Wet canned food

We decided to start supplementing Tigger and Sheboo's diet with some wet canned food, since it has almost no carbs compared to the kibble (cats as carnivores don't need carbs). Supposedly, wet food also helps make sure the cats ingest enough water, which helps prevent kidney-related problems. Before, we had allowed free feeding of kibble, which was fine for Tigger, but Sheboo had become, for lack of a better word, obese! We then bought an automatic kibble feeder before to help Sheboo lose weight by feeding small regular meals. The feeder dispenses a total 0.375 cups of kibble for each cat a day (< 200 cal). Though Sheboo has lost weight over the year, she is still fat (though I guess no longer obese). We can only surmise that she must be eating some of Tigger's share. So, after some research, we decided to get a case of Nature's Variety Instinct and a case of Evanger's canned cat food, since they both seemed to have meat as the primary ingredients and minimal carb fillers.

Trying out the Instinct canned food Tigger happily chowing down

Tigger loved the wet food, but Sheboo is a very finicky eater for such a fat cat, and does not like to try any new foods. We tried to entice her by mixing in some canned sardines and dried bonito flakes, but in the end, the only thing that would work was to basically wait till she was starving enough to eat it. So, for now, we are feeding them the wet food in the morning and the kibble in the evening. Overall, the total calorie intake will be reduced from the all kibble diet, so hopefully we will see some results with Sheboo.

A Pink Chin

Poor Kushi has diarrhea, and got a spoonful of Peptol Bismol. Half of it ended up on her face: Update 10/28: After a week, Kushi's diarrhea has finally gone away. It started after a certain someone (ahem) fed her some spicy mutton. Her diarrhea was so bad that she would poop wet puddles all over her grass sod outside on the balcony, and while I was busy cleaning up, she couldn't wait for me to finish and deposited another poop puddle on the carpet inside. Yaargh!!! By the way, I would highly recommend this product for cleaning up pet poop/pee/vomit accidents:

8 in 1 Complete Stain & Odor Remover Spray

We've tried many other brands (ahem, Nature's Miracle, Simple Solution), and this is the only product that does a reasonable job of cleaning up stains AND more importantly, removes the pee odor, as opposed to just masking the smell. It has a fairly strong citrus odor, and I would prefer no odor, but otherwise, it does a good job of getting rid of the pee smell.

After googling for how to deal with doggie diarrhea, we fasted her for 24 hours (but with free access to water). We initially tried to give her a spoonful of Peptol Bismol once a day, which did not seem to have any effect. It was difficult to get her to swallow the Peptol Bismol (see pic at top!), since we didn't have a syringe to feed it to her. Then we fed her exclusively half rations of her homemade supplement meals, skipping the kibble. I mixed in some plain canned pumpkin, which has a lot of fiber and suppposedly helps firm up the poop. I'm not sure how much it helped, but Kushi's poop soon looked/smelled like canned pumpkin. I also mixed in a spoonful of nonfat plain yogurt (with active cultures) every meal, and that seemed to help. Her poop steadily improved until it back to normal after a week. After a couple days of normal poop, we transitioned her back to her usual combination of kibble and homemade meals.

A romp at Albany Bulb

After a quick dunk into the bay

Spreading the wet love...

A boy and his puppy

Cat tongue lickin' good

Sheboo and some canned sardines