So many things.
I think I spent two hours on Skype. Nice invoice after that was done.
Because Tommy has bladder issues to the point that we felt panicked into re-routing his urethra so that debris would stop clogging the old one up, we’re making some changes to the already great formula as a precaution.
More boneless meat. Lowering the mineral content would leave less substance in his bladder for struvites to try to grab a hold of each other and do nasty things. We’ll be working with bone in skinless whole ground rabbit and then chunked turkey at a ratio of 1:1 instead of the previous 2:1.
That little change gave me a math problem:
The recipe for adding supplements is based on a 3 lb total meat
I buy all my rabbit in 2 lb chubs
You see where this is going?
50/50 split on meat with 2 lb chubs of rabbit based on a 3 lb per recipe means I’m going to be making food at 24 lbs, whereas I was previously making food at 21 lbs. My roasting pan is also only so big, and I’m used to filling it with 7-8 lbs of turkey and now I’m going to be needing to par-cook 12 lbs of turkey. This is going to take two batches now as well, for the extra inconvenience, but we love our cats, so we do this anyway.
More math:
3 additional lbs of food means I need more ice cube trays. While there are 16 cubes per tray, I would ordinarily just say “ok, I need 3 trays” but no; for every 3 lbs of meat you use you add 1 cup water so now I actually need 4 trays.
Yep. Math. I went to college for it. I didn’t graduate, but I did it a few times.
Dr. Pierson would also like me to use the maximum amount of fish oil instead of the moderated amount I’ve been using. She would also like me to use quite a few more skins off the turkey thighs. We’re trying to keep the boys from losing any more weight and while on a higher fat formula they may end up gaining. You can just pull back the portions again. The implication was that with more fat and less portions you get more bang for your buck on how much it’s actually costing to feed your cat per day.
I was also told about a feline glucosamine supplement called Trixsyn that may as well help with Tommy’s bladder health.
I was told to stop giving Tom the Cranberry Relief altogether that there’s just not enough evidence to support it.