I Think I Poisoned My Cat

by Joanne on May 26, 2008

My cat TipToe is a big girl. She has been obese most of her life. Several years ago I tried locking her in the bathroom and feeding her there, because she was such a pig and would go after my other cats’ food. She would inhale her kibble (nasty Science Diet) and often vomit it up afterwards because she ate so much so fast. But after a month in the bathroom she hadn’t lost any weight. I gave up and resigned myself that she would always be fat.

TipToe was a BIG girl

During a visit with her veterinarian I asked about her lack of weight loss and he told me cats only need about two tablespoons of food twice a day. My goodness! That’s not a lot. No wonder TipToe didn’t lose weight. I was following the instructions on the bag, which are written to make you buy a lot of kibble, not feed your cat properly.

I decided to try again. But by this time I was feeding raw food, so I locked her in the bathroom and gave her what I considered a normal portion. This worked. Over the course of a year she lost several pounds. She now has little bags of skin hanging from her belly, and I have to be careful combing her because of the extra skin. And she eats in the kitchen now and takes her time.

The Poisoning

I enjoy eating a large salad for dinner while watching a DVD. TipToe sits patiently beside me waiting for me to finish, because she knows I’ll let her lick the bowl. The dressing for my salad consists of a little olive oil and fresh lemon juice. No harm there. She gets a little of that, little bits of lettuce, maybe a little raw feta cheese clinging to the side of the bowl.

A couple weeks ago I stir fried some vegetables and tossed them with nama shoyu and hoisin sauce. Not thinking, I let TipToe lick the bowl. She vomited later a couple times. And then she just stopped eating. (I’m pretty sure she’s eaten this before, so this may not be the cause of the ensuing illness, but she won’t be getting it again, that’s for sure.)

Fasting Is Natural When Ill

When animals are ill or injured, they stop eating. Digestion takes a tremendous amount of energy, energy that is better spent in repair or excretion of toxins. Animals rely on their instincts, which are correct: stop eating, rest, sleep, stay warm. They need all available energy to recover from illness or injury.

TipToe did not eat for seven days but continued to drink water. If it was sunny and warm outside, she would go out and lie in the sun for a spell. I worry when my cats are sick, but I try to trust nature, trust instinct, trust their bodies’ innate ability to heal and recover. So I left TipToe alone. Every day I would offer her some food to see if she was interested, and every day she would show no interest. On the morning of the sixth day she showed a little interest, but did not eat. On the seventh morning, still no interest, but by the afternoon she began eating. She ate again that night.

This is the third time she has undergone a seven-day fast. I’m not sure why she got sick the other times. The first time I took her to the vet. He examined her blood and found nothing wrong. He cautioned me about fatty liver disease, because TipToe was obese then, and he wanted me to force feed her. I said, “Let’s wait. She’s stopped eating for a reason. I’m going to trust her instincts.” I told him that if she became dehydrated or lost too much weight, I would bring her back. I did not have to bring her back. She recovered on her own. (After numerous conversations with me and being able to examine–but not treat–my cats, my vet later began to eat more fruit and vegetables, lost 20 pounds, and his knees stopped hurting.)

Fatty Liver Disease

Here is the description of one person’s treatment for their cat’s fatty liver disease:

…one of our dear kitties was diagnosed with “Fatty Liver Disease”. Our beloved 6 year old neutered male, Magnum, had just stopped eating, we had noticed, and had gotten quite a bit thinner. Preliminary blood work showed that his liver enzymes were slightly elevated, but that everything else was perfectly normal. His fecal exam came back negative for worms/parasites, and he tested negative for FIV, FELV, and FIP antibodies. We were sent home with a week’s worth of Flagyl, a week’s worth of Amoxycillin, and fluids (Lactated Ringer Bags) to give by drip daily through an 18 gauge needle under the skin for a week. When we returned to the vet after the prescribed treatment a week later, more blood work showed that Magnum’s liver enzymes were now three times as high, and we all agreed a liver biopsy was necessary at this point. From the blood work, the vet could tell that Magnum had liver disease…the question was, which one??? The treatments were very different, and the only way to be sure was to do a biopsy. Our brave boy underwent a needle biopsy without anesthesia, and the tissue sample obtained was read by a certified pathologist. The diagnosis was now without question…our Magnum had “Fatty Liver Disease”, or “Hepatic Lipidosis”. –from www.hdw-inc.com

