Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan. Today, I think we are going to have a lot of fun, because our topic is the Future is Feline. So all you cat people, listen up, because this one is just for you. My guest today is Dr. Angie Krause, and she is a holistic small animal veterinarian who does house calls in Boulder, Colorado, Yay. Lucky people of Boulder Colorado. She believes that cats are underserved, which is very true, and deserve more from veterinary medicine and society. I couldn't agree more. That's why she has created Natural Cat Vet, a community just for cats and the people that love them. Dr Krause, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show today.
Dr. Angie Krause 0:55
Oh, you're so welcome. I'm happy to be here.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:58
So we were chatting a little bit offline before we got started, and we're gonna have some great stories, some things that people can laugh at me. It's fine. Things I've put up with in my life, but we've got five or six talking points, so we're just gonna start at the top and go down our list. So first of all, we're gonna talk about taking a stand for cats, and so in your small practice, you treat dogs and cats. Why did you decide to start the Natural Cat Vet? And what does that entail?
Dr. Angie Krause 1:31
Well, the Natural Cat Vet is a community just for cats, and I curate content and veterinary supplies, supplements, lifestyle products that I use for my patients and my own cats. And so I wanted a place just for cats. I noticed that cats and the people that love them just didn't get enough attention. It was kind of like, oh, we have this product for dogs, but I guess you could probably use it on your cat too. And there's so much research going towards dogs and not enough going towards cats, and I noticed that people that love their cats really wanted more. And as a veterinarian, I felt like this is my job, to step up and serve the cat people, and I am a cat person myself.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:23
Well, there you go. And it's amazing. I think the cats, they do need their own place. And when I was oh my gosh, I guess when I was a senior in veterinary school, I did an externship in an emergency clinic, and one of the doctors who worked there was the cat doctor from her practice was called The Cat Doctor in Philadelphia. And so it was pretty unusual back in the 1980s to have cat only practices, but she was one of the kind of the starting points. And it was really interesting to me that pet owners would have dogs and cats and have separate veterinarians for them, but it is so true now you're a house call veterinarian, which is awesome for kitty cats, because they don't have to get in the box and get in that big motor vehicle that takes them horrible places and see strangers. But for clients who were taking their cat to the veterinarian, they didn't want to sit in the waiting room next to a bunch of barking dogs. And I even saw it in my own practice. People with dogs would just, you know, like, let their dog go over and stick his face right in the cat carrier opening. And it's like, why would you do that?
Dr. Angie Krause 3:33
I know, I know cats find it to be so rude, it's offensive.
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:39
And cats are not small dogs. So cats are. We can't just say, well, if this is good for a dog, we'll just shrink it down and make it for a cat. And so this is going to take us into our next subject. Food is very food requirements and nutritional requirements for cats are very different from dogs. I actually, I formulate a lot of diets, and I don't like formulating for cats. I find them to be much harder.
Dr. Angie Krause 4:07
Yes, cats are obligate carnivores, and when we created kibble for dogs, we thought, oh, I guess we could use this for cats too, just another kind of cats being the afterthought. And I went to school at Texas A and M in the early 2000s and even then, we were taught that cats should not eat kibble.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:28
You were? oh my gosh, because, like I said, I went to school in the early 80s, and it was all about which kibble diet to feed your cat, and it was all corn based,
Dr. Angie Krause 4:35
right? And we were taught that we should mimic a mouse diet.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:41
I have a new respect for Texas
Dr. Angie Krause 4:42
totally I think it's because it's the home of the GI lab, so there's a lot of research going on there. And so I was taught very early in my career that cats just don't do well on kibble.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:56
How do we convince the big pet food companies of that?
Dr. Angie Krause 5:02
You know. That's an excellent question. I think, I think consumers are going to convince the pet food companies. And as someone, I've worked in pet food for some time, and I see consumers driving those ingredient decks, and so I want people to know that when they give pet food companies information, they're listening.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That's good. Yeah, we're hoping
Dr. Angie Krause 5:25
So keep squawking, squawking,
Dr. Judy Morgan
man, I squawk all the time. I'm hoping that the people that follow are also squawking. So, Give me a couple of reasons why they said kibble was bad for cats. I mean, you and I both know it is, but, and I talk about it all the time, but let's, let's hear it from somebody else as well.
