In early December 2013, we lost our oldest cat – Big Kitty. In mid-December 2013, we took our younger cat Grumpy in for her yearly vet visit and vaccinations. During the visit her ears were cleaned out, somewhat roughly both of us felt at the time. Unfortunately this rough treatment led to a punctured ear drum plus an ear infection. This led to antibiotics, and that led to complete kidney failure..
Grumpy spent 7 nights at the vets on a drip. You can see via the above photo, she was not very happy about this.. Neither were we! We were both very upset and for a while there, it seemed like she might not make it home. The Other Half went in twice daily to feed her as she was quite difficult with the vet nurses. At some point she turned a corner, and got better.
When she arrived home, she spent over 2 months being syringe fed two to three times daily by The Other Half, and I can categorically state that without his nursing care Grumpy would not have survived.
He has a lot of scars for his efforts, as well, because Grumpy was not a big fan of being syringe fed. She did not seem to have any appetite or drive to eat by herself for a while. Eventually, she did get hungry again and was willing and able to eat on her own.
We were told by the vets that she would need to be on a special diet and a kind of food called k/d Feline Renal Health by Hills Prescription Diet was recommended to us. That is a kind of food you can usually only source from vet clinics, and as a result it can be very pricey. We were paying over $90 for a bag of kibble.
Both of us were not happy with the vets we’d been going to after this experience – in fact we both felt that if the ear cleaning had been done more gently, none of this would have happened at all. I asked around to find out who was the best cat vet in our area, and that is who we see now.
We were already seeing a totally different vet for the chooks because I’d asked around to find out which was the best chook vet. It turns out the best cat vet works in the same practice, so we decided to buy the recommended cat food via that vet clinic and cut all ties with the previous vet. The new place stocked the kibble at a lower price of $72 per bag, so it was a win all round.
That clinic closed earlier this year, merging with a new vet practice. At that time they switched to a new brand of vet only food. We got a sample and Grumpy did not like that food at all. She LOVES the k/d kibble.
So, we had two options – find another local vet which stocked the k/d kibble, or try to find a place we could buy it online. I did some googling and we found a place that looked promising, so when the time came, we crossed our fingers and placed an order. We ordered Thursday night, the order shipped on Friday, and Monday Morning the box arrived. Below you see Happy inspecting it.
Shipping was free. The kibble was the cheapest price I have ever paid for it, coming in a huge $12 less per bag of kibble than what I had been paying. The website has a huge range of pet related items many of which are quite difficult to find in local pet stores.
Plus, they sent us a lolly bag and a welcome voucher for $10 off our next order. The kitties approved the food immediately!
We feed one tin of wet food a day shared between the two kitties, kibble is always available to them, and they have a water fountain. The vet said feeling k/d to the younger cat would be fine, and she likes it, so we’re sticking with that plan.
Having a browse around the website, they have the largest range of cat food that I have seen, ever. There are some cat foods there which our local supermarkets and pet stores stopped stocking – eg the Applaws range which our cats enjoyed – and they stock some foods which I had never heard of before. They stock some Fancy Feast flavours I have not seen in a while, too.
In case you were wondering, nobody paid me to write this post, nobody gave me anything for free.. I just felt this was a great experience and I wanted to share it with you. I know I have readers who have pets and who might find the My Pet Warehouse website useful.
With all that said, I would totally accept free samples of cat food if they were offered to me, but that is only because I don’t like paying for new cat foods and having them rejected with great prejudice by our kitties, who are the harshest critics of pet food. Understandable, seeing as they are the ones who have to eat it. :)
Grumpy performing a pose we like to call monorail cat.
We don’t know how much time Grumpy will have with us. The vet says that her life expectancy may be reduced as a result of her kidney issues. Anything we can do to extend her time with us, we will do it, even if it means we have to budget a little more for cat food by cutting back in other areas. In the meantime, we deeply value the moments we get to spend with her.
This pose I like to call morph ball with a half pike – great leg extension!
