Gandalf likes to chew on his stuffed animals, if that counts as a chew toy. You can certainly try to redirect the behavior if you catch her doing it. I still catch him chewing on wires, stacks of paper, and the corner of my laptop sometimes though.
Now she's throwing up around the house, not eating a lot, but otherwise acting normal. And I'm out of town visiting the boyfriend.
My boyfriend's older cat has a thing for plastics. She's very picky about it-an ordinary grocery bag won't do. She likes the heavier duty soft plastics like shower curtains and bags from mall stores. Have you heard of cat grass? It's something they can chew on that won't hurt them. That might distract her a bit.
AwNow she's throwing up around the house, not eating a lot, but otherwise acting normal. And I'm out of town visiting the boyfriend.
I hate when that stuff happens when I'm out of town
Roommate says she's eating a bit more and hasn't thrown up since Friday, playing with her toys normally. Still going to make some puzzle feeders, moving toys, and get a can or two of wet food. And keeping a vet on hand in case she turns worse.Aw
Looks like normal betta fin tearing. Nothing to worry about. And that is pretty typical coloring too, with the black edges. Bettas, especially the fancier colored ones, may change color as they get older.I don't know if this is considered medical advice...but there aren't any fish vets in my area that I know of
For anyone who has experience with bettas, does this look like fin rot? Or tail biting/accidental tears? I'm looking specifically at the big chunk missing from his ventral fin and the ragged edges on his dorsal and top half of his caudal fin.
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I thought the black edges were a clear sign of fin rot, but then I looked back at the pictures from when we first got him and realized they were there then...so maybe that's just his coloring? It's been about a month so I would think it would be worse if he had fin rot when we got him.
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Well I'm happy to hear that, but also I can't believe I put him through a week of quarantine and daily water changes for nothing! Ugh!
She thinks she's so sneaky when she's hiding in or behind it. Despite the crinklingI have that same tube for my cat.
She thinks she's so sneaky when she's hiding in or behind it. Despite the crinkling
I don't see why not! I've been seeing some puzzle feeders on the shelves that are marketed as ways to slow down eating/encourage your cat to exercise.
Definitely! I did that for a while with my older cat when she was overweight. Then we got the younger guy, I gave him one too to keep him from getting bored during the day...and after a month or so he broke both of them. So no more of that haha but he's big and very good with using his paws like he has opposable thumbs
I don't know if this is considered medical advice...but there aren't any fish vets in my area that I know of
For anyone who has experience with bettas, does this look like fin rot? Or tail biting/accidental tears? I'm looking specifically at the big chunk missing from his anal fin and the ragged edges on his dorsal and top half of his caudal fin.
I thought the black edges were a clear sign of fin rot, but then I looked back at the pictures from when we first got him and realized they were there then...so maybe that's just his coloring? It's been about a month so I would think it would be worse if he had fin rot when we got him.
I think fin rot can be subjective....to me it looks like it could be the start, especially since it doesn't look like the blackish edges are 100% consistent. Biting would look like very clean 'U' shapes (the shape of their mouths) throughout their tail, but the chunks on the anal fin look like biting. Based off what I had been reading for my fish, fin rot can be acute and very rapid, or it can be more of a chronic thing. It's possible his black coloring when you first got him was the start of fin rot, and it's just slowly progressing. The aquarium store by me recommended Kanaplex to treat. Would it help if I sent you pictures of my fish to see what suspected fin rot could also look like? My fish's tail was considerably more damaged than yours, and it went down in a matter of 3 days. Mine also didn't have black edges. According to my local aquarium store, black edges are severe cases of rot and it doesn't look like yours is severe...I don't know if this is considered medical advice...but there aren't any fish vets in my area that I know of
For anyone who has experience with bettas, does this look like fin rot? Or tail biting/accidental tears? I'm looking specifically at the big chunk missing from his anal fin and the ragged edges on his dorsal and top half of his caudal fin.
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I thought the black edges were a clear sign of fin rot, but then I looked back at the pictures from when we first got him and realized they were there then...so maybe that's just his coloring? It's been about a month so I would think it would be worse if he had fin rot when we got him.
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Well now his dorsal fin is all torn up. This had to have happened in the last couple hours.It's hard to say as the original picture is much further back and he looks a bit more flared in the first picture, but I feel as though I see that his tail fins look much smoother-edged in the original picture and more tattered in the subsequent one (the first one you posted). The fin edges look rattier in the subsequent/closer up picture compared to the original.