Dr. Angie Krause 5:43
Yes, so kibble is not ideal for cats, because it has a very high carbohydrate content. And as obligate carnivores, they just can't process carbohydrates like dogs can. And even if you make it grain free, because I have a lot of people say, but Angie, I'm feeding a grain free kibble, it's still high in carbohydrate, maybe pee, potato, because you have to to make it crunchy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:07
it will not stick as a kibble. If you try to put 70% meat through an extruder, you're going to have a big old gunky mess
Dr. Angie Krause 6:14
Right? We were also taught by the dentist that it actually increases dental disease. So for dogs, we think maybe crunching can help. It's very minimal. But for cats, we know that crunching actually makes their dental disease worse. It causes dental disease.
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:33
not to mention the fact that most of the time they don't crunch. They swallow whole.
Dr. Angie Krause 6:45
right? That is true,
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:55
because when they puke it back up on your carpet, it's whole.
Dr. Angie Krause
It's whole, yes, and so we were taught to mimic a mouse, high moisture, high protein, low carbohydrate,
Dr. Judy Morgan
and a little mouse hair in there for fiber. And the interesting I was giving a lecture somewhere at a pet expo. So, you know, a pet expo is not a scientific thing. It's a bunch of pet parents who are there getting entertainment and buying a bunch of toys and treats for their pets. And I was giving a lecture on cat health, and I said, we wanted to mimic the mouse diet. And I said, I've been asking people for years to just put mice in the blender and feed it to their cat. And I was waiting for somebody to actually do that, and, you know, said it as a joke, and a guy came up to me after the lecture, and he raised snakes, and he said, Well, I raise a lot of mice to feed to snakes. I might just do that. I have yet to see the mouse cat food, but I'm waiting.
Dr. Angie Krause 7:39
I haven't seen that either,
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:42
you know, I would think it would be cheap to produce, make a lot of mice really fast
Dr. Angie Krause 7:46
you could, yeah, it would be cheap.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:49
Might have to mix in a little rabbit. I mean, I don't know if anybody has done the nutritional profile on a mouse, but there must be something to it, because my cats eat a lot of them,
Dr. Angie Krause 7:58
definitely. And I think when we change them if we were to blend them up, would the cats like the palatability? Would they like that mouthfeel?
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:06
Do cats like any palatability cats are? So they're picky, but I think a lot of it is we're not feeding them appropriately. I think that's part of why they're picky.
Dr. Angie Krause 8:17
That's right, yes. And when we don't start as kittens, and they get kibble as kittens, and they don't learn to have an expanded palate. It makes it harder. As they get older, they get pickier.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:29
Yeah, when I first started my cats, I had all adult cats at the time, and I started that I wanted to change them over to raw feeding from kibble feeding, because I had learned kibble you know, that was what we all did. Maybe they got a little canned food once in a while, but I wanted when I once, I learned better as I kind of, I can't do this anymore. It one of my my oldest cat. It took me six months to get her to transition over off her kibble, because they get so ingrained into the texture, the smell like the crunch, there's just, there's so much that is learned, and then the longer they're on it, the more difficult it is to change. my whole group of cats, my clowder that I have at the moment. They were started on Raw, right? Their mommies were fed raw, and they're all fed raw, and it's so they love it. They've never seen a piece of kibble, and I hope they never do,
Dr. Angie Krause 9:19
yes. And I found, I find those raw fed kittens to be more open to other textures. So my raw fed kittens will sometimes share my dinner. They'll sample different textures on my plate. And I'm for it,
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:33
yeah, absolutely, because I think that we can provide so much more nutritionally. And, you know, just a variety, which I feel is really, really important. So even with my raw fed cats, one meal might be a poultry product, and another meal might be a four legged product. Another meal might have some fish in it, and their poultry spans, pheasant, quail, duck, goose, chicken, turkey. So when you can get them to enjoy that type of variety, you know that you're getting really, really good nutrition into them. So
Dr. Angie Krause 10:09
yes, it's true. And then if so something medically comes up down the road, you have so many more options, supplements, to put them on a single ingredient diet, whatever you need, you just have more feathers in the quiver when you have an expanded palate.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:27
And I have found that when they're started off on that kind of diet, we don't see allergies and IBD and, you know, all these GI problems, and so that kind of leads us into the next topic, which is vomiting.