Grumpy is sleeping on Carters lap in that last shot, by the way. Carter is in the perfect position for winter, right in front of the gas heater. Plus, he does not move, unlike those humans!
Wow. You’re paying roughly twice the price I could buy k/d on wag.com (an Amazon company I think). I buy most of my cats foods online because the deliver for free and have a much larger variety than I can get without driving a couple hours.
I’ve never had a vet who advocated ear cleaning. I did have a cat who, like some people, had an excessive amount of ear gunk. She loved to have her ears cleaned and we did it at home with nothing more than a clean kleenex around a finger. Pretty much let her decide how much she wanted to rub. I’m so sorry about your kitty’s experience and I hope she continues to recover.
We do pay a lot more in general in Australia for stuff, which is why I love to go shopping in Hawaii. :) I can save more than the round trip plane tickets and accommodation on clothes shopping alone!
Poor Grumpy does have a very bad ear situation and when the vet looked in there was a large wax plug in there, which is why the cleaning was suggested. However. I feel like pouring some liquid in there and then shoving cotton wool in and smooshing it about to the point that the animal tries to escape was unwarranted no matter what was going on in there. I can understand putting the liquid in to soften the stuff, but that is probably where it ought to end.
Things were made slightly worse during the stay when her drip blocked up and the other half pointed it out to the vet, who said it was perfectly fine but the next day her paw swelled up huge because the drip was *not* perfectly fine, and they had to move it to the other paw. She might have got better sooner if the drip had been flowing correctly.
The Other Half really should have trained as a vet. He has this calming presence to animals, it is quite something to see. :)
What cute kitties! I’m glad to hear Grumpy is doing better.
I’ve ordered food online but I try not to. I never know how the cats will react to it.
We once had a cat with urine crystals. We had to feed him prescription food. That’s really tough and expensive when you have 10 other cats. It’s either feed it to all of them or try and segregate the one cat that needs it.
We only have two and we’ve found it impossible to feed certain food to only one cat. :)
I would probably only get food we’d tried and tested online, because mine are very fussy. Though anything with tuna in it seems to be a winner. They love them some tuna. :)
I’m having a rough kitty week and will blog about it later. (if I have the heart) My daughter wants Mari(her cat that I’m babysitting) to have a special cat food that is easy on the kidneys. (Taste of the Wild-venison and salmon flavor) She eats better than I do! I have to go to a Farm supply store to get it.
I will wait to read more about the rough kitty week. Venison and salmon sounds tasty! ;)
I suspected this post was just to show lots of cute cat photos. It did that and was interesting too. PS Your blog now loads lightening fast.
I added in extra cat pics late last night. I love the monorail cat one but I am going to get in trouble when the other half gets home for posting that one, because she is monorail on his leg and those are his hands, lol.
He has this weird thing about not liking to be photographed. Even with cute kitties! :)
I had a cat with kidney failure and the special vet diet was the Supercoat kibble now available in supermarkets. Back then it was only at the vet and hugely expensive; I couldn’t afford it so the cat was put down. Angel is my first cat since then. At his last vet visit I was told to reduce the amount of kibble so he doesn’t get fat as he is already a large cat.
I check hi ears myself now and again, he seems to have no problems there, once in a while I’ll wipe inside the outer ear with a damp, warm flannel, he seems to like that.
I have not tried a damp flannel, I might give that a go. :) She sometimes scratches her ears with her back feet trying to get the wax out.. :) I think she could go for ear scritches with a flannel.
ooh they do black hawk food finally. I might give them a go, purely because getting to my local place can be difficult at times. Well not that difficult, but I am lazy and they seem to have supply issues and I am always scared they’ll have none!
Fen – The free shipping thing for most items is awesome as well. :)
Our local kitty litter and chook pellet place has changed brands and now they have very little stock of all the bulk items we used to buy there. In fact we had to drive to an entirely new place to get our kitty litter last month as they had run out. I think we will try and get everything from the one place in future, as mypetwarehouse stock it all. :)