Limes with Orange

"When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."
~ T.S. Eliot, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"

The topic of pets has been cropping up a lot in my life lately. Well, I guess it always crops up a bit for me… whenever people find out I studied veterinary medicine, I usually end up fielding questions about health or behaviour or sometimes just trivia.

At the moment, I'm getting worried that my cat Emma (immortalized in my Meerkat post) might be developing diabetes.

You see, my old cat Ferdinand had diabetes. She (yes, her name was Ferdinand and she was a female cat... long story, 'nother post)... anyway, she was the first case I diagnosed all by myself when I was a vet student. Dubious achievement. My suspicions were based on a change in her urinating habits and the fact that she was quite overweight (a definite risk factor for diabetes in any species). Well, Emma is also quite overweight (my bad) and has recently been exhibiting some odd urinating habits… as in, she does it right OUTSIDE the litter box. Fortunately, I keep a plastic sheet under the litter boxes so there hasn't been an issue with cleanup and stains, but it's still a pain in the... neck.

I haven't figured out yet whether this problem is behavioural or medical. I'll need to check the sugar levels in Emma's urine to determine that. Hopefully I'm wrong. But if I'm right, hopefully it's non-insulin dependent diabetes. (Ferdinand was insulin dependent and she deregulated—meaning she switched from insulin dependent to non-insulin dependent, which I believe is unique to feline diabetes—so her next insulin injection led to an insulin overdose. I don't want to go down that road again.)

But I found this site that offers natural pet remedies. They have an herbal treatment for diabetes that looks interesting. I'll have to do a little research on the ingredients, but I'll admit I'm intrigued.

Not to neglect my other cat, Tobi (though she tends to stay hidden when guests are around and has developed a nickname of "the closet cat" because she spends so much time in—you guessed it—my closet), I also checked to see if they have hairball treatments. Tobi has a marked tendency for hairballs and she's a very picky eater and hates every hairball treatment I've ever given her. And when I feed her food that's supposed to reduce the number of hairballs, her coat ends up looking scraggly and she starts to lose weight (which she can't afford, because she's quite skinny already… not apparent in her picture because she's quite fluffy… usually).

Anyway, the site didn't have a treatment specifically for hairballs but they did have this dietary supplement that looks promising. I think I'd like to give that one a try.

I also noticed that they have a treatment for ear mite infections. Not that I need it now, but I seem to have a tendency to adopt farm cats who always seem to have ear mites when I get them. Tobi's ear mites were soooo bad that initially I thought she was hard of hearing. Then when the vet came (she did house calls… it was awesome), we cleaned Tobi's ears out together and ewww… q-tip after q-tip of black gunk. It sounds to me like this ear mite treatment would have worked nicely as a post-cleaning treatment as well, with its pain relief and healing properties. But the story has a happy epilogue. You might think that such an intensive cleaning would have made Tobi wary of having her ears touched or afraid of q-tips, but on the contrary. I think she felt soooo relieved afterwards that, to this day, she LOVES having her ears rubbed and her favourite toys are q-tips. Go figure.

Labels: animals, health