What bothers me the most about this story is that the doctor had no idea why the cat had stopped eating. The weight loss itself is self-explanatory. When you don’t eat, you lose weight. But based on absolutely NO KNOWLEDGE of cause other than slightly elevated liver enzymes which, technically, is an effect, not a cause, the doctors prescribed two antibiotics and forced hydration. Were they forcing food on him too at this point? What did they hope to accomplish by killing off all the bacteria in the cat, both good and bad?

One precept of natural hygiene is that the symptomology that medical science classifies as disease is actually remedial action: i.e., action by the body to remedy an underlying imbalance. The way I see this scenario is that this cat began to fast because it needed its available energy to correct an imbalance and to reduce its internal toxic load. Its initial bloodwork showed a slight elevation in liver enzymes, which was instituted by the body as a corrective measure. But note that after a week of “treatment” the cat was worse off! The cat’s body created the enzymes for a reason, and after treatment it had to triple the number created.

To add insult to injury, they cut into his body and liver with a needle. Imagine the trauma to this cat of going to the vet, being poked and prodded, having a needle stuck into his liver, and then being fed antibiotics and having foods and fluids forced into his body when all his body wanted to do was rest and fast. This was all incredibly wasteful of whatever energy was necessary to heal the body. The medicos call this “intervention.” I call it “interference.”

This same webpage says later:

With aggressive tube (or force) feeding and/or diet therapy and fluid therapy, 60% of cats with primary Fatty Liver Disease survive and return to normal, while without this long-term commitment and follow-through on the part of the owners, less than 10% will recover.

Why only 60 percent? Why would some survive the “therapy” and others die? Does this fatality occur before the poking and prodding and needle in the liver and whatever other diagnostic procedures they use to determine fatty liver disease? Or after? I’d love to see where they got the stats on that 10 percent figure.

What Caused the Fatty Liver Disease?

What’s not mentioned here is that no one has addressed the cause of the fatty liver disease. What started it all off? The veterinarians are in essence saying that fat in the liver caused fatty liver disease. Do you get it? It’s like saying your aching head caused your headache. Or the pain in your stomach caused your stomach ache. It’s a house of cards. They’re not saying excess food preservatives have irritated the liver, or poor quality fat or proteins have built up toxic byproducts in the liver. If this were the case–the cause–then all you have to do is stop feeding these toxic products and the disease would more than likely self-correct, since the body is always aiming toward health.

If many kinds of diseases get well at nature’s hands, and others get well under the treatment of all sorts of mountebanks, quacks, cults, and deluded scientists, what does that mean? It means that headaches and many other minor discomforts–such as colds, sore throats, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea et alii–come and go, receiving no attention, or at most home remedies whose principal virtue is in not doing any harm. This tendency to stay normal, or to get back to the normal, or to throw off disease, is so constant that all sorts of delusions, theories, and systems of cures have been given life and perpetuity. Every sort of scientific medical man, mountebank, adventurer, knave, and fool has found success and a following–for a time at least–in this No Man’s Land, with its serious, grotesque, scientific, pseudoscientific, and superstitious therapeutic cure-alls. The advocates of all sorts of overnight cures, physical and mental, extend their pipelines into this Fool’s Medical Paradise, and never fail to suck sustenance–a thing made possible by the fact that nature so often cures ills without extraneous aid from any source.”–J. H. Tilden, M.D.

