How to feed a savagely ravenous carnivore with a thyroid problem?

What formula of Medi-Cal (Royal Canin Prescription in the US) is she on? When I Googled it, it looks like there are a bunch of different formulas. Does she ever get canned food or just the dry?

I don't think that most hyperthyroid cats require a prescription diet. The hyperthyroid cats I know eat regular cat food. So it may be worth switching to a food with a higher meat content. Unless your vet has a specific reason for wanting her on the prescription food, it may not be necessary.

And try to find out which brand the pet store guy is recommending. Some of the "hippie" foods (LOL) aren't as great as they advertise, either.

Have you told the vet about her voracious appetite? Her meds may need adjusting.

What is the thyroid problem you are dealing with? I know that my cat always appeared very hungry...would come up and meow everytime she wanted food, and would keep doing so until you went downstairs to feed her. As it turned out, she was probably developing a hyperthyroid problem. As long as she is holding her weight, the T4 levels should be ok. My cat started to lose weight despite eating good. That's when the bloodwork began and diagnosed hyperthyroidism.

Best of luck....hope she continues to do well.

Keith

Has her blood pressure been tested? Cat with hypertension are often excessively vocal--she could be meowing due to high blood pressure rather than solely out of hunger. Also, you could try a treat ball, or spreading her food out on a plate or cookie sheet--eating more slowly might give her time to realize she's full. How much food is she getting per day?

I'd ask the vet for a copy of her results so that you can keep track of her blood work values. Also, has she been checked for worms? Even indoor only cats can get worms from fleas, and a parasite could explain the hunger level.

I can't decipher the Canadian way of figuring the protein levels, LOL. It's a whole different system (and I can't find the info for the American version). But from the ingredients, I would guess that it's fairly low in protein. NOW! Is a pretty good food, not sure as to its suitability for older cats. Someone with a better grasp on senior cat nutrition should pop in soon. But I think that I would switch her to something better if she were mine. It doesn't sound like your vet has a terribly good reason for having her on the prescription food.

And yes, it is best for a cat to have some canned food. The more canned the better, but if cost is a problem, 50/50 canned/dry is fine for most cats. The extra moisture in the canned might help her to feel full longer, too.

I am dealing with a hyperthyroid cat myself and I am inclined to say you should re-test her... yep, it takes months to get to the correct dosage, and this appetite is a sign of hyper-t.
I have been taking Gracie every 3 weeks for T-4 tests (thyroid blood tests), and I think it will take a while before she stabilizes. Even then, she will have to go in to make sure the dosage is correct, until the vet is secure.
What you are describing is to the T-how she was when she was out of her meds/starting her treatment.
About the argument who knows more about nutrition - the vet or the pet store... hum... tough one... IMHO You can not generalize either. There are vets and vets, there are pet store employees and employees... Personally? I would not trust the health of my cat to the pet store employee - nothing against them - I met a fantastic one once... But really... they are there to sell those foods, and in general, their argument about nutrition class... well... tell them to show you their animal nutrition diploma then .
Tru, a lot of vets do have an agenda, and a lot of them lack on nutrition knowledge, but a lot of them know about nutrition too - and more importantly, they know your cat.
I like doing my own research, then discussing with my vet and getting to a consensus. There is another thing too: Sometimes not the best thing in theory will work for your cat. For example: my cats have special needs and eat prescription food - one of them had her life literally saved by the food. It is Hills prescription. It was Hills - Best ingredients, no... but saved her life...
Lucky, my other cat recently had a hairball and constipation blockage. She had to be force-fed for 3 days, would not eat at all unless with a syringe... The vet told me to try giving her hairball food - I went to the store and bought a bunch of different ones... The one she liked was Purina ProPlan Hairball Control. The best one? Not by far - but guess what? She is eating on her own and doing GREAT on it.
It wouldn't matter for me to try to give her the best food on paper if she wouldn't eat or if it made her sick...
So... When looking for food, remember that your cat is an individual, and what works best for him is what matters most...
There are guidelines you can follow, but I would do some research and discuss it with the vet...
Hope your kitty keeps improving!

Out of the three vets that I've used for my dogs and cats, two of them freely admitted that the nutrition courses that they were taught in vet school were sponsored by pet food companies like Hills, Purina and Royal Canin - basically the companies that make the prescription foods. One of the three vets took extra training after graduating on pet nutrition, their office carried the prescription brands as well as Orijen/Acana.

