Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

If anyone here has any anti-aging resources for cats, I'd love to see them. I have two 9-year-old Maine Coons whom I'm supplementing with glucosamine for joint and urinary health, and wonder if there's more I could be doing.

Edit: Getting some great tips on core diet and health down below! Luckily we're already doing most of those, and I guess I'm largely wondering about advancements in supplementation or preventative medicine (of course everything would have to be considered with a veterinarian). Here are other basic things we already do:

* My most important thing is not giving any dry food. Especially since one of my cats is prone to urinary problems and gets sick within just a couple of weeks if given even a partially-dry diet. But even if he wasn't prone to it, with what I've learned over the years I would not feed any cat dry food.

* We eat partly wet partly homemade raw (but the latter needs to come with careful research and caveats since cats have very delicate nutritional needs).

* Keep water bowls away from food and switch bowls/fountain once in a while for novelty.

* Indoor-only and we go for walks on a harness for enrichment when the weather is nice.

We just lost our cat last week. She was 18 and got a tumor in her nose which became too big.

Her kidneys were mostly fine and it wasn’t a concern the last time we checked (about 6 months ago)

I think she lived so long because she was allergic to most commercially available food (chicken and beef allergy) so we had to feed her higher quality food with 95+% meat. We also put her water in a different spot or the house (cats hate drinking where they eat, the smell of food near water makes them think it’s unsafe to drink so they’ll drink much less of it)

She was an indoors only cat for the last 10 years of her life after some crazy junky partially shaved her.

If we ever get over the pain and get a new cat, I’d do it all over again:

- high quality, 95+% meat food (dry and wet, the cat picks whenever she’s hungry)

- indoors only (no crazy people, no antifreeze, no cars, no cats/animals fights)

- water bowl far away from food bowls

Not a miracle recipe, but she was older than any other cat I’ve known.

Thank you, these are great tips. Sorry for your loss, sounds like you gave her a long and happy life.

Luckily I already do all of these! (Except for dry food; we do wet and raw only here)

Thanks. It’s hard for people who haven’t gone through it to understand the pain it can cause. But even then, euthanasia is an act of compassion no matter how difficult it is rather than letting the animal suffer and slowly die.

For dry food, vets told us some cats like it better but it also helps with oral health as it removes some of the plaque by friction and keeps the gums healthier by stimulating ligaments holding the teeth from the crunching.

I have not yet had to go through it myself, but came very close when one of my cats nearly died as a kitten. The experience affected me permanently and I get a little more anxious with every year that they get older.

From what I understand the plaque thing with dry food is a bit of a myth. After all, we don't brush our teeth by eating crackers. So I brush their teeth with a toothbrush and enzymatic toothpaste instead! For stimulating ligaments, that's really interesting. I feed largely a (balanced) homemade raw diet alongside commercial wet and suspect/hope having them chew through solid chunks of raw muscle meat would achieve a similar effect.

It doesn’t replace brushing but as our cat was eating wet food with a sort of pâté consistency, it would accumulate in her teeth. Alternating this with dry food helped remove most of this still wet food from her teeth so that it doesn’t turn into stone as fast. It’ll never be as effective as brushing though but our cat didn’t allow it unfortunately.

If the wet food is chewy then I guess it’d be very similar to dry food. Our cat’s food consistency was softer so she’s need the hard kibbles to crunch on.

Losing a pet is never easy I think. Even if it isn’t human, it becomes a member of the family with its own character, habits, and behaviour. It does create a void when they go but it’s unfortunately inevitable. It’s difficult to know when is the right time, but I believe it’s worse to leave a pet suffer because its owner doesn’t have the empathy to call it.

Isn't it very important to have at least 2 cats, when they are indoors? I was told this by a vet.

I think this depends more on your lifestyle. If you're never home and can't play with your cat, there is nothing to watch out of the windows (birds, nature...), no toys, etc then I guess two cats make sense because they can entertain each other.

But otherwise, it's fine. We were feeling guilty about keeping our cat indoors after the incident (it's not in their nature, etc) but every (North American) vet told us that they'd love it if all the cats they look after were indoors. They'd have way less diseases, wounds, maiming, etc. In Europe, vets weren't as adamant about keeping the cat indoors but they all agreed it's still better than outdoors. Our cat lived both in Canada and Switzerland.

Whenever we were hearing vicious cat fights outside for 10--15 minutes at a time, it felt very nice to look at ours peacefully curled on our bed rather than worrying if that was the sound of our cat losing an eye or getting notched ears and the expensive associated subsequent vet visit. They also require less vaccines from not being exposed to other cats and animals, and even though the vaccines are safe, it's still avoiding the very low chance of an adverse reaction (and the cost of the shot and boosters).

Shorter life of freedom and enjoyment is better than a long life stuck in a box. The real reason why they incentivize cats to stay indoors is to spare bird populations. Anything else is a cope.

Indoors cats can have a happy, full, low stress life indoors. The onus is on you to make sure that’s the case. It means providing entertainment (play, toys, windows) and making a little effort. Indoors cats are not in prison like you’re trying to make it sound.

This was in Europe and I was working from home during that time. We only had one cat. I played with it for sure, but not for hours. He had a window. Made weird sounds, especially at night. Once we got the second cat it was much better, at least to us he seemed way more chill.

> high quality, 95+% meat food (dry and wet, the cat picks whenever she’s hungry)

I think this right here is the smartest thing you can do. Cats are obligate carnivores, and some of the crap in the stores is just fillers they crap out anyway. Same with dog food - they design it to make poop more solid and easier to deal with.

I noticed that too, all the supermarket (and “vet only” foods like pedigree pal etc) are mostly fillers like corn or other things that cats don’t really eat normally but make it much cheaper to produce.

Raw food is the biggest thing. One of our cats has IBD and was about to be put down, raw food completely reversed it and now he’s better than before with no signs of slowing down.

Good call. Mine eat a mix of homemade raw and commercial high-protein wet.

Make sure they drink enough water. May have to get them a water fountain or a wider bowl, and make sure it's fresh.

Aside from that, Maines are already a very long lived generally healthy breed.

Good point; despite fountains and large bowls mine tend to not drink much except when the male is on urinary-specific food that ups his thirst (he was sick as a kitten which made him prone to urinary issues). I've read that cats in general don't tend to naturally drink much and are more used to getting moisture from their food. So I make sure they only eat wet and raw food, which provides extra moisture.

I just wrote a comment above, but I wanna make sure you don't miss it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38601677

Thanks for posting this. Mine don't have OA (that I know of or see symptoms of, at least), but I know joint issues are common in larger breeds like Maine Coons. I'll definitely ask my vet about this if the time comes (since this seems like more of a pain-relief thing rather than a prevention method?)

So glad your cat is happy and pain-free!

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