Dr. Angie Krause 10:46
Oh my gosh. I could talk about this all day. And I do, in fact, I do talk about it a lot.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:53
like I used to think it was normal to come down the stairs and put my bare foot into a squishy pile of cat vomit, because they just did that every day,
Dr. Angie Krause 11:02
absolutely well. And I was taught in veterinary school, cats vomit. And you know, some professors were like, oh, cats just vomit, and that's what they do. And the internal medicine professors were like, No, cats should not vomit regularly. But I find that rhetoric is still out there. I have a cat trying to crawl in my light right now, that rhetoric is still out there that it's normal for cats to vomit. That's what they do, and I think it's really detrimental, because usually cats are vomiting either because they're not on an appropriate diet. They do have a food sensitivity, or maybe they do have IBD, and they could be getting treatment and so, and I think that cats walk around with stomach aches more than we know.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:47
Well, sure, and even the whole, you know, it's normal to puke up hairballs, I don't think it's normal to puke up hairballs. The hair should be transiting through. It should be carried through. That's where the fiber comes in in their diet. And fiber is very different from starch. So when we're talking carbohydrates, yeah, maybe we have one or 2% in there, but that's for the fiber. So if you're feeding a prey model diet, you're going to get that feeding the whole animal, which means they're going to eat the hair and the feet and the head and the bones and all the little goodies that go along with it. We need to take a break to hear from our sponsors when we come back. We've got some really important topics that we're going to cover, particularly for our senior kitties. So stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
PRODUCT 1
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PRODUCT 2 13:36
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Dr. Judy Morgan 14:12
Welcome back. You're listening to Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, and this is my guest, Dr Angie Krause. She's the Natural Cat Vet, and we are talking about the future is feline. So we've covered what we should, should and should not be feeding them. We've talked about vomiting not being normal. Next, we want to talk about urinary issues. And I was telling Dr Angie, before we went live, that I have had more cats with pee pee problems in my life, like I can't believe that my husband and the rest of my family has put up with the cat issues. And I actually had one cat who once peed in our toaster, and we didn't realize till we were cooking a bagel in the morning and it did not smell like a bagel. There was no cleaning that toaster. It just went out in the trash. And as Dr Angie said, How could that even be comfortable to be squatting on the toaster? I just don't know. And with an entire household of things to choose from, why? So in the notes, you say urinary issues are less likely to be medical problems. Let's talk about that.
Dr. Angie Krause 15:23
it's true. A lot of people bring their kitties to the vet saying, my kitties, you know, urine, urinating outside of the box, peeing on my bed, peeing on the wall, and rarely is it a medical problem and unfortunately, most veterinarians aren't really equipped to talk about cats mental and emotional health and what could be going on around them to stress them out or make them feel uncomfortable. And so I think it's really important for people to understand, just like when we go see our physician, they might not be the best person to talk to us about our mental and emotional health, that there are more resources out there for kitties.
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:07
So do we have kitty psychiatrists? Do we have a little kitty couch that we're going to put them on?
Dr. Angie Krause 16:16
Absolutely yes. People like Jackson Galaxy, they are teaching us so much about how we should be keeping our homes. Cats need vertical spaces. Cats need to escape. Cats fight with each other. Often I see as a house call vet I get to go into people's homes and see what's stressing this cat out. And I will tell you so often there is a cat outside causing complete Havoc never comes in the house, but it's the neighbor's cat that lurks in the backyard and disrupts the whole ecosystem. So you know, antibiotics and doing all these things probably isn't going to help. The Prozac might not help. And you know all these things that Western medicine can do, which is honestly not a lot, unless your cat has stones or crystals and is blocked most of the time, it's not going to be a medical issue.
