babs' slave
-- will your cat lap up food? If so, there are very soft, smooth pates that might work: the canned pates on that BFF pages are very soft and lappable (our cats really love those and there's a good variety of blends) as are Sheba's pates. Also, some foods can easily be processed in a miniprocessor (a little water helps for some!) to make them easier for a cat to lick up.
cheesycats
raises a good point about comparing foods! Foods that are calorie-dense are often a better deal because you get more calories for the money, plus if your cat is having difficulty eating, she might not need to eat so much to feel full. If you haven't already had her teeth checked, it's worth doing that -- I remember several members mentioning that difficulty eating was the first indication of dental problems.
Thank you so much for the tip on Soulistic. They are much cheaper! I think I found a canned variety I like on their website: Chicken & Tuna in a Hydrating Puree ("In a hydrating Puree" is what the slide-n-serve pouches call it)Pouches are over priced anyway. I’d go to cans. I think weruva has a canned jelly type food. I could be wrong though(look at their bff line. They have 10oz cans in 12 packs).
I know though that soulistic (made by weruva as a cheaper alternative for petco only) has several options in cans. They are the light colorful cans that say in gelee. They are cheaper
Ps: using the words gelee and aspic are going to help you a lot. Those are what those jelly like textures are actually called
Pss: lol also one more thing, your cat is 12 lbs? so if you’d move to something like the bff line in gelee you’d have to feed probably a whole can a day plus some. However it’s a little under 30$ a case. So you’d need about 3 cases a month or 36 cans. Bringing u to under 80$ a month to feed canned in gelee.
Thank you for the tip on Soulistic. I do see that its is cheaper!
Thank you so much for the great amount of info you gave me!The jellied Weruva cans that we feed are from the Cats in the Kitchen line. The primary benefit with those in terms of price is that they make larger cans: six ounces and, for a few recipes, ten ounces. Not all the foods are aspic-like, some have more runny jelly.
There is also a BFF slide 'n' serve line (check the pounches here). I bought a couple of those for our cats and they liked the first one. It was basically pate that was more held together in a pancake sort of shape than it would have been if I had scooped it out of a can.
Another thought,
Good luck!
Excellent ideas, thank you so much!
Oh my goodness, your cat is amazing to be 19 and still have such good blood test results! Yes, I totally understand your hesitance to have her put under for dental surgery. (Our previous cat lived a long life, too, though she was only about 17, and was never fully diagnosed in her final months because she was so frail.)
(Some breeds -- like our Siamese mixes -- are apparently more prone to dental problems making it especially important.)
Yes, I thank God Babbette is still very healthy. I do think she's deaf, but I treat her accordingly and she does well with it. A previous cat, Stubbs, lived to 19 and only had one bad day (her last), which was crazy because she was indoor-outdoor. Babbette has been indoor only for the last 12 years, as are her relatively new house-mates Watch Kitty (12 years) and WK's boy, Buddy (16 months).Oh my goodness, your cat is amazing to be 19 and still have such good blood test results! Yes, I totally understand your hesitance to have her put under for dental surgery. (Our previous cat lived a long life, too, though she was only about 17, and was never fully diagnosed in her final months because she was so frail.)
I know this may sound crazy but our vet recommends a probiotic that can be sprinkled on a cat's food to (apparently) improve dental health. It's Entero, this stuff. We brush our cats' teeth, which they actually enjoy because the flavored toothpaste is like a treat for them, so we haven't tried Entero but our vet told us she's stopped brushing her cats' teeth and started using Entero instead. Even just feeding a little enzymatic toothpaste (we use CET) without brushing can be of some help. Our cats used to have quite a bit of gingivitis but regular brushing with CET helps a lot. Anyway, just a couple thoughts on that in case your vet hasn't mentioned anything less invasive for your cat -- I'm not sure if either would even help but our vet is so big on dental care that there's always discussion about teeth.
My cat goes between 8-9 pounds, which is vet approved for her. She's fairly active for indoors. I shoot for 160 calories a day and she has maintained that weight for two years now. When I read the suggested amounts on cat food cans it just boggles my mind that anyone would feed their cat that much. Ailish would be a fuzzy black whale. If she'd even eat that much, which I doubt. I don't know what the thinking is. Well, I kinda do, but it's kinda not right if you ask me.
Ditto for me. I have to manage Lily's weight carefully, or she'll go back to being the Goodyear blimp she was at 14 pounds when the vet gently but plainly suggested I begin to bring her weight down if I didn't want all kinds of health problems. She gets about 4.5 ounces a day or less than 200 calories. She weighs about 10.5 pounds now which is good for her. The other two get about four ounces a day. Just to be clear, though, I make their food now so it's high protein, moderate fat and no carbs.
So she was well until a few months before passing on? I think that's very good for elder cats and humans, right?
You have quite the brood of cats! Is Babbette the cat in your avatar photo?
She hadn't been especially healthy for some time: Brooksie had quite a few ailments over the years, including arthritis and a very bad arrhythmia, that the vet said meant she might just not wake up some day. (!) The worst thing, though, was that she had digestive problems for much of her life but they were never properly diagnosed. Online resources were much more limited when she first had symptoms so I couldn't get the advice when her problems started that I could get in her last months of life. And, unfortunately, the practice where we took her really had more experience with dogs; we take our current cats to an all-cat vet! She also developed mild cases of kidney and thyroid diseases later in life, so she had a lot going on! Even so, if the estimate from shelter was correct, she lived to be at least 17 and one of her vets thought that was probably an underestimate. Best of all, she was still getting into mischief even in her last days.
She was a great cat!
Yes, that's her. She's such a good-natured cat. In her 19 years with us, she has had 5 feline housemates - Stubbs, Bubba, PJ (all passed away) and her current 2, Watch Kitty and Buddy. She's a survivor.
For Babbette, I could afford it since it lasts so long, but not for the other 2.
Thanks for the tip. Babs would need the lighter texture for sure.
Yes, it does. Just like 2 of my cats cats like Tomlin Hairball, but Watch Kitty, I have to spread it on her leg and she has to lick it off.
Were you hoping that when it was her time, that's how it would be? I always pray that's how my cats would go. Peaceful for them.
Kittens are great and fun, but there's something to be said for caring for an old sick cat. It's very difficult and costly, but rewarding. It certainly teaches a lot about love, life and patience, doesn't it?The worst thing, though, was that she had digestive problems for much of her life but they were never properly diagnosed. Online resources were much more limited when she first had symptoms so I couldn't get the advice when her problems started that I could get in her last months of life. And, unfortunately, the practice where we took her really had more experience with dogs; we take our current cats to an all-cat vet! She also developed mild cases of kidney and thyroid diseases later in life, so she had a lot going on! Even so, if the estimate from shelter was correct, she lived to be at least 17 and one of her vets thought that was probably an underestimate. Best of all, she was still getting into mischief even in her last days.
Yes, in some ways I wish that had been what happened. Though in other ways I'm glad we had the last months/weeks/days, when she was still appreciative of attention. It was hard to know what was right because she was so obviously very sick and sometimes barely ate... but yet even on her last morning, she crawled through the child gate we'd installed at the top of the stairs so she could go down and get up on my husband's desk. That same day, the vet could feel a mass and she said Brooksie's organs were shutting down. We knew that, at least in some intuitive way, but needed to hear it at the clinic.