Now onto Global Pet Foods, I personally know two people that own Global stores and have talked to the owners of two more stores. They go to seminars on pet nutrition fairly often and definitely know what they are talking about. Every Global store can carry whatever foods they want on the higher end stuff. They are known as a Natural Food Store for Pets. When we had Stan and he was quite sick he wouldn't eat anything. I went to the Global we frequent most often and had a talk with the owner about what he might eat. He explained everything to me and definitely knew what he was talking about. He told me why they carry every brand that they do AND why they carry Science Diet. He has personally been to the factory where they make it, said it was extremely clean and that there's something like 14 veterinarians on site there. He did say that it wouldn't be his first choice in foods and that he wasn't even going to carry it, but after the tour of the factory it changed his mind. He still doesn't recommend it most of the time, but there are a lot of pets that do well on it.

Sorry for the little ramble there, I was getting to a point, lol. Anyways, if the guy that you were talking to that worked at the store was anyone but the owner, he may only know partially what he was talking about as they do not get as much training as the actual owners.

If it were me, I would get the cats bloodwork done again, check her blood pressure and then work with both the vet and the pet store to find a happy medium with food.

I personally don't know what your vet is like, but two of ours wanted to put one of my dogs on Medi-Cal Urinary SO for bladder problems even though she is highly allergic to both the grains and the main protein source in the food. As per their advice, I put her on it anyways, her seizures became more active again (she had been in remission from Epilepsy for almost a full year), she had urinary incontinence, she lost a lot of her fur from all the scratching because she was so itchy, and she was puking almost daily. The idea behind the food was to increase her water intake so that she would pee more, but her water intake was fine to begin with and she was peeing more than usual anyways. We put her back onto her raw diet without telling the vet (neither of those vets agreed with it and said that we'd end up killing her) and she has been fine since. Those two vets at the time were both busy "high end" clinics, the $50-60 exam fee covered all of about 10 minutes of being with the pet (including doing shots) and they rarely gave a full answer if you asked them questions. We switched vets when Sadie developed her 10th (yes 10th!) UTI in under 4 years, they actually listened to me and checked her out fully. They agreed that she has an innie vulva and gave me tips on how to keep her clean AND they did the xrays that I had been begging for at the other two vets and found that she had 3 large bladder stones. They could feel them in her bladder just by doing a physical exam and said that the other vets should have felt them as well.

Anyways, sorry about that part of the rant too. Just trying to show how even though a vet can have your animals best interest at heart and can have the chart infront of them that tells them everything about your pet, only YOU really know your pet and what they're normally like.

After getting the bloodwork and blood pressure tested, if everything comes back normal, I would get a few samples from the store and mix it with her current food for a few days. If you notice that she's becoming less ravenous then you may have found your solution.

I'm sorry but I don't see how much you are feeding her and how often.

I wonder where he got that particular number from? Two hours? I did a year of animal science last year (preliminary degree for people who didn't score highly enough at school to get into Veterinary Science) and in our units on animal body systems we spent about a month on the digestive system, and loads of time on diet for lots of different types of animals... and that was just as a precursor to the actual veterinary degree.

Also, in the internships I did at various vet practices they looked at the information and free samples and marketing goods handed out by companies wanting to sell their products as... well, ways to help their clients who are not doing very well financially but need the products.

I would go back to the vet and tell them what the dude in the pet store said, see what he thinks. Plus, there are loads of people who know what they're talking about here on TCS. You might want to hit up the_food_lady - she posted some excellent advice on my thread about Mackerel, and I'm sure she wouldn't mind a polite question.

Hope that helps!

For starters, wet food is more filling, lower calorie, and better calories since it requires less fillers and preservatives than dry and should be part of your cats diet as cats generally have a low thirst drive, with natural hunters getting most of their required moisture from their kills.

Wet food is expensive and inconvenient though, so I feed both.

For the dry, my suggestion would be to get an automatic feeder to feed dry at specific times of the day in small portions, and/or get a food dispenser ball put somewhere that it doesn't roll all over the house preferably not on carpet.

The automatic feeder can be set to dispense 1/4 cup or more up to three times a day (no accurate control, so exact amount depends on kibble size but is in my experience very consistent with evenly sized kibble and works great using Blue's Wilderness at least). Add one or two wet meals, and you've got plenty of little numnums to keep a cat satiated. The Petmate is battery powered (goes about 6mnths on a charge) and in my experience just wedging a chopstick by the outlet between the bowl and the housing (takes 1 second) stops a smart cat from getting their paw in there. I put it under the cat tree so its out of the way and prevents the cats from jumping on it to knock it over. Took cats a week to figure out its schedule, and hang out there within about 30mins of feeding.


The ball is cheaper and self-explanatory, you just scoop it into the dry, twist it to the small opening size (large is just for training), and cat pushes it around which causes kibble to fall out and it can take an hour or so to finish and when you eat slower you feel more full as we all know.