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:07
Yeah, bacterial infections in cat urine are actually very rare, but the treatment has always like, that's what I learned in school. Hey, your cat's peeing outside the box. The Cat's got cystitis, they go on antibiotics. When I started studying Chinese medicine, it was like, Oh, now I know why the antibiotics work. They're cooling. So it's, you know, energetically cooling. They're cooling the inflammation. They're not killing bacteria, except for in the gut, where we kind of don't want to kill the bacteria. So if your cat is having urinary problems, yes, go get 'em checked out. Make sure they don't have stones. They don't have a lot of crystals. Make sure you're feeding them a species appropriate diet that has a lot of moisture in it. And go ahead and get a urine culture. Don't just put them on antibiotics, because there's a really, really good chance that they don't need them,
Dr. Angie Krause 17:54
right! Unless they're 15 with kidney disease. Chances are it's, it's not, it's not bacterial,
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:02
so most of the time it actually is behavioral. and like you said, it could be the cat outside in my house. It's been inner cat problems, like I had a brother and sister the I didn't realize the brother was intimidating her, but he was, she was five pounds. He was 15, so and he didn't he he seemed like a big mush. But once he passed away, she's like, Oh, now I can come in this room, and now I can get near the litter box and, oh, life is pretty good, of course. Then I got a dog that likes to chase the cats. So the cat is back to living on the piano in the window sill, because she needs her vertical space to get away.
Dr. Angie Krause 18:42
Right exactly? It's important to think about those vertical spaces. And the other thing that I'll say that might be controversial is it's okay to rehome kitties if there's a lot of problems between cats. And a lot of people don't like to hear that, but I know when I was living with someone I didn't want to live with, and then I got to move out, my life got a lot better. And I think that that's true, that that is an option that is really shamed. Now I'm not saying go dump your cat at the shelter, but it's okay to look for other options, and people really feel like they've failed their pet if they've done that, but I don't think so. Sometimes it is the most loving thing you can do for everybody involved.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:30
Well, that is true, because I feel sorry for my poor little kitty, who spends most of her time on top of the piano in the window sill, because this dog, if she's down, luckily, he's pretty much blind, so if he smells her, he's trying to find her, and she knows that she can get away faster than that he can find her. But still, it's very stressful for her. So I find that at night, when he's in the bedroom, she's wandering all over the house and, you know, doing her exploring and things that she likes to do. And if I get up in the middle of the night, she's begging me for snacks. So. We kind of have this nighttime relationship now, but I actually had a and this, I think, is pretty important, and people may not think about it, I had a communicator in my office one time, and we were dealing with a cat with urinary issues, and he was communicating with the cat, and he said, Well, your cat just told me that the other cat in the other cat in the house beats her up all the time. And the owner said, that's true. And he said, I also see that your litter box is tucked way back in a corner in your room that you use as an office, and the litter box is way back, kind of around in a corner. And the owner said, yeah, it's to keep it in the kitty litter out of the way. And he said, Well, your cat is scared to death to go there, because she keeps getting cornered by the other cat. And so she needs that litter box where she has a 360 view and she can see if he's around. And you know, as long as the other cat isn't around and she's not going to get cornered, then she'll use the box. And so the box got moved, and the cat was absolutely fine. So we can find a communicator. They can make it a lot easier for you, but I will say that a lot of times cats do not like to be cornered. So solving the issue with my little kitty, who's been peeing and her brother was being mean, unbeknownst to me, we gave her a covered box with a clear cover so she could see out, and we put it up on a counter so she also had that elevation, so she didn't have to worry about it. My dogs are small. She didn't have to worry about a dog getting near her in the box, and she could see exactly what's going on. And so she's using the box beautifully. It's a little bit of a weird setup, but it's working great. It's in my laundry room. It's working great. So, and the other thing is, changing up your kitty litter. Sometimes they just don't like the substrate,
Dr. Angie Krause 21:51
definitely. And there's so many products on the market, you can find something that your kitty likes.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:57
I actually, I had one of my technicians one time... She had dozen cats, and one cat would only pee on plastic bags. So if she had, like, brought home groceries, that cat was peeing on that bag. And I said, Why don't you shred up some plastic grocery bags in a litter box? And that's what the cat wanted to use.
