Clients often ask me what they should feed their cats. It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is far from straight forward. The biggest debate amongst veterinarians at the moment is whether or not a cat should be fed dry food or wet food, or both. Personally, I tend to lean towards wet food as it seems to be the more natural option for a lot of different reasons that I won’t go into in this article. But I don’t necessarily recommend that to all of my clients. My own cat, for example, loves almost any dry diet but seems to hate wet food, so this is clearly not a good option for her. Being fussy creatures by nature, in most cases, the best food for your cat is the one that they will eat. But this isn’t always the case. Read on to see some examples of what NOT to feed your cat…

“I feed my cat only the finest fillet steak! Costs me a fortune, so it must be good for her, right?”

Short and long answer to that one – absolutely not. It’s true that in the world of well-balanced, scientifically formulated complete pet foods, you generally get what you pay for. More expensive foods, on the whole, tend to be of better quality than cheaper ones. But that only applies to complete, well-balanced pet foods. Just because a human food is expensive (ie, humans really like it and therefore are willing to pay a high price for it), doesn’t mean it’s going to do your cat any good at all. Sure, a bit of steak here and there isn’t going to hurt them, but by feeding your cat exclusively the muscle meat of any animal, they will quickly become deficient in a wide range of vitamins and minerals. There is, for example, very little calcium in muscle meat, to name just one. Other expensive human foods can even be dangerous for cats, even in small volumes. So if you ever feel like splashing out on your cat’s diet, put back the caviar and foie gras and ask your vet for their recommendation instead.

“But sometimes all she’ll eat are her treats, so I just give her those!”

The problem with this one is that unless your cat is extremely ill and you’re happy to get them to eat anything at all, this simply isn’t true. Cats are absolute masters when it comes to training their owners at mealtimes. And they’re not stupid……….

The London Olympics have captured the full attention of the public and the mainstream media: there’s something compelling about watching humans pushing themselves to extraordinary athletic achievements. Yet in comparison to some animals, even exceptionally talented humans are slow and weak.
One of the UK’s top sports scientists happens to be a veterinary surgeon. Professor Craig Sharp qualified as a vet in 1956, starting out in mixed practice in Crieff. In his leisure, he was a serious athlete, at one time holding the record for the fastest run to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. He soon began to take a serious professional interest in the science of physical exercise. In 1971, he took up a lectureship in the (then) innovative Department of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Birmingham, the start of an illustrious academic career. He’s been described as the founder of sports science in Great Britain, working closely with Olympic athletes and coaches.
In last week’s Veterinary Record, Professor Sharp published a detailed academic article comparing the athletic abilities of different animals with humans. His findings make even top athletes seem like puny weaklings compared with the power and speed of the animal world.
In sprint distance races, humans are left standing. A greyhound ran 100m in 5.8 seconds, compared to Usain Bolt’s best effort of 9.58 seconds. Over 200m, a cheetah has been timed at 6.9 seconds, a horse took only 9.98 seconds, and a greyhound ran it in 11.2 seconds. Meanwhile, Usain Bolt’s world record is 19.19 seconds. A horse has run 400m in just 19.2 seconds, and a greyhound has done it in 21.4 seconds. The fastest human takes over 43 seconds………..

Have you ever wondered what to do if you aren’t happy with the actions of your vet? Most people realise that vets have codes of conduct and ethics that they need to adhere to, but how does this work in practice? What happens to a vet if they stray from the correct professional path?
Vets are a “self regulating” profession, like many other professions such as doctors, lawyers and dentists. The phrase “self regulating” does not fit well with twenty first century concepts of fairness and objective justice. It sounds as if vets are allowed to just get on with their own thing, putting their own interests first. After all, how can someone be expected to regulate themselves as firmly as they would be if controlled by an independent third party?
The historical basis behind self regulation is the concept that the professions operate in a market where the consumer can never have full and equal knowledge with the professional. Whereas anyone can see if a grocery product is adequate, if your doctor tells you that some complex test is needed, or your dentist tells you that you need a filling, or your vet tells you that your dog needs an MRI scan, how can you tell? To address this imbalance in the market place, governments need to have a system that forces the professions to adhere to certain standards. And the only people who know enough about a specific profession, in order to be able to understand what’s going on, are members of that profession. Hence the concept of “self regulation”……………………………..

