vet visit

[cellio]

Tonight's was not one of the better trips to the vet, despite the best efforts of my vet and her assistant to make things go smoothly. (My vet and the assistant rock, and when I go back in a few weeks I should take them cookies or something.) I'm not sure what got into Erik and Baldur tonight.

We started with Baldur having a voluminous accident in the carrier on the way over, which meant we gave him a bit of a sponge bath upon arrival. (The assistant was very kind to take the carrier away and wash it. Normally I think of the "bio cleanup" fee they tack on as just skimming, but they earned it tonight.) This probably did not start things off on a good note. :-) But hey, fresh sample from an identified cat and I'd forgotten to collect a sample from the box -- it's not all bad. But Erik was also uncharacteristically jumpy tonight, including when the vet was trying to draw blood. She has never before had trouble getting a clean draw from him.

Baldur, presumably still grumpy from the bathing, growled through the entire exam. He also fidgetted a lot. When 17.75 pounds of grumpy cat decides to fidget, you notice. I thought he was going to take the vet's fingers off when she did the dental exam, and she told me to just stay away from his head while the assistant was clipping his claws because she was afraid he might bite me. (I'd already gotten scratched once.) It has been many years since I've seen him behave that badly at the vet's.

At least they both took their shots without squirming. Baldur once had a presumed allergic reaction to one of the vaccines, so he also gets a shot of kitty Benadryl.

I couldn't get three adjacent appointments, so I'll have to go back another time with Embla. I made this appointment as "Erik plus one" and that was ok with them. (The vet specifically wanted to see Erik tonight.) I'm not surprised that I was unable to capture Embla tonight.

But in interesting news, it seems the Atkins craze has cat-food analogues. I had commented that I expected Erik to have gained some weight (he didn't) because he's been getting canned cat food (to bury medicine in); the vet told me that actually, anecdotal evidence suggests that cats are more likely to lose weight on canned food. The dry stuff, by contrast, is full of carbs. Mind, this isn't scientifically-validated research; it's just what some vets have started to talk casually with each other about. Curious.

Comments

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

My sister's cat has had to go through chemo treatments over the course of the last four or five months. Spinnaker (aka Spin) knows the trips will result in her being tied down, jabbed with an IV needle, and nausea for days. I cannot imagine how my sister gets her to go to the vet every two weeks, but somehow she does.
(Oh, you might want to reconsider those Feline leukemia vaccinations, unless your kitties go outside. That is what caused Spin's cancer. Even with the lumpectomy and the chemo treatments, Spin is only predicted to live for another six months. The vaccination causes this cancer in 1 out of every 1000. If your cats aren't really at risk for the leukemia, I wouldn't consider it worth facing those odds.)

[spiritdancer]

You might want to check the odds, actually; what I've seen quoted in the literature is more like 1 in 10,000 (and that factor of ten makes a big difference).

If they don't go out (ever) and you never bring another cat in, then you're gold. Unfortunately, most of my patients do the inside/outside thing, and I see way more feline leukemia infections than I do fibrosarcomas. There are other factors working that cause fibrosarc besides FeLV vaccines (considering at least two of my fibrosarc patients never had ANY vaccines, with owners who had them from kittenhood on).

_M_

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

I'm quoting the literature that the veterinary oncology hospital that she took Spin to has given her. They specialize in this sort of disease and treatment (best in the country), so, with all due respect to you and your practice, I will take their word.
And I do completely agree that, if your cat is at risk for the disease, the vaccine is appropriate. My frustration is that most vets don't even talk about the risks involved. And even 1 in 10,000 should be discussed.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

It would also be a wise practice for vets to ask if a cat is an "indoor" or an "indoor/outdoor."

[cellio]

Mine does/did -- asked it initially and wrote it on the chart, and checks back now and then to make sure it's still true.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

That's great.
I have no doubt they'd appreciate the cookies.

[cellio]

If they don't go out (ever) and you never bring another cat in, then you're gold.

That turns out to be my situation, and a few years ago my vet recommended that we discontinue the vaccines for feline leukemia because it sometimes does harm. (She didn't give me odds and I didn't ask.) The only other non-human mammal that's come into the house since I got the cats is one Italian greyhound (single visit), and I'm pretty confident that he wasn't carrying the disease. :-) (When I added Embla to the household I did so only after having a vet screen her.)

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

I'm not that surprised, actually. One argument for low-carb diets in general, and some of their variants in particular, is that they're closer to what our caveman ancestors ate (B.P.F.)**. Perhaps kitties need to channel their smilodon forebears. :-)

** Before Processed Foodstuffs. :-)

[rectangularcat]

I had the problem that the skinny cat loved the diet wet food so much and she became underweight. *silly silly kitties* It is effective though.

[cellio]

That could well be true in general. I'll note, though, that the few times my cats have caught mice, they have not consumed them. Maybe even the memory of solid meat has been bred out of them? :-)

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

I dunno... both the dog and the cats (when we had them) seemed to gain weight pretty quickly on wet food. Fat furballs!

[cellio]

That's what I expected, and would still expect, actually. I'm in no danger of going over entirely to canned food, mind -- between the smell, the cost, and the dental damage (or at least non-help), I'm just not up for it. Besides, it's hard to segregate cat food, and I've got one who's fat, one who's skinny, and one who's just right.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Yow...that is a bad night at the vet's by any standards.

Hope the tests (especially for Erik) all come back good!

[moose]

The carb & cats thing has *nothing* to do with Atkins and everything to do with biology.

Cats are carnivores, mostly. They will eat some grass and plants, but mostly they live on meat. The amount of carbs in dry food is far, far more than cats "in the wild" would ever eat.

When Shade was ill her vet and I got to talking about diabetes in both cats and humans. It seems that a researcher discovered that, for *some* diabetic cats, the need for insulin disappears if they're taken off dry food. If the problem is simply that the pancreas isn't making enough insulin to keep up, removing the heavy load from the dry food sometimes is enough of a treatment.

Cats aren't really designed to breakdown carbs so it makes sense that, especially as they get older, they would gain weight from 'em.

[and remember, i'm anti-atkins :-)]

A friend of mine sent me a link the other day

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

to someone who had decided her cats would be best with an all-meat diet and was working on providing that to them.



http://www.livejournal.com/users/bhakti/31250.html

(link was referred by tim. suprised, I thought comment headers could handle lj user tags but I guess they can't)

Re: A friend of mine sent me a link the other day

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

grrr. meant tim_

the moments in which I have wished I could edit comments have been entirely too many