According to data from pet insurer Animal Friends, there has been an increase of 1161% in domestic cat diabetes cases since 2011. An expert from UK veterinary charity PDSA says that one the main reasons for this is that people are feeding their pets with human snacks. I would argue that quite possibly the major reason or another important reason is that more people are feeding their cats with dry cat food which is high in carbohydrates.
It a bit like us eating cream buns and bread and jam every evening while watching TV. Humans are bound to put on weight with that sort of diet and yet we are giving our cats an unnaturally high-carbohydrate diet in dry cat food, often on the recommendation of veterinarians who sell the products in their clinics.
I know research is required on this but to me it’s common sense that a cat’s diet should be balanced and should be perfect for the cat and quite frankly dry cat food is not. The same expert says that people should be feeding their pets healthy, balanced diet for their species, age and lifestyle.
Yes, I agree, why are they, therefore, feeding their cats an unbalanced diet of dry biscuits every day? That said, the extraordinary increase in diabetes amongst the feline population is very worrying. This is been going on for a long time. Nothing has been done about it. People have been discussing this explosion in feline diabetes for years now. In parallel people have been discussing obesity amongst domestic cats for a long time as well. Yes, the two go together. But not always.
On August 13, 2015, I wrote an article entitled “Magic Cure for Feline Diabetes: Feed Wet Cat Food Only“. I stand by that article today. A well-known veterinarian and author, Dr Hodgkins, says that feline pancreatitis is also on the increase. Pancreatitis causes a deficiency in the production of insulin which in turn causes sugar diabetes. This, as the data states, is on the increased and Dr Hodgkins says that a major factor in the increase of feline diabetes is a change in the domestic cat’s diet to a large increase in dry cat food with high-carbohydrate levels. Remember, carbohydrates are needed in the manufacture of this food. Is that the only reason why carbohydrates are in the food? If so, it is appalling.
Amongst domestic dogs, there has been an 850% increase in diabetes over the same period (i.e. since 2011). An article in the online daily Telegraph newspaper urges that we stop pampering our pets because pampering them can result in diabetes. It certainly can and I would agree that we should not pamper our pets by giving them too much food but, as mentioned, I don’t think it’s all about pampering our pets. I think the answer is largely in the type of food that we give our pets which is almost always commercially made and which I have to conclude cannot be of sufficient quality otherwise I don’t think we would have such a crisis amongst the best in cats in respect of diabetes.
Another aspect is exercise. Cats cannot be getting enough of it. Owners should be aware of this. People are becoming fatter too. It seems that we are transferring our lifestyle onto our pets.
The data concerns UK pets but the problem is not untypical in the West particularly the USA.
Great comment Cassandra. I will turn your comment into an article as I have never heard of this before and your argument sounds compelling and interesting. I also hate declawing. Thanks again.
Did you know not only dry food is the culprit, but declawing causes diabetes too.
The Diabetes Connection When we printed the list of declawed cats to inspect, one thing immediately caught our eye: nearly every diabetic cat Animal Ark currently houses was on the list, with only one exception. To be clear: the general population of declawed cats is always around 25% of the total population. The fact that the percentage of diabetic cats that were declawed was near 100% was startling, to say the least. I decided to review the diabetic cats Animal Ark has seen over the last couple of years. More than 50% of them were declawed. I began asking veterinarians about the possible connection to declawing and diabetes.
One topic kept coming up: Cortisol. Cortisol is a chemical produced by the body to manage chronic pain. It also dramatically affects blood glucose levels. Ironically, elevated cortisol is also a risk factor for diabetes. The linkage may be even more compelling than that, because cats with pain in their paws are more likely to be sedate, get less exercise and are, therefore, more prone to being overweight, another contributing factor for diabetes.
Take Miracle, for example, a very overweight, diabetic declawed cat… When she came to Animal Ark, we had assumed the fact that she limped so badly was a result of her severe weight problem. However, as she has been trimming down, her limping is getting worse. After watching the Paw Project and examining her paws, it seems clear she is suffering from several of the long-term complications from the declaw procedure. Animal Ark’s relatively limited data set may not be enough to prove a link between declawing and diabetes. However, if a link were to be demonstrated it would go a long way toward clinically proving that declawed felines, even those with no obvious complications from the procedure, are suffering from long-term, chronic pain.
To help compile a more complete data set, I am asking shelters and rescue organizations to review records of their diabetic cats to determine how many of them had been declawed. I have also created a simple form they can fill out to submit their findings. You can help with this effort by sharing this article and asking the shelters and rescue groups you support to submit their information.
http://nokilllearning.com/A55E3B/NKL/NKLArticles.nsf/AllArticles/56C9087CE94E4E1786257C0E004F9537?OpenDocument
https://www.facebook.com/pg/BetrayedDeclawedCats/photos/?tab=album&album_id=986782461450925
In case you do an article, this is a good review of FISS and available evidence. The article was written before Merial 3-year Purevax was announced. You can find the announcement if you google for it.
http://todaysveterinarypractice.navc.com/vital-vaccination-series-feline-injection-site-sarcoma/
You can also look up the discussion on skeptvet blog where it was mentioned – it was in comments in one of the vaccine-related entries in 2015, if I remember correctly.
Thanks Kitty for a fantastic comment. I’ll digest it and maybe do an article on it.