Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary, Inc.

1-5-2016

We hope you and your family had a wonderful New Year! We wish you a wonderful new year! We had so many adventures in 2015, we can’t wait to see what will happen in 2016! I know together, it will be great!

A picture of all 12 cats that passed in 2015 and a list of the dates

Our number one goal this year is to of course provide quality care to the 90+ cats that we have in our care. Number 2 goal is to build a new building to provide care more FELV, Blind & FIV+ cats! You can easily help

Picture of a birthday cat, Says Pledge your birthday, Help save lives.

Pledge your birthday to the cats, Have your friends and family donate to the cats instead of giving you a gift. Have your birthday help change history. Have it be part of something permanent. Help us build a new building to save more lives! The building will include having an in house vet!

2015 was a very difficult year. We had more losses after the last newsletter. Someone made this wonderful picture of those that touched our hearts an left us last year. We have a special Facebook group, BCR cats who left too soon https://www.facebook.com/groups/1487504094892360/ You must be invited to join so send me an email (alana@blindcatrescue.com) if you would like to join. We share pictures and stories of the cats who have left us. I also share pictures of cats you may have never met.

Cat Updates:

We started 2016 with the loss of Ray on 1/1 It was time, his body was weak and it was time to let him go. Autumn is still hanging in there, playing, eating. Shelly has pancreatitis but is dong ok. Greta still has her feeding tube for meds, she is maintaining her body weight and is going to see the cardiologist later in the month.

What causes a cat to become diabetic? A fast short answer is that the pancreas is no longer able to effectively do its job producing insulin. There is a wonderful detailed answer explaining how the body processes/produces sugar and carbs here: http://www.felinediabetes.com/diabetes-info.htm Why am I bringing it up? Because Big Bob has been diagnosed diabetic. We took him to the vet because of unexplained weight loss. Blood work said very clearly, diabetic.

Picture of Big Bob, a gray cats sitting looking at the camera

If your cat sees your vet regularly (which you should be doing) and you get full blood work done (you should always do this) you may catch it before they become symptomatic but the symptoms to watch for are: Increased thirst Sudden increase in appetite sudden weight loss increased urination increased lethargy Diabetes left untreated can lead to blindness, destroyed kidneys, problems with motor function, coma and DEATH! This is not a disease to play around with! How do you prevent it. Something that some may find hard to do. Change what your cat is eating. They can’t go to the grocery store, you do. They need to be eating a lower carb wet food instead of the dry kibble that is more convenient for us humans and the cats like it. Everyone needs some sguar and carbs so do not go crazy and only try to feed them no carbs, that would be bad too. This website has a huge list of the carb count of wet foods http://www.felinediabetes.com/diet.htm The raw diet may also be a good choice but trying to make sure they get the right nutrition they need must be carefully addressed. If they only like dry food (which is NOT good for them, but some will not touch wet food (Simba is on of them for us) Read this article about dry food HERE Switch to a much lower carb dry food. HERE They have a low carb dry food and a Zero carb dry food. Their dry food is based upon the nutrition of a mouse since in the wild that would be a cat’s natural diet. Your vet will try to get you to feed the prescription Purina or Royal Canin food. That dry food will keep your cat a diabetic because of the carb content. Why would your vet have you feed it then? Because the vets do not know better. They get very little nutrition training in school. It is not a big subject for con-ed and they listen to a salesman. Most have never heard of youngagainpetfood and they do not know there is another choice. And NO we are not connected to youngagain, we have just had diabetics and they have converted to non insulin dependent on this food. How are we managing Bob’s Diabetes? We have ordered his some Youngagainpetfood carb free dry food (he likes crunches) He is eating wet food so he is being fed lower carb wet food (much of the foods on our wish list are lower carb wet foods) His BGL (blood glucose level) is being tested multiple times a day and he is receiving insulin. He is removed from the room and fed separate from the others. The dry food is removed when he is in his room. His “sugar” (BGL) numbers are improving since he not getting dry food at this time. We are adjusting the insulin depending on his numbers. This is not our first rodeo with diabetes. From our previous experiences, if he is a type 2 diabetic (Pancreas is working just not sufficiently enough verse type 1, pancreas is not working at all) it will take us approx. 4 weeks to get him back to a non insulin dependent diabetic. He will still be a diabetic but so long as we manage his diet he will not need insulin.

Feline Diabetes

We have signed up with iPet Companion. It is a real time play system that you can log in to and play with the cats. Click HERE There are 3 toys and the buttons do not look a thing like the toys (they are supposed to change them to match) The toys and buttons go left to right in the room. Toy 1 (first button left) is a spinning toy, Toy 2 is near the climber, round with a ball in it, it rocks when you push the middle button. Toy 3 is a laser toy near the right side of the screen. You can move the camera around the room, peek out onto the outside patio, zoom in on the cats and take a picture. I would love your objective feed back on it. Be brutally honest so I can share it with them. If it is slow, say it. (It is brutally slow on my computer but I have slow Internet) We can not help them make it better without feed back. iPet provided the equipment for free. If you are using Chrome Browser, add Ad Blocker to it makes it work so much faster.