What they are in essence saying is, “We’re not sure what caused it, but the symptoms are lack of appetite (so we’ll force feed), dehydration (we’ll force liquids), vomiting (we’ll give drugs to stop that) and even though we don’t know if there are bacteria present, we’ll go ahead and kill all of them just to be safe. And we’ll suppress the immune system, because we have no idea what it’ll do.”

Remember, this cat was fasting and losing weight, and yet its blood showed only a slight deviation. It did not at that time have fatty liver disease. After a week of meddlesome treatment his bloodwork showed a serious problem. (My cat George also had lack of appetite and weight loss and underwent the same crappy treatment, but he didn’t survive it. They blamed his death on a different disease.) It was only after treatment that the cat was diagnosed with fatty liver disease. How many cats have fatty liver disease during preliminary examination for weight loss and lack of appetite? How many cats have fatty liver after typical forced treatment of weight loss and lack of appetite?

So is it possible the veterinarian caused fatty liver disease in this cat by overloading its system and interfering with its innate means of healing? And the recovery is credited to the doctor, not to the cat’s ability to heal despite interference. Did this cat recover because of treatment or despite it.

Most diseases are self-limited with a tendency to recover. The treatment of disease is in a state of constant evolution. The treatment of a hundred years ago with its bloody lancet, with its blisterings, its sweatings, its denials of ‘cold water to thirsty ones,’ is the barbarism of today, and the treatment of today, much of it, is to be the barbarism of the time to come; yea, it is barbarous even now. There is no evolution in Nature’s method of cure. She performed the work in the long ago in exactly the same mode, in cell action; no matter how enfeebled by the withdrawal of pints of the ‘elixir of life;’ and her power to achieve victory against numerous odds is often surprisingly great. Even under the barbarous treatment of the darkes ages, she was able with consummate power to restore most of the sick. Each treatment was orthodox in its time, and he who failed to use it efficiently was deemed disqualified for the grave duties of his profession. –E. H. Dewey, M.D.

In other words, even when the sick were given strychnine and arsenic and mercury and being bled and having leeches applied to them or having holes cut in their heads or swallowing scrapings from tombs, bat turds and all manner of vile concoctions, they survived. But these hideous and barbaric treatments were all given credit as the cure and those who prescribed them were esteemed physicians! And the people who died during these treatments were said to have died from their disease, never the treatment. It’s so very convenient. This is why herbology is so popular. It’s not that herbs are so effective. It’s just that they are so benign. They give the illusion of treatment without the toxicity of pharmaceuticals.

This blog is called OPEN MIND REQUIRED. Remember? I’m asking you to think this through. When you get a cold and upper respiratory infection (meaning mucus in the airways to remove irritants or bacteria that is feeding on toxic waste) and you go to bed and recover, then you forget about it. But when you go the doctor and she prescribes drugs and you then develop pneumonia, then you thank God that you went to the doctor. You give credit to the doctor for healing you of pneumonia that you may never have developed had you not gone to the doctor and had your innate healing efforts interfered with!

Here’s the beauty of medicine: If you recover under their care, that means their treatment was successful. If you die under their care, then you would have most surely died without treatment, though there is absolutely no proof of that. If you live without treatment, they never know about it because you weren’t in treatment. You don’t enter the statistics. If you die without treatment, then the death is blamed on lack of medical care! It’s the perfect system for compliance. The epitome of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

A Happy Ending

TipToe's first meal I feed my cats once a day, but I am now feeding TipToe three times a day until she is fully recovered. Again, instinct leads her to eat small portions in recovery. Humans often gorge after a long fast, and some have been known to die from such gorging. So TipToe gets three small meal a day until she regains the weight lost and is able to eat her normal portion. I believe the second time she fasted was after I tried The World’s Greatest Cat Litter. She was eating it, and shortly thereafter stopped eating for a week. I left her alone, and she recovered. My other cat Boy ate the litter also, but he didn’t have any problems. I got rid of the litter.

My girl TipToe has been sitting on my lap as I write this, and she’s back to sitting next to me at dinner time, waiting for me to finish my salad. She’ll be 15 years old this summer.