Cat health and salmon.

[rolmops]

I know,it sounds weird,but lately my cat has been suffering of over active thyroids. This causes it to loose weight,puke all over the place and be very restless. In short,she becomes a much loved pain in the neck.

A visit to the vet resulted in a $350 bill and some quite effective medicine.

Next, I did some reading and it seems that one of the causes of this condition is cat food containing seafish which has a high iodine content. (research points in the direction of either too high or too low iodine content in the diet).

Fresh water fish contains much less iodine, specially the better cuts. ( not the fatty parts or the head which is typically used for canned cat food).

My question is,does anybody feed their cats Lake Ontario or Finger Lakes fish and if so,do they ever have any thyroid problems?

I believe that the drug industry is not much interested in healing patients (they would loose income) be they people or animals, but if a change in diet can do the trick, I'm game to try.

 

[ifishy]

i used to give my cats fish everytime i kept some for the table they loved it. never had thyroid problems i will say though i used to work in a vet hospital and cats with thyroid issues are more common than you would think.  the meds work pretty well and at least with animal meds they are much cheaper than the ones for humans even though its the exact same medicine

[skipper19]

I have read that manufactured cat food from fish can be a problem for thyroid as well as some urinary trouble for male cats. However, I cannot fillet a salmon or trout that has come home, without Jasper tearing my leg off and incessantly meowing for some raw fresh salmon from Lake O. He eats as much as he can hold, and has been doing so for about 8 years without issues. He gets some even when thawed and prepared to cook. Still a cat! Thyroid is a common ailment in cats like mentioned before.<br />

<br />

Sent from my PC36100 using Lake Ontario United mobile app<br />

<br />

[jason]

I feed my dogs fresh fish all the time. My vet calls my dogs special because they get salmon. They are healthy as can be.

[Big Water]

A few months ago I had a cat diagnosed with overactive thyroid with the same sysmptoms you describe.  We feed the cats lake fish about once a month, but this was our only cat to develop this condition.  Medications dropped the thyroid hormone levels to values the vet deemed acceptable, but we subsequently needed to euthanize the cat because it continued decline appreciably.  This cat had been highly nervous and high strung its entire life, so I don't think the diet had anything to do with it.  It was 18 1/2 years old at the time also.

[ifishy]

18 1/2 is no youngster for a cat at that kind of age just like people the chance for problems gets more and more.  I say feed them the fish get the taste for wild game in them so they keep the mice down unless there like my last one who just got fat and lazy but that was because he ate everything.  Only cat i know who would steal french fries from people and eat eggs in the morning if he could get his paws on them