What kind of substrate/decorations are in his tank? Mine has a floating log and a soft plastic plant and his aren't frayed, so I'm wondering if maybe something in his tank is tearing them up. I wouldn't rule out fin rot unless you've treated with an actual medication and not just water changes. But just my $0.02 as a betta owner
Pictures would be great. I don't want to put him through antibiotics or something if it's not necessary, but clearly the salt treatments didn't work if it is fin rot.
They're not nearly as good as yours, but this is him while he was still swimming:
It's so hard if you don't have an fish-experienced vet around. You could always try emailing exotics vets at schools...it's worth a shot. For my guy, the salt didn't do anything (that I noticed), and Kanaplex seemed to improve him for just a few days. It's entirely possible the salt helped him last longer, who knows really. All I know is that nothing I did stopped it and that the exotics vet here said he likely had something more going on. He was seriously a mess
I didn't think he'd associate that box as a bathroom since he has bedding for his 'litter' and the cats have clay litter, but nonetheless, I didn't have to clean a puddle out of my carpet!
... for a cat we hadn't even had a week!
I have never ever relinquished an animal and honestly it shattered my heart.
Glad he's feeling better, but unless he actually had bacteria in his urine, he didn't have a UTI, he likely had (and still has) a much much more common feline disease called feline idiopathic cystitis or feline lower urinary tract disease. A PU can significantly decrease the risk of urinary obstruction, but it's not a 100% guarantee, and it doesn't forever eliminate cystitis. I recommend you do some reading and talk with your vet about management strategies prior to adoption again, because this is likely to be an expensive and frustrating lifelong process for him (intermittently).Long story semi-short ... 4 weeks ago my husband and I adopted a 3.5 year old cat from XYZ shelter. 3.5 years old, was adopted out from said shelter as a kitten then returned because he blocked and the family didn't want to deal with it. 2 months later my SO fell in love with him and I warned him this cat could potentially be very expensive but per XYZ shelter he was well managed on c/d. We adopted him.
3 days later I took him into the vet hospital where I work for an exam. He got the works - rads, UA, bloodwork. No stones visible on rads and no crystals on UA. BUT his urine looked like Kool-Aid - full of blood and WBCs. Should he have been adopted with a horrendous UTI? NO! Looking through his records from the shelter he had been straining off and on for the prior ~6 weeks and not once did they run a UA. Poor guy. So we gave him fluids, pain meds, started him on abx, and sent off his culture which had begun to grow in only 3 hours.
That night he was super playful and appeared to be feeling a bit better. The following morning I found him sitting in the litterbox and when I approached him he hissed - totally out of character for him. Threw him in his carrier and ran down to the ER (this was Labor Day weekend). He was only partially blocked but by that afternoon he needed to be catheterized and we gave the go-ahead. That particular ER doctor said his catheter was unusually difficult to place so she suspected his distal urethra was abnormally narrow and recommended PU surgery since this was his 3rd blockage.
$2000 to keep him in the ER for 3.5 days and ~$4000 for an u/s and PU surgery by a board certified surgeon at the ER if we decided to move forward
Met with the medical director of XYZ shelter the Tuesday after Labor Day while kitty was still hospitalized. Very nice woman but said she personally would never do a PU surgery on her own cat and said the shelter didn't have the resources to do the surgery anyway. We made the incredibly difficult decision to relinquish him back to XYZ shelter so he could remain hospitalized once his u-cath was pulled just in case he blocked again. They agreed to get him through his UTI before putting him up for adoption again. The kitty had developed quite a fan club at the ER and they told the shelter they would do the surgery if their doctors thought it was necessary and didn't have the resources.
Fast forward 3 weeks later to now. The medical director called to let me know he had the PU surgery last week (done by the shelter!) and is recovering beautifully. They plan on putting him back up for adoption next week as long as he has a negative urine c&s. We have first dibs at adopting him.
I'm SO happy and SO excited! I don't know that he would be alive if we hadn't fought for him and never in my wildest dreams did I think I would see him again!!!! It's highly likely that I will be pathologically bonded to this cat after the whole ordeal
This is the last time I saw him...
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Note: I have nothing against XYZ shelter. They're high volume and mistakes happen. They owned their mistake and fixed it which is all I wanted.
Mine hides in the curtains and meows at me. Or watches from the edge of the tub.
My other cat just sits on the back of my toilet and waits, but my other one genuinely seems concerned about my well being. The fact that he hates water, yet will get that close....
One of mine always lays in my pants while I pee. I don't know why she bothers getting so comfortable for a 15 second rest
Mine tends to curl up next to the tub about a two feet away. The other one will lurk outside the door.
Moral of the story: Cats are weird.
