Feline Nutrition, What do you feed your furcats? Options

[Muffins]

Hi Everyone:

Over the past 2 weeks, our girl Ms. Lucy has been ill on & off. She has been an insulin dependant diabetic since October, 2004. Blood tests performed on January 27th showed that she is now hyperthyroid. So, as of now, she is on Tapazole, 5mg in the morning.
She HAD been on Humulin insulin up until 2/1/2007, when she was changed over to PZI insulin (for cats). Humulin was no longer being made, so switching her was necessary.

Lucy has suffered from chronic diarrhea ever since we rescued both her & Mr. Yoster in March, 2004. There were a couple of days over the past two weeks where her stool was very, very watery diarrhea. Knock wood, since we have taken up all of their dry food -- her stools have become a bit more firm .

I have been doing A LOT of research over the past couple of weeks on feline nutrition. I must admit -- I am extremely overwhelmed.
One of the things I have found out is that - NO cat should be given dry food.

Because cats are obligate carnivores, they don't need corn, wheat -- grains.
They have very short digestive systems which are not designed to digest carbohydrates, only proteins, which are supposed to pass through their systems very quickly and not hang in their for too long.

On occasion, I look through the feline diabetes site, and recently came across the name of Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins. I am learning quite a bit with regard to diabetes & diet for felines.

I added several links here that you're all welcome to look over.

My question to all of you who read this is:

What foods do you feed your furcats? Do you feel that your furcats body requires dry foods???

A couple of days ago I took up all of the dry food that we had down for our kids. Right now, they both are on wet food ONLY. We are feeding them "Wellness - grain free" and "Wysong meat w/au jus" <<-- we add "Wysong Call of the Wild" food supplement with that.

Thank you all very much for reading this. I am looking forward to learning even more through your feedback.

Peace & Love,
Denise


http://www.catnutrition.org/

http://www.catnutrition.org/resources

http://www.wysong.net/

http://www.all-about-cats.com/index.htm

http://www.oldmotherhubbard.com/wellness/c..._can_index.html

[Moose Mom]

Denise

** I just noticed that the AvoDerm canned food contains Oat Bran & Rice Flour .

First of all I want to say sorry about how long this took. My husband does most of the reasearch and buying of the cat food. I had to ask him and I kept forgetting. Second I was dead wrong and I'm sorry about that too. AvoDerm makes several different kinds of food. If you get the AvoDerm cat/kitten formula it does indeed have the Oat Bran & Rice Flour. We did this too, it's easy to do. Our cats didn't like it, I didn't much like the smell and the upshot to this is we didn't give it to our cats.

What we feed our guys is 'AvoDerm Natural, Choice Cuts'. Same company but very different. NO grains. I just did a quick search on Yahoo and found a ton of places you can buy it off the internet. One of them is: http://www.breeders-choice.com/cat_products/avodermcat.htm

The other thing is we only feed this to them as about 25% of their diet. The rest is slightly cooked turkey. (It should be raw but they won't eat it that way). We did try the 'home made' raw diets, and they wouldn't eat that either.

Again sorry it took so long and so sorry I was fuddled about just what we do. Good thing I have a hubby!

Again you have a wonderful family, they are just beautiful.

Love