Dang, Now Even My Vet Is Against Low-Carb

There's a lot of opposition to the low-carb lifestyle out in that world of ours and apparently everyone has their opinions about what they think about low-carb regardless of who they are. Even my veteranarian!

My oldest cat Muffin has been having stinky ears lately and we saw her scratching at them often, so we decided to take her to our local pet hospital to have her checked out. The veteranarian found Muffin has a bacterial infection in her ears that can be cleared up with antibiotics and periodic ear cleanings with cotton and Q-tips over the next couple of weeks. Muffin hates it and it's no joy for me either when she fling that stuff in my face every time she shakes her head. :-~

While we were there in the room talking about our cat, the veteranarian said to us, "You know, Muffin really needs to go on a diet." Yeah, tell us something we DON'T know! LOL!

She weighs 14 pounds and needs to lose about 2-3 pounds. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the same as a human trying to lose 50-75 pounds. Of our four cats (in addition to Muffin, there's Ginger, Smokey, and our latest addition Peaches -- who replaced our Millie Jo who died of cancer earlier this year), Muffin is the only one that is overweight although Smokey is borderline pudgy.

So, my vet says we should start feeding Muffin some high-protein "science diet" type of cat food to help with her weight and to keep her coat from shedding so much. I asked the vet what she thought about low-carb cat foods like Innova which was brought up by one of my readers when I wrote this blog post recently.

I'm not kidding you, here's what she said:

"A low-carb diet is actually preferred for your cat, although I'd never recommend any human being ever go on such an extreme and dangerous diet. We need carbs as humans to function and without them our bodies would run out of fuel and we'd die. But cats are born to eat protein and actually don't need to eat any carbs at all."

I bit my tongue...HARD! Hee hee!

She went on to explain how cats that live in the wild either eat a mouse or a bird for their protein and the only carbohydrates they would consume is what was in the stomach of their prey.

The entire time she was going off on her tangent about how bad low-carb is for humans, I just stood there smiling and nodding my head up and down at her (blood about to spew from my mouth because I was biting my tongue so hard!) without her even knowing I had lost 180 pounds on that very diet she had just lambasted right in front of me as "extreme." Finally, I decided to break the good news about my livin' la vida low-carb to her.

"You know, I lost well over 100 pounds on low-carb and have kept it off for two years now."

After an awkward 3-second silence that probably seemed much longer I'm sure to her, the veteranarian stammered and stuttered when she tried to backtrack what she said to cover herself stating, "Well, obviously low-carb worked very well for you, but it's not a diet that most humans need to be on for weight loss or their health."

My wife Christine was with me, so I didn't want to get into a debate over the merits of low-carb living in the pet hospital with my vet, but I guess I opened her eyes to the fact that there are real people who have gone on this amazing diet and lived to tell about it. I reckon the next time she starts her little speech about low-carb for humans (which she has no business talking about in the context of treating sick pets), she'll probably remember me and my low-carb success. Maybe.

Sheeez, can't I go ANYWHERE these days without my eating lifestyle choice getting raked over the coals?! :D