Fishy update: He seems to be doing really well! I did my best to disrupt the reflections at the sides and back of the tank with one of those static cling backgrounds, he can still see himself at the front (he still flares at it occasionally) but there are a couple plants there now so no more glass surfing. I also got a new filter also, which works a lot better, is quiet, and with the outflow baffled with a piece of sponge creates almost no current. Overall he seems more relaxed and I haven't seen any further damage to his fins, plus there's some new growth now. And he LOVES the wisteria I have floating on top of the water
Fishy update: He seems to be doing really well! I did my best to disrupt the reflections at the sides and back of the tank with one of those static cling backgrounds, he can still see himself at the front (he still flares at it occasionally) but there are a couple plants there now so no more glass surfing. I also got a new filter also, which works a lot better, is quiet, and with the outflow baffled with a piece of sponge creates almost no current. Overall he seems more relaxed and I haven't seen any further damage to his fins, plus there's some new growth now. And he LOVES the wisteria I have floating on top of the water
My vet and I both agree that at the moment, the most important thing is managing her diabetes by food and she isn't at the point where a low protein diet is necessary, and he's fine with her staying on her current food. We just discussed and thought it might be useful to see if we could lower her phosphorus at all to see if that might help slow progression. )
Ah that is the combination that tends to leave people scratching their heads in terms of diet. If it were me I would probably continue with the food she's already on - while diabetes can definitely be controlled by diet, there isn't as much evidence that low protein diets effectively slow the progression of or treat kidney disease (meanwhile you run into problems with decreased muscle mass and such), just based on my own reading and research it seems the trend has been away from the low protein diets except in cases of terminal renal failure. As far as phosphorus goes, it can be decreased in other ways - you could talk to your vet about adding a phosphorus binder to her food. If you're feeding dry food now, you could try for a canned version which could help her kidneys as well (increased hydration and all that). You could also try looking at the canned versions of the renal diets, since they tend to be lower in carbs.Does anyone else have a food controlled diabetic cat with kidney issues?
My diabetic old lady's kidney values have been sneaking up over the last few years, and they're finally getting to the point where it's becoming a concern. Both my cats are already on the lowest phosphorus food I could find that they'd 1) eat and 2) was low enough in carbs to control her diabetes.
Anyone else in a similar situation and have some food recs? Evo chicken looks like it's lower in phosphorus than their current food and would be low enough in carbs, but they were recently bought out and discontinued a lot of products, so I'm kind of worried they may be some reformulation in the near future, so they may not be a long term solution.
I've been doing a lot of research, and all the food lists I can find for kidney cats that are lower in phosphorus are either too high in carbs or no lower in phosphorus than her current food aside from a few. Just wondering if anyone else was in a similar situation and had some advice!
(not asking for any medical advice
Yep! The two issues are basically on opposite sides of the spectrum for food needs.
it was the only way to get her off insulin. I mix extra water in as well, since she's not one for drinking. She's not to a point where fluid therapy is the best idea (she also has heart issues), so I'm just trying my best to keep her hydrated via food and it seems to be working right now.
Yeah, I think you're probably doing all you really can do for now. Oh if only a high protein/low carb/low phosphorus food existed.Yep! The two issues are basically on opposite sides of the spectrum for food needs.
Yeah, my vet only uses kd for cats that are end stage to try to keep them comfy longer. And even then, it's more of just presented as an option, and not something he's super set on. By the time low protein diets are even thought to be beneficial, he's just more concerned with them eating well.
They're both on 100% wet
Sadly, all the canned renal diets I've seen are still too high in carbs :/ I was told to stick to 10% or less of carbs by dry matter to control her diabetes, and the renal diets I've seen are 30+.
I wouldn't be as worried if her numbers hadn't spiked so much lately. She had a fatty liver episode in June, and at her be recheck a month later her kidney values were so much higher. We just did her three month bw recheck from that and it's not as dramatic of an increase, but still up. She'd been pretty stable the last few years, so the worry is she's going to keep going up fast. She's 17.5, so this isn't unexpected, but still.
I talked to the vet about phosphorus binders, but he doesn't think that dramatic of a step is needed yet. I may see though if he'll let me try if I can't find another food that is lower in phosphorus that's okay for her diabetes.
Thanks for your advice!
You're welcome
I also found this list though it hasn't been updated in about a year so it's not all accurate
call royal canin, purina and hills. Let them know your particular situation. Then ask for their best recommendation.
Sorry WZRIP Arson. He was a beautiful fish and full of personality. I feel so guilty because I had trouble finding a lid to fit his tank and today he jumped out. I was far too late to save him. I thought all the plants floating on top of the water would be enough to keep him from jumping until I could get a lid