As we saw in the previous part of this series, Medical colics are those which can be managed medically, usually on the yard. However, about 1 in 10 cases of colic require emergency referral to an equine hospital for surgery.

This is what most horse owners are terrified of. The general indicators that a horse has a surgical colic are:

1) Heart rate over 60 that isn’t relieved by injectable painkillers.

2) Dilated loops of small intestine on rectal exam

3) Positive stomach reflux from the stomach tube

4) A definite rectal diagnosis of a surgical problem.

5) “Toxic rings” – dark red or purple gums, that indicate that the horse is going into toxic shock.

Of course, it varies between horses, and the vet has to make a judgment call based on all the evidence available.

We also have to talk to the (by now usually frantic) owners about costs. Colic surgery usually costs between £4000 and £5000, but can easily be a lot more. Even if the horse is insured, it is important to check how much the insurance company will cover – there are a couple of companies out there who will only cover part of the costs of emergency surgery. If in doubt, always call your insurer’s helpline.

However, colic surgery is one of the most genuine emergency operations there is – and it can be truly life-saving….

Ben Fogle has written a moving piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the loss of his Black Labrador, Inca. At twelve years of age, she had lost the power in both hind legs. Ben made the right decision for Inca, but it was still terribly difficult to go through the process of euthanasia. His article is unusually frank, with Ben describing how he “burst into uncontrollable tears” on the telephone when talking to his veterinary surgeon father, Bruce, about the situation. Then later, Ben describes the actual act of euthanasia:
“I carried her from the car into the house, burying my face into her fur, and laid her on the kitchen floor. Mum, Dad and my sister were all there. “I lay on the floor, hugging Inca while Dad injected her. Her breathing became heavy. I could feel her heart pounding and the warm blood beneath her skin. I breathed the familiar scent of her fur as I nuzzled into her thick coat. I have never sobbed like that in my life. It was a primal, uncontrollable, guttural sob as I felt her heart stop beating.I lay there on the kitchen floor clutching my best friend, unable to move. Wishing, hoping it was a dream, I held her lifeless body.”
Many readers have commented on the online version of Ben’s article, with some describing how tears were streaming down their face as they read his words.
Ben’s account will come as no surprise to vets and nurses: we witness people going through the emotional trauma of losing a pet every day, or even several times in one day. Perhaps the only surprising aspect is that the depth of grief isn’t discussed more commonly in public. It’s as if it’s only behind closed doors that it’s acceptable to express this level of grief for an animal……………………….

This week my Granny died, which was sad for us all but she was very old, had had a wonderful life and her family was with her at the end. She had been in a home for some time and was cared for very well. When she became sick and bedbound, the doctors and nurses worked together to keep her comfortable and pain free, until she slipped away in her sleep. I am lucky in that she was the first person I knew well who has died and this experience has made me understand why many people hope this is how their pets will go. However, to die in their sleep is rarely a pleasant or pain free experience for our animals.

Although, just like people, our pets are living longer and healthier lives, inevitably there comes a time when their age catches up with them and illnesses develop. Advances in veterinary care mean we can do a lot for them but eventually we won’t be able to keep up with their problems. If they were people we would put them in wheelchairs or place them in a home where their needs could be catered for, for example being assisted to the toilet or spoon fed but this isn’t practical, or in most cases fair, to a pet who won’t understand what is happening….

In my last piece, I looked at how the vet will examine a horse with colic. Following this, and using all the information from the history and workup, he or she has to decide if the colic is Medical or Surgical. The terms are more or less self-explanatory: a medical colic can be managed with drugs, while a surgical colic needs emergency surgery.

As a rule of thumb, 9/10 colics are medical, and can almost always be managed on the yard.

So, here are the common causes of colic that we see in the UK1 :

1) Spasmodic Colic. This is probably the commonest, and perhaps the least understood; I estimate about 80% of Medical colics are Spasmodic. Spasmodic colic can be caused by a stressful event, mild dehydration, or be genuinely idiopathic (i.e. we don’t know what causes it!). It can also be caused by severe tapeworm burdens. In a Spasmodic Colic, a section of the gut goes into a spasm, preventing anything from moving past it. It can be acutely painful, but usually responds really well to management with drugs. For any horse that has two or more bouts of spasmodic colic, I’d always recommend a tapeworm blood test to make sure it isn’t part of the problem!

