Posted in Feline nutrition and health, tagged cats, cholongiohepatitis, feline, IBD, Latifah, liver, lymphoma, pancreas, pancreatitis, Rumpelmintz, triaditis on September 29, 2009| 46 Comments »
Feline triaditis is actually three conditions occurring simultaneously: pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), cholongiohepatitis (inflammation of the liver), and inflammatory bowel disease or IBD (inflammation of the intestines).
There may be no known “cure” for triaditis, though I would argue that proper nutrition is the absolute BEST method of treatment and prevention. By proper nutrition, I mean a raw diet or a canned diet – and most definitely no dry food/kibble of any kind.
Posted in Feline nutrition and health, tagged cat food, cat nutrition, cats, dry food, feline nutrition, IBD, pancreatitis, raw food on December 11, 2008| 4 Comments »
This post has actually been a work-in-progress for some time, but a phone call today pushed me to try and finish it. That phone call took place with the internal medicine specialist treating Studley. The specialist has diagnosed Studley with pancreatitis and IBD, based on an ultrasound performed Tuesday. Today he got back the results of Studley’s GI lab, and expressed some confusion that while he KNOWS Studley has IBD (based on the ultrasound results), his GI lab results (cobalamin and folate) were normal.
I do NOT generally openly disagree with most vets (to their face). I’ll express my opinions to my regular vet, who acts very open to my ideas and thoughts – but I’ve learned not to waste my time and breath on many vets who really don’t care what I think about anything. They just want me to do what I’m told. However, today for whatever reason I felt the need to tell this specialist my suspicions on why Studley’s results were normal. I told him I had worked with many cats with IBD, adopted and fostered, and I fed all my cats an “IBD friendly” diet. This diet had eliminated symptoms and normalized GI lab results for the other cats I’d worked with – and my thinking was, if Studley was fed this “IBD diet”, and it’s treated these other cats with IBD, it made sense to me that it’d also treated Studley, without my knowing he even had IBD.
Posted in Chi-Town Fur Gang, Feline nutrition and health, tagged cat food, IBD, pancreatitis, raw food, Studley on December 9, 2008| 5 Comments »
Once again life has gotten in the way of my writing. Seems I’ve been doing a LOT of writing about Studley lately – and apparently Studley likes having the spotlight shown upon him as yet again he’s “inspired” a post.
It started on Saturday, pretty innocuously. Studley didn’t eat breakfast. At the time, I thought little of it. I’d walked toward him to give him his pill, and he ran away. When he didn’t come back and eat, I figured he was just nervous about pilling, and it wouldn’t hurt him to skip a meal. (I did get him later, napping, for the medication.)
However, he seemed fairly lethargic throughout the day. Around 4:00 p.m. he vomited. By evening, he wasn’t interested in dinner and was drinking a lot of water (highly unusual, especially for a cat on an all-wet diet). In fact, at one point, he just lay by the water dish with his head over it – and that was enough to convince me a visit to the emergency vet was warranted.
(more…)
Posted in Feline nutrition and health, tagged cat, cats, diabetes, diabetic, feline diabetes, pancreatitis, tight regulation on August 4, 2008| 13 Comments »
I’ve worked with nine diabetic cats now – one of my own that was diagnosed after I adopted her (and responsible for teaching me so much), four adopted diabetics, and four fosters. Five were able to be “diet-controlled” (no requirement for insulin), the other four need/needed small doses of insulin along with an appropriate diet. (Two or three of those four had temporary bouts of remission.) As many caregivers ask my thoughts on feline diabetes, I thought I’d summarize my “personal beliefs” as they presently stand regarding effective treatment. I am always studying and learning new things when it comes to diabetes mellitus, so I expect as I learn more I’ll fine-tune my beliefs further.
(more…)
Life of the Lintee Bean 