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Cat vet blog with questions, answers and random thoughts By Mike Karg, DVM and Lisa Wolkind, DVM
September 26, 2013
Harry is very happy right now. Six feet off the ground, paws curled over the edge of the TV armoire, head back and eyes half-closed with a contented leonine air that says, "I like the way my kingdom looks this evening". I had built a cat tower years ago and finally got around to adding a shelf over the doorway to his new perch. This is a very small home, small that is, from the perspective of upright ground-dwelling humans. Cats love vertical space. Cats are skilled predators, but are also prey themselves. The instinct to find a safe spot means they are most comfortable off the floor where they can survey their domain.
In a multi-cat household, using vertical space is even more important because it diffuses tension. Submissive cats have more places when they "need some space" from the others, and bullies are less likely to pick on others when they have more climbing spots to serve as physical and mental outlets for all that feline energy.
-Mike Karg, DVM
July 31, 2013
The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is adding a new labeling requirement in 2014 for cat foods to provide calorie counts. At present, labels list ingredients and percentages by weight of moisture, fat, protein, fiber. These percentages are not very useful, and oddly, carbohydrates are not included. AAFCO is not a regulatory body, but most states follow its guidelines. A lot of the better companies have been including calorie counts for years, although most still use the term kcal, which is the same as the calories we are all familiar with. AAFCO recommended that states not enforce the labeling on existing products for 3 years, and that is just to add a simple calorie count! Here is a cat food label and human food label side by side:
-Mike Karg, DVM
July 12, 2013
There is no word more carelessly tossed around in retail pet products than "natural". It sounds good and it sells well, but tells you nothing about the product you have purchased. It would seem it is on a par with "organic", but there are no regulations governing its use. A recent flagrant example of the uselessness of the word is Fresh Step Natural Scoop. Natural is used to attempt to disguise the fact that this is just another dusty, clay, clumping litter. If there is a cloud of dust after dumping the new box into the pan from waist height, move on to a better choice. There are many natural, no...let's call them plant-based litters that clump well without all that dust. Technically, clay and rocks are natural, but many other natural products are quite toxic, most notoriously lily plants, which are as deadly as antifreeze. The sodium bentonite is a naturally found material as a byproduct of strip mining those natural mountains to extract that natural coal, but sodium bentonite ends up stuck in cat's paws and in the gastrointestinal tract after cats groom.
The plant materials used to make the better litters are all safe(apparently, since full ingredient lists are rarely given with the propietary nature of cat litters): corn cob, walnut shells, pine, cedar, newspaper. Good choices using these materials include Nature's Miracle, One Earth (which looks and smells exactly like Nature's Miracle), Swheat Scoops, Purr & Simple, Tidy Cat Pure Nature, World's Best Cat Litter, Feline Pine. All of these litters contribute to the blurry haze of natural that envelops cat foods as well. When I gather a cat's history before an exam, I ask all clients what they feed their cats. Many can't recall the name, but mention it was "natural-something". But, that's a topic for another day.
-Mike Karg, DVM
June 20, 2013
This was a book I had known about for a long time, but never got around to reading until last week. This 1980 non-fiction work regales the stories of the legendary Manhattan veterinarian in simple, no-nonsense prose, typical of the man himself. In 2013, I get plenty of surprised reactions when I tell people I only see cats in my veterinary practice. For Dr. Camuti, the first to limit his practice this way (mostly), this was a one-of-a-kind travelling show.
This book is accessible to anyone, unless of course, the reader is one of the last oddball holdouts that actually does not love cats. It is a dated book and I felt as if I had stumbled across a musty Reader's Digest in my old barbershop that gets new material every few decades. New York before the technology revolution is rather quaint, and much of the veterinary medicine is outmoded and rather scary. The toxicity of medicines in those days was quite profound, with anesthesia being a high-wire act. There is a little mention of diagnostic testing beyond the essential physical exam, and most medications used today did not exist prior to 1980.
This book is fascinating in another historical way, as it charts the evolution of veterinary medicine over the last century plus. As Dr. Camuti was starting out, he was witnessing the rise of the "horseless carriage". Cars put horses out of business as the major mode of transportation in the early 20th century, and that change affected the veterinary profession markedly. Veterinary medicine quickly took household pets under its wing, and small animal practice is entrenched to this day as the primary veterinary occupation. Dr. Camuti's 60 years of work is monument to the emergence of the profession.
The critical component of the book, however, remains unchanged. The singular self-possessed yet winsome feline nature and the devoted, often eccentric nature of the people who love them is not some fad. The pervasive internet cat culture of today is simply a global unveiling of this once secret life.
-Mike Karg, DVM
May 29, 2013
-Lisa Wolkind, DVM
-Mike Karg, DVM
May 9, 2013
-Mike Karg, DVM |
Reasons given for not listing protein in grams, for example, is that consumers would not know how to use that information. But, consumers don't know how many grams of protein a cat should have in a day, because that is not on a label -not the other way around. Instead, we have a situation where dry food appears to have more protein than canned food, which is rarely true. In the photo on the right above is listed a minimum of 31% protein, whereas a good canned food might list 12%. That canned food with "12% protein" actually has much more protein as a percentage of calories (often 50-60%), but the numbers are skewed because moisture (a fancy word for water) is a part of those calculations. Basically, the numbers given on a cat food label today are not very useful. AAFCO offers this page 