A question, someone help.

Last June I welcomed a Bengal Kitty into my home. She is a F5 girl. I read many books about this breed before her arrival. However, I didn't find good/help information about any disease or sickness that this breed is likely to have (The vet didn't have very much to say about it either). So I was wondering if someone at this forum could provided me with more information. Thanks!

Dorothy

My Coco is a bengal. From everything I have read and heard they are a robust breed with no special health issues.

Don't worry! Just enjoy!

I hope one of our resident breeders will pop in... but to my knowledge they dont have any big issues ...

Thanks for the lovely replies! Right now my Aria is trying to get rid of her hairballs. =) Other than that she is one happy beautiful girl. Ok time to play fetch...

I'm going to move this thread to the Breeders Forum. We have several Bengal breeders here at TCS and I'm sure they'll have lots of info for you.

Welcome to TCS - hope you enjoy your time with us.

Hi Dorothy.

Welcome to TCS and also to bengal cat ownership! Bengals are a robust healthy breed without many health issues. A couple things to look out for are these:

Some lines of bengal cats are prone to heart disease, called HCM. The best thing to do is to have your cat checked by your Vet on a regular basis and let the Vet know you're interested in monitoring the condition of your bengals heart. Tell him/her that HCM is a known occurance, but not prevalant. Establish a base line early, so that any changes over the years can be evaluated properly.

Bengal cats also have sensitive digestive tracts, so food changes can effect them adversely. They need more protein in their diet than other breeds.

Thanks to all my TCS friends for your attention to my post!

I'll mention to the vet about monitoring HCM next time I see her. Her main diet is Hill's Science Hairball control "crackers". In addition to that I give her Fancy Feast Medley every night (about 1/3 can each time), tuna flakes twice a week, and regular hairball elimination gel. Is that "Protein enough" for a Bengal? (note that she is allergic to human food, I had to send her to the ER one time because of a little piece of boiled chicken. sigh...)

Take care everyone! Hope you had a good 4th of July celebration!!

Dorothy

Originally Posted by hoosbunny

Thanks to all my TCS friends for your attention to my post!

I'll mention to the vet about monitoring HCM next time I see her. Her main diet is Hill's Science Hairball control "crackers". In addition to that I give her Fancy Feast Medley every night (about 1/3 can each time), tuna flakes twice a week, and regular hairball elimination gel. Is that "Protein enough" for a Bengal? (note that she is allergic to human food, I had to send her to the ER one time because of a little piece of boiled chicken. sigh...)

Take care everyone! Hope you had a good 4th of July celebration!!

Dorothy

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Welcome to TCS. I hope you had a good July 4th too. I can't see the pic of your baby.

The Science Diet Hairball food is honestly not one that I would feed. To answer your question, that food is somewhat low in the protein department, particularly in the good "meat" protein department. I'm sure you have good intentions...I just want to share my thoughts about that food.

Please forgive me if I sound like a cat food snob.

The first handful of ingredients...

Chicken By-Product Meal - "by products" are something I avoid. They have a vague name because their origin and quality is somewhat unpredictable. "by products" can be heads, feet, intestines, etc. We have no way of knowing what they are, and I don't think they want us to know.

Brewers Rice - shards of rice left over from the rice milling process...these can be sweepings from the floor of a mill.

Corn Gluten Meal - Very, very high on the list for a food fed to a carnivore. Corn can serve a valid purpose but personally I don't feed it. I like to see more meat on the list, fewer grains.

Animal Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid) - "animal" fat...is vague...could be any animal.

Powdered Cellulose (11.1% source of fiber) - this can be paper or sawdust...no nutritional value.

Ground Whole Grain Corn - more corn.

Maybe I should let Kai Bengals give you specific suggestions for other foods. As far as dry foods go, I guess my suggestions would lean towards the "grain free" foods such as Wellness CORE, Orijen , Serengeti or Raw Instinct or Innova EVO. Those are very high in protein...50-75% higher than the SD hairball food.

Forgive the increasing length of my reply, but to be fair I thought I would add the first 5 ingredients of one of those foods I mentioned, Wellness CORE

http://www.oldmotherhubbard.com/well..._dry_core.html

Deboned Turkey - just what it says.

Deboned Chicken - ditto.

Chicken Meal - chicken minus most of the water and fat...like dehydrated chicken.

Whitefish Meal - ditto, but whitefish.

Potatoes - TMK, this is what holds this dry food together...it needs something starchy to make a "cracker".

I think it sounds much better. I hope I didn't bore you

Dear friend beandip,
no you didn't bore me at all. In fact I learned a lot and I am
willing to change the food brand for my baby girl. Is just that
I'm worried about her hairball issue. Since she has very fine
fur and hairballs always seem to bother her. I don't know if taking
her off from the hairball control will make the case worse ?
The Wellness you suggested does sound delicious and I'm sure
a wildcat like her will enjoy.