2) Impaction Colic. This is more common in some management systems – it is pretty rare, for example, in horses who live on grass. In these cases, the food in the large intestine dries out a bit too much, and turns into a putty-like material. It then gets stuck, typically at one of the 180- degree turns in the Large Colon. It’s also strongly associated with moderate dehydration – as a horse gets dehydrated, he will move water out of the gut in order to keep up his circulating blood volume. This is a clever trick, meaning a horse can survive levels of dehydration that would kill a human. However, if the water isn’t replaced, and he’s been eating dry hay, his gut contents can become so dry they cause an impaction. This is why, many years ago, bran mash and Epsom salts were fed after hard work – both are good ways of rehydrating the colon and Caecum contents.

3) Gut displacements and entraptions. These are a bit of a mixture – some are medical, some are surgical, some look surgical but aren’t, and some can be fixed medically but keep coming back so surgery is eventually needed. What many people don’t realise is that the guts are in constant motion. Occasionally, a loop of intestine goes “wandering around” inside the abdomen, and gets stuck behind something else (for example, into a little gap between the spleen and the kidney). These can often only be diagnosed by rectal exam, and can feel really confusing, where nothing seems to be exactly where it should be! Each case has to be treated on its merits, and many can be resolved by lunging – presumably because jiggling everything around helps the intestines to fall back into their proper places! Personally, however, my inclination is generally to refer the horse as a possible surgical case……………….

The most common cause of illness in rabbits is poor dental health, they suffer terribly with their teeth and problems can become so severe, it is not unusual for bunnies to be euthansed because of them. However, the news is not all bad because it is actually very easy to keep a rabbits gnashers gnawing gnaturally!

Rabbits have teeth that grow all the time and are kept short by both a natural diet of tough, woody grasses and also by the upper and lower sets grinding on each other. However, since bunnies have been domesticated their diets can be very different from the wild, often consisting of more soft rabbit food and vegetables than hay and grass, and this is what causes the problems. Firstly, because the teeth aren’t worn down by these softer foods and secondly because they can become calcium deficient; leading to the jaw bones softening, the teeth shifting and no longer being in alignment with each other. This problem is particularly prevalent when the rabbit is fed the muesli type diets, which they tend to selectively eat by picking out their favourite bits and so they don’t get a balanced diet………..

It’s something all horse owners dread – colic. However, colic is a symptom, not a disease in its own right, and has a wide range of different causes. This is the first in a three-part series where I’ll be looking at colic in horses – its diagnosis and treatment, and what happens if your horse has to be referred for surgery.

Put simply, all colic is, is abdominal pain. However, before you’re tempted to dismiss it as a stomach ache, it’s worth remembering that the horse’s intestines are as complicated as a major chemical factory! Anything that causes disruption to their function is potentially life-threatening.

Occasionally, colic pain comes from a non-intestinal source, e.g. Liver disease (think ragwort poisoning, or liver fluke), or a kidney issue. In mares, it can also be caused by certain disorders of the reproductive tract. However, the vast majority are due to disease, damage or malfunction of the intestines.

If you call your vet and tell them that your horse has colic, they’ll treat it as an emergency, because it can be….

The so-called “Canadian cannibal porn star”, Luke Magnotta has finally been apprehended. His actions to date provide a classic case study of the reasons why society needs to make tackling animal cruelty a far higher priority. Magnotta began by torturing and killing animals, and now he’s doing the same to humans: if his attacks on animals had been dealt with effectively, he might never have become a murderer.
Cruelty to animals is important to many of us because of the simple fact that animals are sentient beings: to us, it’s a given that animals should not be allowed to suffer. Unfortunately, there are many in society who disagree: animals rank low on the scale of importance. If it came to a vote, it’s likely that “animal lovers” would be in a minority. As a result, calls for greater attention to animal welfare often go unheard: human concerns trump animal welfare issues.
This can be frustrating for those who are passionate about animal welfare, but rather than just moaning about it, perhaps we can use these facts to our best possible advantage, by seeking out reasons why the human race can benefit from improving animal welfare…………