Dr. Angie Krause 22:17
Yes, my last cat would only poop on smooth plastic. So I had a litter box without litter for him to poop there.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:27
There you go. There you go. Oh, man, we're going to run out of time. So I want to, I want to talk about senior cats real quickly. And there are two things that we know that cats suffer from silently. There's probably many, but two that I want you to touch on real quickly are hypertension and arthritis. like, what should we be looking for?
Dr. Angie Krause 22:47
So cats... If your cat has been diagnosed with kidney disease, even early stage kidney disease, I want you to have your cat's blood pressure monitored every six months. Hypertension comes on slowly. It often doesn't have a lot of symptoms. Sometimes they can have a little bit more dilated eyes, but unfortunately, the first symptom we often see is sudden blindness, and it's completely preventable and it's easily treatable. And so if your veterinarian says your cat has kidney disease, I want you to ask for a blood pressure to be monitored. My preference is using a Doppler. And I have all the privilege in the world because I get to do it in the comfort of Kitty's homes. So if you can find that, that's even better. But I want you to be paying attention to that. And the second thing,
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:33
yeah, and the thing is, even if they're stressed at the veterinary office, if you get a baseline, like you should get a baseline before they have kidney disease, find out what your cat's blood pressure is at the veterinary office, because if it's normally running 175 and now all of a sudden it's 250. that's different. It's a problem
Dr. Angie Krause 23:49
Yup, that's enough to cause sudden blindness, because what happens is the retina is detached from the back of the eye, and it's hard on kitties. When that happens, they can definitely live blind, but if they didn't have to, Let's prevent it,
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:04
Yep. All right, so let's talk arthritis.
Dr. Angie Krause 24:07
Arthritis. Most senior kiddies have some form of arthritis. And unfortunately, people have this concept that cats should sleep 22 hours a day, and they become less mobile, and people don't notice. They're like, Oh, you know, they're older, and fortunately, we have so many modalities to treat arthritis, and cats don't have to suffer. So if you notice that your cat is not jumping on the bed or doesn't walk down the stairs, a lot of people will say, oh, I want to. I'll just bring everything to my cat. But what I want you to do is to treat their pain, whether it's acupuncture, herbs, chiropractic, massage, we have a lot of things out there, and then I want you to keep them moving. I want you to keep them moving around your house.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:51
Well, you know, I think that we don't keep our cats moving enough in general, because we're like, oh, they're just doing their cat thing. And so we don't interact with them as much. Unless if you are a totally a cat, like, if you have dogs, and I have a million animals, so little like, oh, just take time to play with everybody. So if you are, you know, only a cat owner and you're really interactive with your cats, they're probably going to get more interaction and play time with you. But a lot of cats, the owners are gone all day. That's why a lot of people have cats, because it's like, oh, well, you know they're they're happy while I'm at work all day, but you do need to interact with them, and you do need to make sure that they're moving however you want to do that with them. So get some interactive toys, things that you can play with. And the most common symptom for arthritis in cats is none.
Dr. Angie Krause 25:39
I know. I know.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:43
So it's very sad. But, you know, take notice. Did they used to jump on and off the refrigerator, and now they only will jump two feet, or to get up on the table, they have to take multiple you know, like, I'm going to get to the short chair, then I'm going to get to the taller chair, then I'm going to get to the table, then I'm going to the counter. Are they having to do it in multiple hops? Are they sitting and thinking about it before they go? So there's so many, so many things I'm going to have to have you come back again, because we didn't even get to touch on thyroid and kidney issues in cats a little bit. But those are so important, particularly in our cats, as they're aging. And I'd also like to talk more about dental health with kitties, so we are going to have you come back again. Dr. Angie Krause, thank you so much for the work that you're doing, and it is so nice to have someone who is really paying attention to our kitties. We are getting more people who are really focusing on the cats. And I think the cat community is very happy.
Dr. Angie Krause 26:42
Yes, they deserve it. They deserve everything
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:46
they do. I love my clowder so you can find out more about Dr Angie Krause and her Natural Cat Vet community at naturalcatvet.com very simple until next time. Thanks for listening.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.