Background Information:
My male cat, Tim, has experienced constipation, urinary crystals, mild asthma, frequent hairballs, and occasional then very severe vomiting. He saw three different veterinarians in February, two at our normal place and one emergency veterinarian, who could not pinpoint the problem and prescribed medications. Each medication caused a new problem and I sought another opinion with a holistic veterinarian because I felt the problems were all related and due to inflammation.
Today, Tim is in pretty good shape. He is off all medication, except Cisapride for constipation, which we are weaning him off. I eliminated fish, chicken, carrageenan, guar gum, and xantham gum. Eliminating the fish resolved the urinary crystal problem almost immediately. He was vomiting foods that contained one or more of the other ingredients. When we recently tried feeding him Tiki Cat chicken, his mild asthma symptoms returned, which disappeared after stopping the chicken. He's not had a hairball or vomited since early February, which is a record for him. Recent blood and urine analysis results were described by the holistic veterinarian as "wonderful".
I mention all of this background information because my commercial canned food choices are very limited. I've been feeding Nature's Variety Instinct rabbit and LID turkey, with pretty good results. But it's higher in fiber than I want to feed regularly, given I may be dealing with chronic constipation (I pick out the veggies). Fiber can be good in some cats and not so good in others. My big fear is that his stools will bulk and his constipation will turn into megacolon. I would rather have more control over adding fiber or not to his food. Plus, my female has developed somewhat hard stools and I had to treat her for mild constipation last week; possibly the clay?
In general, I'm not comfortable relying on a single brand of food and I can't find anything else that doesn't contain one or more of our "suspect ingredients". We want to transition to raw, but the holistic veterinarian wants Tim off Cisapride first, due to concerns that raw will move too quickly through his system while he's still on Cisapride (and we experienced this when I fed him a raw snack one evening; I will wait and transition as the holistic vet advised). I am not sure how successful we'll be with getting him off Cisapride, given he has had a very irregular week and is on his fourth 36-hour stretch (I hope, he's not gone yet this morning and his last BM was Friday night) this week.
Because of my frustration with yet another possible bad experience with what I thought looked like a good canned food (Lotus Just Juicy, and I suspect the problem ingredient is agar-agar), I am going to do a mix of Nature's Variety Instinct and home-cooked food. I've read the stickies at the top of this page and have read many of the posts in this sub-forum and my questions are relatively simple, given my long lead-up.
Questions:
I am trying to decide between Alnutrin and BalanceIt. I'll need to order and would like to do so in the next day or so, so I can get going with home-cooked. I am interested in hearing opinions and experiences with both, as regards to home-cooked foods. I cannot consider TCSFeline because it contains xantham gum.
Has anyone followed Strombeck's recipes for cats? Assume these are to be cooked? I noticed there is no taurine supplement for the meat recipes. Is this an oversight, or does home-cooked meat really supply sufficient taurine for cats? With a quick trip to a health-food store, I could start this tomorrow.
Any other advice for a new home-cooker for a cat with the potential issues described above?
Thanks so much!
My male cat, Tim, has experienced constipation, urinary crystals, mild asthma, frequent hairballs, and occasional then very severe vomiting. He saw three different veterinarians in February, two at our normal place and one emergency veterinarian, who could not pinpoint the problem and prescribed medications. Each medication caused a new problem and I sought another opinion with a holistic veterinarian because I felt the problems were all related and due to inflammation.
Today, Tim is in pretty good shape. He is off all medication, except Cisapride for constipation, which we are weaning him off. I eliminated fish, chicken, carrageenan, guar gum, and xantham gum. Eliminating the fish resolved the urinary crystal problem almost immediately. He was vomiting foods that contained one or more of the other ingredients. When we recently tried feeding him Tiki Cat chicken, his mild asthma symptoms returned, which disappeared after stopping the chicken. He's not had a hairball or vomited since early February, which is a record for him. Recent blood and urine analysis results were described by the holistic veterinarian as "wonderful".
I mention all of this background information because my commercial canned food choices are very limited. I've been feeding Nature's Variety Instinct rabbit and LID turkey, with pretty good results. But it's higher in fiber than I want to feed regularly, given I may be dealing with chronic constipation (I pick out the veggies). Fiber can be good in some cats and not so good in others. My big fear is that his stools will bulk and his constipation will turn into megacolon. I would rather have more control over adding fiber or not to his food. Plus, my female has developed somewhat hard stools and I had to treat her for mild constipation last week; possibly the clay?
In general, I'm not comfortable relying on a single brand of food and I can't find anything else that doesn't contain one or more of our "suspect ingredients". We want to transition to raw, but the holistic veterinarian wants Tim off Cisapride first, due to concerns that raw will move too quickly through his system while he's still on Cisapride (and we experienced this when I fed him a raw snack one evening; I will wait and transition as the holistic vet advised). I am not sure how successful we'll be with getting him off Cisapride, given he has had a very irregular week and is on his fourth 36-hour stretch (I hope, he's not gone yet this morning and his last BM was Friday night) this week.
Because of my frustration with yet another possible bad experience with what I thought looked like a good canned food (Lotus Just Juicy, and I suspect the problem ingredient is agar-agar), I am going to do a mix of Nature's Variety Instinct and home-cooked food. I've read the stickies at the top of this page and have read many of the posts in this sub-forum and my questions are relatively simple, given my long lead-up.
Questions:
I am trying to decide between Alnutrin and BalanceIt. I'll need to order and would like to do so in the next day or so, so I can get going with home-cooked. I am interested in hearing opinions and experiences with both, as regards to home-cooked foods. I cannot consider TCSFeline because it contains xantham gum.
Has anyone followed Strombeck's recipes for cats? Assume these are to be cooked? I noticed there is no taurine supplement for the meat recipes. Is this an oversight, or does home-cooked meat really supply sufficient taurine for cats? With a quick trip to a health-food store, I could start this tomorrow.
Any other advice for a new home-cooker for a cat with the potential issues described above?
Thanks so much!