed's her cat a good mix, but we always fed the cat we had when I was a kid dry food. Our dogs too.

Our family vet told us it was better to feed male cats some kind of wet food because they're prone to pretty concerning urinary tract infections and blockages, but I grew up in a household where it was normal to give all our animals dry and wet food, so I'm not sure about the specific health benefits for the rest (outside of extra hydration, obviously). What kind of ingredients a brand uses would probably factor into it, too.

I think maybe it's when it's too much dry food.

Ideally, my cat gets two servings a day. (Unfortunately human Grandmommy tends to sneak in a few extras... poor thing's in for a shock when I get my own place. But it'll be for her own good.)

My cat growing up was fed mostly high-quality wet food. She still died of renal failure (lived to be 18, though).

Maybe it was the dry food in your case, but maybe it wasn't. Sometimes you can do everything right and the thing you're avoiding still winds up happening.

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[ SECRET POST #2951 ]

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