Help Your Cat Live Longer. Here's How.

Well, hey you guys, and welcome back to The Longevity Vet. I'm Dr. Kevin Toman Toman, and I'm glad you're here. In today's video, we are going to take a deep dive into cat longevity, or how to help your cats live their longest and best lives in calendar year 2025. Why this video? Well, I've been a little disappointed by some of the veterinary press lately who have stated that the only thing your cat needs to live happily ever after are regular examinations and yearly vaccines. And while some of that is true, some of that is demonstrably false. And so this video is my effort to get you guys started on the right path. Who am I? Well, my name is Dr. Kevin Toman, and I graduated from veterinary school back in 1986. And during that almost 40 years in veterinary practice, I've developed a passion for longevity science, or how to help older dogs and older cats live their longest and happiest life. So that led to a bunch of studying on supplements, eventually to my using and prescribing prescription longevity drugs like rapamycin and acarbose, and most recently to my developing a website, www.helpingpetslivelonger.com, where we try like heck to do just exactly that. So what I am not is a big YouTube guy, kids, and so there's going to be some stuttering and some stammering in this video, maybe the occasional rethinking of a sentence or even a paragraph. So bear with me and we'll get through this together. So with those things being said, let's get to work. The first thing you should understand is that when I graduated from veterinary school back in 1986, I was told unambiguously that the things that were most important to helping a cat live long were yearly examinations and yearly vaccines, giving them every vaccine that was known to man on an annual basis. And while I still agree with the examination part of things, you're going to find out pretty soon that I disagree 100% with some of those vaccine recommendations. So moving right along, when you and I adopt a cat, or when we purchase a cat from a cattery or from a shelter, it's important for us to know that there are no free rides. Every cat comes with its own set of health risks. Now, some breeds like Maine Coons and Sphinx are much more prone to heart disease than you and I would like, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. Other cats like Persians are much more prone to kidney disease than the average cat, so something else to consider. But even the mixed breed cats that you and I get from a shelter are very prone to upper respiratory disease because they've been kept in a big enclosure with a bunch of other cats. Uh, and so about 25 to 30% of the cats that I have seen in my practice coming out of a shelter setting have persistent upper respiratory viral infections that they caught in a shelter setting. So the moral to the story, there's no free lunch. The first thing you should do when you get a new cat, new friend for life, is to have that examination done by your veterinarian. Not just to make sure they're healthy, but here's the other part of things: I want you to bring in a sample of their poop. Why? Because statistically almost 80% of kittens are born with worms, and that's something that can be easily taken care of by your veterinarian. But here's the more important part: there are certain intestinal parasites that can create abortion in human females and blindness in kids and infants. And so please, if you do, if you take nothing else from this video, if you have a new kitten or a new cat, please bring in a sample of their poop to be tested for intestinal parasites so that you know that your new best friend is not creating a health risk for you and your family. Now moving right along, we are— we're gonna— let's talk about those vaccines for Pete's sake. And so there are 3 vaccines that are typically used in cats. One is the rabies vaccine, one is leukemia, and one is protection against these upper respiratory diseases. And that typically goes by the abbreviation of FVRCP for the different constituents in there. And so let's talk about the rabies vaccine to begin with, and This is an important vaccine and one that I am unambiguously in favor of you giving, whether your cat is inside or out. Why? Well, outside cats do run into the risk of rabies just simply by virtue of interacting with skunks or possums or bats or whatever the vector is in your area. But there's a more important factor to this, and that is that rabies, the rabies virus, is one of the few viruses that your cat can transmit to you and your family. And just like rabies viruses will kill a cat, if you get a rabies vaccine, you will die— excuse me, let me try that again. If you get a rabies— if you catch the rabies virus from your cat, or for that matter from your dog, you will die as well. And so that rabies vaccine is important to create a vaccine break between you and this virus. Now, it's not very common in the world, I don't want you to panic, but this is a simple means to protect your family health. So please, get your kitty a rabies vaccine. The larger question becomes what happens with these, with the leukemia and the distemper complex, the FVRCP vaccines, as cats grow older. I think you should get your new kitten a full round of leukemia, a full round of FVRCP vaccines. I want to make that clear. But if they are not going out as they grow older, if you have 1 cat or 2 cats, or for that matter, 6 cats that are kept in isolation I see no clear logic to vaccinating them against diseases that can only be transmitted by another cat. Your cat cannot get leukemia by you bringing it in on the, on your shoes. They can't get an upper respiratory disease that comes wafting through the air. Both of these diseases have to be transmitted by the proverbial intimate contact from one cat to the next, whether that take place via sex, food bowl contamination, or just simply hissing and squalling at one another. And so if you have strictly inside cats, it just defies logic for me how they would be exposed to these diseases. And here's why that is important. And this is another thing, this is another lesson to learn, and that is that every injection that I give your cat as a veterinarian carries a small risk of creating skin cancer at the site of injection. Why do veterinarians typically use the lower hind legs to administer vaccines? Well, heck, it hurts more in those areas than it does in the scruff of the neck, which is where I was always taught to give vaccines 1,000 years ago. And here's why they do that: because if your cat develops cancer at the site of injection, it's easier to amputate their leg than to deal with that skin cancer up in the loose skin of the neck. And so I want you to think about that. The risks— and listen, they're admittedly low— the risk of developing skin cancer at the site of injection for a vaccine that your cat may or may not need deserves careful conversation between you and your veterinarian. Don't let them blindly make a statement that every cat needs leukemia vaccines or every cat needs distemper vaccines. Base that on your own perception of your cat's risk, okay? And why, why am I emphasizing this so much? Because in that 39-year veterinary career, kids, I know that I've killed at least 3 cats with skin cancer due to my giving them a vaccine. And you know what? That's a really shitty feeling, so I'm hoping to avoid that for you. I'm going to circle back around for just one second to the whole inside versus outside routine as well. I speak with a history of this dilemma because for about 20 years or so, I lived in southwestern Colorado. For most of that time, I had 2 adult cats that every morning I would let out and every evening I would let back in. Why? Because they loved being outside. Now listen, we had coyotes in that area, we had mountain lions in that area, we had a highway a quarter mile away. But I let them out because I knew that they loved it, and my own personal bias was that if one of them didn't come back at night, well, they died as a happy cat. Now I want to make clear, if you're interested in just simply the maximum number of days for your cat, I think that they should be kept inside. Studies show that they will live longer. But here's the deal, if you want the maximum number of happy days for your cat, Well, then all of a sudden you need to have a decision with your cat. Don't let your veterinarian, don't let your neighbor tell you what to do. You and your cat will sort that out. Okay, so moving right along, after vaccines, the next thing, the next most important part of your cat's healthcare is honestly dental care. Now that might strike you as a little bit funny, and when I graduated from veterinary school back in 1986, I'm gonna make an admission here, I hadn't taken one dental class back then. But in the early '90s, we realized how important that dental care was, and so I went to, like most veterinarians, I went to a bunch of continuing education and rapidly learned how ignorant I was when I graduated from veterinary school. But the gist of this is that cats are poster children for developing 3 different dental diseases, and these diseases not only create daily pain, but in some cases can shorten your year— shorten your cat's lifespan by up to a year or so. So what's the deal? Well, I have my handy-dandy little pictures here, and this first one is a picture of a cat with severe periodontal disease, and you can see this gray shadow around the root of this tooth, and that's a dental abscess that was filled with pus, and you can see how little natural bone actually remains. And this kitty's periodontal disease was so severe that it broke its jaw at the site of this infection. Why am I harping on periodontal disease? Because of this: studies show that if your cat, or for that matter a human, or your dog have severe periodontal disease, we are shortening their life by up to 15%, and in your cat's case, that's over a year's time. So that's nothing to sneeze at, guys. The only way that you can solve periodontal disease in pets is the same way, is the same only way that you can solve it in humans. You have to go ahead and have dental x-rays of each tooth in a cat's body, and that requires anesthesia. There's no free lunch on this. You guys don't, brushing your cat's teeth will not solve this. Anesthetic-free dentals will not solve this. The only way to solve periodontal disease for your cat is an anesthetic dental on a yearly basis, typically after they turn 6 or 7 years of age. And during that dental procedure, your veterinarian needs to take x-rays again of every tooth. What's the take-home message here? If your veterinarian can't take dental x-rays, then you need to find a different veterinarian. That— not taking x-rays equates to malpractice, and that's something for you to remember. Now there's a couple other dental diseases. Periodontal disease, that what I just talked about, that can occur in any species, but there are a couple of cat-specific diseases that you should be aware of as well. The first is that some cats are unfortunate enough to develop these little resorptive lesions, which look to you and me like somebody has taken a very small drill bit and drilled through the hard enamel of the tooth into the sensitive and bleeding pulp. And this is what that looks like on examination. Once your cat is anesthetized, a lot of these, these cats with resorptive lesions, you can see how the enamel of the tooth has been eroded to the point where these teeth are actively bleeding. Now that's something you can't see because back in the back of your cat's mouth, but can you imagine how painful that is? These are resorptive lesions and these require the extraction of the tooth. To solve your cat's pain. The third and final disease, final dental disease that we're going to talk about just briefly is stomatitis, and that looks like this. This is looking straight down the barrel of an anesthetized cat, and you can— this is normal gum tissue up here, but you can see how red and inflamed this tissue is right here. And listen, this resonates with me because every once in a while I get herpes viral cold sores, and I know they They just hurt like hell. But can you imagine how stomatitis makes your cat's mouth feel? That's one of the most excruciatingly painful diseases known to, known to the world. And the traditional treatment of that, unfortunately, is have to extract every tooth in the affected area of your cat's jaw. Why? Because we think stomatitis is an autoimmune disease that's directed against the bacteria associated with those teeth. Typically, extractions, whole mouth extractions, will solve that, but that is a very good way for you to spend a couple thousand dollars and to expose your cat to weeks of post-operative pain. Now there's a new player on the block, and I'm going to talk more about that in just one second, but the moral to this story, guys, is just simply that please, I mean, think hard about whether to vaccinate your cats, and if you, when you when your cat reaches middle age, the single best way that you can help them live to their full extent and live comfortably is with good dental care, and that requires anesthesia, and that requires x-rays of those teeth. All right, I'll stand down off my soapbox here for just one moment, but let's talk about laboratory work for, uh, middle-aged and older cats. And I want to make one thing clear, and that is that for older cats in particular. Anybody, any kitty that's older than 8 years of age ought to be having yearly lab work done, and that lab work should consist of complete blood counts to measure the cell numbers, a chemistry panel to make sure their liver and kidneys and other organs are working well, and a urinalysis. Why is the urinalysis so important to us? Because many times that's the early warning system that tells us about not just urinary tract infections, but also kidney disease. And kidney disease is a silent killer of older cats. In fact, somebody, a professor much smarter than I will ever be, once told me that if nothing else kills your cat, if they don't get squashed by a car or eaten by a coyote, every cat will die from kidney disease. And that's why routine urinalyses are so important. Because if you and I can catch kidney disease early in the game, we can, we stand a heck of a lot better chance of minimizing it with diets and with supplements and with preventive care than we could if we catch it later in the game. The other thing that I want to mention here, I'm gonna circle back around to the heart issues that would affect Maine Coons and Sphynx cats in particular, but almost every breed of cat to a lesser extent, and that is, If your veterinarian ever tells you, "Hey, you know, I'm picking up a murmur when I have a listen to your cat's heart," then odds are that your cat has a progressive and fatal disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is the single biggest— excuse me, the single most common form of heart disease in cats. And this disease, lovingly known as HCM, is progressive, it is typically genetic,, and it will progress over a period of months to years to the point where your cat dies of heart failure. Now, for many years, I've been— that has been a death sentence for cats. Now there's a new player on the block, and I'm going to talk more about that in just a couple of minutes. But if your cat ever develops a murmur, please take them to a cardiologist or a veterinary radiologist who can do an echo examination, an ultrasound examination, of their heart because they can tell you very, very accurately exactly what is going on and what the best way to minimize progression of this disease is. All right, so next on the hip parade is diets, and I'm going to address 3 things with diets. I'm not going to get into specific— this diet is better than that— because there's just too many out there to keep track of. But I will tell you categorically that just as with humans, The biggest concern with diets is obesity. The fact that you and I feed our cats too much. And why is that important? Because once cats exceed their normal body weight, they are 4 times more likely to develop diabetes. The symptoms of diabetes are a cat who is losing weight— well, let me back up. A cat who just eats like hell, they're ravenous all the time, but is losing weight., and if that's the case, it's typically one of two problems. It's either hyperthyroidism or diabetes, and both of those can be diagnosed via blood tests. Moving right along on the diet component though, in addition to simply feeding too much, we also have to understand that every cat is an individual, and therefore how their body responds to a given diet is, is a very individual thing as well. And here's where I'm headed with that. If you lined up 3 different cats and fed them all the same thing, 2 of them might develop absolutely normal urine with— and by normal urine, bear with me here, you guys— I mean urine that is slightly acidic, a pH of 6 to 7, and that's great. But 1 of those cats, or maybe 1 out of 5, or 1 out of 10 cats, is going to not respond as well as you and I would like to to that diet, and instead of having a nice normal acidic urine, their urine is going to end up basic or less acidic than you and I would like. And here's what's important about that. Two things. Number one, if your cat's urine is not acidic enough, they will have more urinary tract infections. That's a pain in the butt for you, and it's a pain in the butt for them, quite literally. The other thing though is more serious, and that is that if your cat's urine is not acidic enough, they have a tendency, whether it be male or female, to form bladder stones. And these bladder stones start as just little crystals within the bladder, and that's got to be uncomfortable in and of itself because these are literally little sharp, sharp little chunks like, like glass that are rattling around inside your cat's bladder. And so number one, it creates inflammation, and if you're— if you have a female cat, that's all you're going to see is inflammation, maybe a secondary infection. But your cat, your female cat's urethra, the tube that leads from their bladder to the external world, is about the diameter of a pencil, and so they can very easily pass these microscopic urinary crystals. However, if you have a male cat, male cats' urethras are literally smaller than the diameter of a pencil lead. And so many times what will happen for these male cats with urinary crystals is they'll try to pee these crystals out. Crystals get halfway through that small cat penis and, and grind to a halt, creating a urethral obstruction. And I want to be clear about one thing: that is one of the single biggest threats to your male cat's health. If you see your male cat walking around and squatting like he has to pee or just yowling all the time or leaving small drops of bloody urine all over the place. That is a medical emergency. If you've ever had a full bladder in a car or something and not been able to pee, you know exactly what I mean. And this is magnified by hours and hours of a poor male cat's inability to pee. So these cats are in excruciating pain. And if you don't solve this by taking your better— excuse me, by taking to your cat— let me try that again, guys— by taking your cat to a veterinarian to be anesthetized and have a catheter run up their cat penis, then you will kill them because that bladder will burst and they will die. Yeah, and so this is nothing to fool around with. Again, if you see your male cat walking around and hollering, yeah, yeah, and leaving bloody urine wherever they go, please, please take them to the vet. That is an emergency. All right, so I have two more things that we're going to talk about. The first of them is supplements. And so I talked about these obese cats, I talked about cats as they age, and if you combine those two things, one of the most common problems that older cats run into is arthritis. Now listen, cats don't tell you that they hurt, because if they did, from a genetic component, from an evolutionary component, If cats told you they hurt, they quickly switch from being predators to being prey of a larger animal, and so cats are very stoic. But if you see your older cat having difficulty jumping up onto the sofa or onto the counter that they always used to, or if they try to jump up and fall, or if they're avoiding the stairs, then any one of those things tells you that they are painful. And for years, for decades, the standby supplement for arthritis, for joint pain in any dog, in any cat, in in any human has been glucosamine and chondroitin, most notably the brands Dasiquin and Cosequin in the veterinary world. And listen, I sold them for many a year, but here's one thing you should know, and that is recent studies show glucosamine and chondroitin products just simply don't work. They don't work in humans, they don't work in dogs, and they don't work in cats. And so for all of us, the supplement, the natural supplement that has been shown to work is one with a big long name, and that big long name is undenatured type 2 collagen, or UC2 for short. And it— UC2 has been shown to be as effective as some types of nonsteroidal pain medications in reducing inflammation in human knees, and we think the same thing extends to cats and dogs. The other bonus of UC2 products is that they are cheap and they taste good. These are chicken-derived products, and so for dogs, you just give them the whole capsule, but for cats, you can sprinkle the contents of the capsule right onto their food, and I've just never had a cat refuse it. So, another take-home lesson for you here, as they used to say, and that is that if your cat has arthritis, you can use glucosamine and chondroitin products on them, like Dasiquin and Cosequin, it's just gonna, it's just not going to help cat as much as we'd like. Please can think of using undenatured type 2 collagen, or UC2, to keep your kitties comfortable. All right, and now we're down to the final topic, you guys, and that is the use of prescription longevity drugs to help your cats live their longest lives. And there are two that I'm going to talk about. I've mentioned diabetes a couple of times, and that is because it's such a common problem for cats as they age. And it's 4 times more likely to occur in these cats that are heavier than, than normal. And so there's a drug called Acarbose, which helps to reduce not only body weight but also blood sugar, and that it's a very small pill. It can also be formulated as a suspension, and it's prescription drug that you can get through your veterinarian or through us with a consult that will help your cat to to lose weight and to drop their blood sugar. And if it comes to, when it comes to blood sugar, guys, the last thing in the world you want is for your cat to develop diabetes. Not because it's a hard thing to treat. You know, I could teach a monkey to give an insulin injection because they're such very small needles. But when you have a diabetic cat, I know darn well where you're gonna be at 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM every day of the year, 365 days a year, and that is giving your cat insulin injections. And so although the injections themselves are easy, diabetes ties you to your cat on a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year basis. And so let's avoid it if we can, and one of the ways to avoid it is with the use of a prescription drug called Acarbose. The last drug I'm going to talk about is Rapamycin. And this is a new kid on the block, and here's why it's so important to us. Because about 2 years, a study by a company called Trivium came out and showed us that this fatal heart disease that I spoke of before, this hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, can be stopped in its tracks for many cats by the use of this prescription drug called rapamycin on a once-weekly basis. And I want to be clear, this is a game changer. Because for the 40 years I've been in veterinary practice, until the time that Rapamycin came out, if I told you that your cat had HCM, I was in effect telling you your cat has a death sentence. And now with Rapamycin, that's no longer the case. A couple interesting facts about Rapamycin along the way, and that is that it reduces inflammation. And so if you're talking about arthritis, the pain of these inflamed joints in an older cat, rapamycin also helps that. It helps to minimize and sometimes even eliminate the stomatitis, that autoimmune disease that creates kind of cold sores associated with, with teeth of a cat. And it also, funny as it sounds, has been known to improve hearing loss as people, as dogs, as cats age. And so all those things are of interest to us. But what is even more fascinating is the fact that rapamycin has been proven to benefit patients with chronic kidney disease in several other mammal species, and it is currently being studied at Colorado— excuse me, at the Ohio State and Florida State veterinary schools to learn whether rapamycin can benefit cats with chronic kidney disease. Remember that I told you that virtually every older cat will develop kidney disease as they age, and so if you are telling me that a prescription longevity drug like rapamycin not only can, can improve hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, this fatal heart disease, but also may improve chronic kidney disease. And oh, by the way, has been shown to be a benefit against 3 forms of cat cancer: squamous cell carcinomas, mammary cancer, and melanomas. What's not to like? The reality is that These things make Rapamycin the most promising drug in cat longevity that I have seen over the last 40 years. All right, done. And so there's been a lot to cover, I know. I'm the one doing the talking, and so, but I want to make, all kidding aside, I want to tell you one thing. You, if you have questions about how to help your cat live their longest and best life, please reach out to me. I'm happy to answer the questions because we're all in this together. You can find my email splashed all over the place at www.helpingpetslivelonger.com. Let me repeat, we're all in this together and I will help you if I can. So thank you very much for listening to this video and have a great day. Bye now.