I'm working on the picture of my Aria too. I think I need to have
more post in order to post any pictures as well as making my
signature.

Thanks again for the reply!

Dorothy

Dorothy, I'm glad I didn't bore you. As far as the picture goes, a lot of us have free accounts at www.photobucket.com. You can sign up there and then upload pictures, then paste the provided code that begins with [ IMG ] into your post and your pics will appear here. It's a bit more flexible than the "attachment" process.

You might want to browse the health/nutrition forum here. That's my favorite place to hang out here. There's a lot of discussion about food there. Maybe post a thread about your baby's hairball concerns and solicit some suggestions to handle that.

As a side note on the hair issue, I like the Furminator comb. It's expensive but well worth it IMO. I love it. It removes all the loose undercoat, in hand fulls! It's awesome. There are some good tips in the care/grooming forum on where/how you can get some good deals on that comb. I'll say it again, it's unlike any other comb.

How about all wet food ???

Dorothy,

You'll also want to stop feeding Fancy Feast. That stuff is kitty crack. You may actually have to wean kitty off of it by slowly mixing in a healthier food. This stuff isn't good for any cat, and I would imagine it to be particularly bad for a Bengal.

Do you know what food the breeder was feeding? If the breeder is ethical, they should be using a really good food. I'd start there and check the ingredients on that food.

As far as hairballs, just the gel should be enough. My kitties get a pea sized bit of gel once a week. Is your kitty coughing, or actually hacking up hairballs? If there's coughing only, it could be something else, not a hairball. In that case, it's time for a vet visit.

(The Furminator is an amazing brush, I have one too!)

Actually that's one (FF) that Charlie doesn't like and he eats anything Got one for the shows and he ate it but was not thrilled about it.

Welcome and good to see you on here. I feed Innova Evo and highly recommend it! It comes in canned and dry. Pet Food Discounters is the only store in the Charlottesville, Va area that sells it.

As for HCM, we don't have any vets in this area that are Board certified cardiologists. I take my kitties to Va. Tech to have their echocardiograms done.

My Bengal, Penny, gets a mix of Royal Canin, grain free Nature's Variety Raw Instinct and grain free Timberwolf Serengeti kibble for dry, a can of Sheba Chicken & Duck wet at night (it's what Kai Bengals, her breeder fed her for wet) and a 1/4 patty of raw rabbit in the morning.

I also use the furminator - it is AWESOME. For hairballs I give just a little bit of Petromalt, and it works great.

Welcome to TCS!

thanks so much to all my friends who replied to my message!

I'm very glad that I joined this forum and met so many amazing people here.

See.. I want to take care of my baby but it seems like there's so much that I don't know and should dig into. First, I will get a Furminator and change her diet. Did I mention that my baby also has very sensitive stomach? Last time I gave her a little piece of boiled chicken and we ended up in the ER (severe throwing-up). Therefore I'm not sure if I want to try raw food. Also, about the Fancy Feast, I seriously have tried all the canned foods I could find at the local pet store "Pet Food Discounters" and she wasn't digging into any of it. Plus there was this scary recall, so I was terrified about wet food, period. Now I give her one teaspoon of the new Fancy Feast Medley every night, kinda like a special treat. She drinks a lot of water during the day so I don't think that wet food is that important to her diet (maybe I'm wrong about that again). I will though, contact the breeder and go from there.

About coughing though, if it's just a dry cough, what could be the possible reasons for that? Sometimes hairball does come out, sometimes it's just a dry cough. The sound is kinda like squeezing air out from a balloon, and it's about 3 seconds between each "cough". Oh my poor baby. I told the vet about it back in Nov and she suggested more fiber in food. However, she's still coughing from time to time (usually once a month)

Also another question to SiberianLuv, do you happen to have the address of the vet that you took your kitty to? (HCM) Now my baby's vet is "cat care" in Charlottesville.

I think that's all that's going on in my head now! Big thanks to everyone who replied and paid attention to my post!

Oh... before creating the special photo account, if you want to see the pictures of my baby you can go to this link <http://community.webshots.com/user/hoosbunny2> and then go to "aria" folder.

Have a good night everyone! =)

Dorothy

Originally Posted by beandip

Animal Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid) - "animal" fat...is vague...could be any animal.

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Aren't tocopherols carcinogenic?

Originally Posted by Jen

Aren't tocopherols carcinogenic?

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I don't think so. I'm not very educated on the subject, but I thought of "tocopherol" as being synonymous with "Vitamin E". It's a natural preservative and is also a good antioxidant, I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocopherol