How To Kill Your Cat. Or Not.

Well, hey you guys, welcome back to The Longevity Vet. I'm Dr. Kevin Toman Toman, and I'm glad you're here. Happy holidays to you and your family. In today's video, we're going to talk about how to kill your cat or not, and the choice is yours. And I'm basing this chat on the fact that over the last 40 years, I've been in veterinary practice throughout the United States, mostly in California and Colorado. So I have seen all the bad things that can happen to cats just like yours. With that being said, let's get cracking. The first question around your cat's lifespan is a very simple one, and that is whether to keep them inside or to let them out. And honestly, I think that if maximum lifespan is your goal, you should keep them in. But I think most cats would raise their little paws and vote to go outside. And so I think for the longest lifespan, sure, keep them in, but for the happiest life, I think many cats want to be outside for at least a part of their life. And I can speak very directly to this because for almost 20 years I lived in southwestern Colorado, and during most of that time I had 2 kitties as companions, and I let them out each morning understanding that one or both of them might not come back that evening. But I also knew that they loved going outside. They scratched at the door until I let them out. And if they died with that lifestyle, well, they died with cats. So I guess the moral to the story is just a simple one: if you want to keep your cats around longest, well, inside is probably the player. If you want to keep them happiest, maybe they should go out. And that choice should be yours, not your veterinarian's, not your breeder's, not your neighbor's. You and your cats will figure that one out. All right, moving right along. The next topic, the next way to kill your cat, is by not taking care of their dental health. And this is going to ruffle some feathers, but I'm going to look you right in my little iPhone eye here and say that if you have a cat that is older than 7 years of age and you are not having annual anesthetic dentals done with x-rays of every tooth, you are shortening your cat's life. Why? Because cats are very prone to 3 different bad dental diseases. The first is just simple periodontal disease, just like you and I can get, just like a dog can get. Cats just seem to get it worse because their jawbones are so fine, they're so small in diameter. And so here's a picture of an x-ray that I took, and this gray area right around the, the root of this tooth is actually a dental abscess, an area of bone that's just filled with pus. And unfortunately, you can see how little normal bone is left right through here, and this cat actually progressed to total fracture of its jaw because of a periodontal abscess that you and I could have solved with anesthetic x-rays— excuse me, anesthetic dentals and x-rays. Now, periodontal disease is a problem for all of us. In fact, a recent human study showed that for patients with severe periodontal disease, their lives were shortened by up to 15%, and for our cats, that's over a year. So if you don't do anything else that I am going to discuss in this video, please consider taking your cat to the dentist, to your veterinarian for dental x-rays. And that begs the question, well, what do I do if my veterinarian doesn't take x-rays of every cat in my cat's tooth? Geez, let me try that again. If your veterinarian cannot take x-rays of every tooth in your cat's body as part of a dental, find a different veterinarian. The other word for that is malpractice. Okay, moving right along. What are the other reasons that your cat should have annual anesthetic dentals done? Well, two kitty-specific diseases. And the first, I can speak very direct, I get cold sores every once in a while, so I, and they hurt like, like hell. And so I'm very cognizant of how it feels to have sores in my mouth. And cats are prone to a disease called stomatitis. And what happens then, this is looking straight down the barrel of a cat, of an affected cat's jaw, and you can see all the redness, all the bleeding on both sides of this cat's upper jaw. That's a disease called stomatitis. And again, it's due to, uh, we think it's an autoimmune reaction to the bacteria that live in our kitties' mouths. And this can be such a painful disease for cats that we end up having to extract every tooth in their body. To solve that pain. The third disease that I want to chat about is, it goes by the abbreviation FORLS, F-O-R-L-S, or it's just, these are resorptive lesions, which means to you and me, so let's skip all the jargon, and a FORL, F-O-R-L, or what schmo like me calls an odontoclastic lesion, means that it's like somebody took a little drill bit and drilled right through the hard outer lining of your cat's tooth and directly into the bleeding pulp. And I mean, you can just imagine how painful that is. And so I got a picture of this as well, and you can see these little lesions. I mean, this is a normal tooth down here, and then look at this. And again, it's like somebody took a little drill and drilled right through into the bleeding— the area that's filled with nerves. Another one right back here. And can you imagine how painful that would be? Gosh. A lot of these cats are so painful that during examination, if I press on that tooth with a little a little probe, that— those cats will actually chatter their teeth. I mean, that— it's just excruciatingly painful, and the only way you're going to solve that is, again, my old friend, anesthetic, dentals, and x-rays. So, all right, enough of a lecture. Moving right along. The other thing that we should pay some attention to is the value of lab work for these cats, and that's because you and I have a hell of a time figuring out whether cats are, are feeling well at home. Sure, we can watch their activity level, we can watch their appetite, but on an evolutionary basis, cats hate to show that they are sick, because when they do show that they're sick, instead of being the little predators that they are, they become a prey species. And so they're pretty well attuned to hiding that from, from both other animals and from you and me. And so the gist of this is that every cat over about 6 years of age ought to have annual blood tests and a urinalysis done. The most common thing that we will find in, in the blood tests of older cats is chronic kidney disease, and everybody associates that with vomiting and weight loss and cats that walk around like they have the flu because that's the way they feel. But if you and I can catch that early in the game, sometimes the very first thing you'll see is just a little bit of extra protein in your cat's urine, and if you and your veterinarian find that, all of a sudden you can start them on the right medications, you can start get them on the right diets that can add years to their life. If we catch kidney disease early, it's not as nearly as much of a death sentence as it is if we catch that late. So again, any cat over 7 years of age, one of the greatest ways to kill your cat is to not have annual blood tests and urine tests done. Speaking of veterinarians, number 4 on the list is— let me think, do this, do the math here— yeah, number 4 on the list is the use of extra vaccines, and this is really controversial. Listen, I am a veterinarian, and I'm, I'm going to tell you that I have killed cats like this. And so one thing that is very specific to our little cat friends is that every needle poke, every needle poke, whether it be an antibiotic injection I give or a vaccine, creates the small potential for skin cancer at the site of that injection. And over the 4 years— excuse me, over the almost 40 years that I've been in veterinary practice, I know that I have created this in at least 3 cats that I know of, and probably others. And every one of those cats eventually died from skin cancer. And so I feel horrible about this. I feel shitty about this. And so therefore, I'm telling you, if your cat is not at risk for specific diseases, please Just don't give them those vaccines. Now listen, I'm not advocating against rabies vaccines. In virtually every state, I think maybe every state across the United States, rabies vaccines are required for both dogs and cats, and there's an excellent reason for that, and that is because rabies is one of the few diseases that our pets can transmit directly to you and me, and it is a fatal disease. It will kill us. It will kill your child if, if they contact rabies. So there's absolute logic in giving your kitty or giving your dog the rabies vaccines necessary to keep them healthy. What does not make sense to me is if you have a strictly inside cat or a pair of cats that are kept in solitary isolation, why in the world are we protecting them against diseases that they will never be exposed to? Diseases against— excuse me— diseases like leukemia, diseases like the feline upper respiratory or distemper complex. It just makes no sense whatsoever, and to me, the risks of those extra needle pokes creating skin cancer far outweigh the benefits of protecting cats against diseases that they will never ever see in life. All right, serious stuff, but the last thing I'm going to talk about is just simply the relationship between diet and our cat's longevity, because just as with us humans, the most common dietary problem we run into that shortens our cat's lives is obesity. If you want to kill your cat, make them fat. The other thing that obese cats run into is there was a recent study that came out showing that any cat that's more than 10% over their ideal body weight, which just translates into a pound or two for the average cat, makes them 4 times more likely to develop diabetes. And listen, I can train a monkey to give insulin injections, but you know what that monkey— you know what that— what any, any person with a diabetic cat comes to understand very quickly? You know where you're going to be at 8 AM and 8 PM, or whatever, 6 AM, 6 PM, for the balance of that cat's life, because twice daily you end up having to give these kitties insulin injections. And again, It's a very simple deal, but you know what? There, there go the holidays. There go a quick breakfast out with your pals because you know that you're going to be giving insulin injections twice daily. And so if simply keeping your cat's weight under check reduces the risk of diabetes by 70% or so, why not do that? Why not do that? The other dietary consideration I'm going to speak about is the fact that our cats' diets dictate their urinary pH, or how acidic their urine is. And that's a big deal for some cats that are prone to urinary tract infections or the formation of bladder stones. If our cats eat a diet that doesn't result in a urine that's acidic enough, two things happen. Number one, they're very prone to urinary tract infections, and what can even be a bigger problem is that a high urinary pH, in other words, urine that is not acidic enough, creates a perfect little bladder environment for them to form urinary crystals, which if untreated will coalesce like a little snowball into urinary— into bladder stones. And listen, if you're a female cat, life is good for you because your urethra is about the diameter of a pencil. You can pee a bladder stone out without any problem, but us poor males, the urethra of a male cat, as it passes through their penis, is smaller than the diameter of a pencil lead. And so if a male cat tries to pass urinary crystals out through that urethra, bad things can happen. What— and when I say bad things, I mean that urine flow can be effectively plugged, just like somebody putting a cork at the end of your penis. And all of us, male or female, can sympathize with having to pee and not being able to to. Can you imagine how painful it is for your male cat to be unable to pee for 6 or 8 or 10 hours as that bladder slowly enlarges inside of them? These cats are excruciatingly painful. They walk around howling all the time, crouching in an effort to pee. Sometimes you'll see blood streaming from the, you know, the area of the penis tip. And so if you see any of those symptoms, please Take your veterinarian— excuse me— take your male cat to your veterinarian. It's a very— it's the world's easiest diagnosis to make. Your veterinarian feels their lower bladder— excuse me— their lower body, and it's like somebody stuffed a baseball into the area that your bladder or mine lives. It's just hard as a rock, and your veterinarian touches that, and your male cat just lets out a scream because it hurts so badly. Those are the male cats that we have to anesthetize and thread a catheter back up their urethra so that they can in fact go ahead and pee again. What's that look like? Well, a lot of times the urine looks just like a glass of my Pinot Noir here. It's so red, it's so filled with blood after this chronically distended bladder that, well, here I took a picture of it. I don't know if it's going to translate for you guys, but this is, this is the catheter right there, and you can see the blood that is filling this stainless steel tub, and that, that is— that came right out of a male cat's obstructed penis. And so, at the end of the day then, pay attention to your cat's diet. Let's work on obesity. Let's make sure with your annual blood test, annual urine test, that your cat's urine is nice and normal for us. If your urine— if your cat's urine is over 7, then talk to your veterinarian about either changing their diet or using a urinary acidifier to help minimize the chances of both urinary infections and these darn bladder stones that can create so much angst for our kitties. All right, so to repeat, how can you kill your cat? You can kill your cat by letting them out, although I advocate for that. I think that kitties are happier with that. You can kill a cat by not paying attention to their dental care. Every cat over 7 years of age ought to have annual anesthetic dentals with x-rays of every tooth. You can kill your cat by giving them extra vaccines because every injection through your cat's skin increases the chance of skin cancer. You can kill your cat by not doing annual lab work after about 7 years of age because the earlier we catch these diseases, the longer they will live. And finally, you can kill your cat by giving them too much food or not, not or food that creates a basic— okay, bear with me here. You can kill your cat dietarily by giving them too much food or by giving them a diet that makes their urine too basic and/or not acidic enough. Nobody wants urine that looks like the picture that I just showed you. So, all those things being said, I want to know. I'll help you. My name is Dr. Kevin Toman. I run several websites, the most common of which is www.helpingpetslivelonger.com. You can track me down there. My email is all over the place, and if you email me, I will answer it. I will help you if I can. We are all in this together. So with that, I'm closing. Thank you very much for listening to The Longevity Vet, and have a great day.