Just caught up on reading after the weekend.....wow - where do I begin?
For starters, thanks go out to the few folks for crapping on my wanting to help others, and doing their best to pick apart the post.
On the other hand, thank you to the couple of people who actually thanked me. The whole point of the post was "Here's a good suggestion that worked really great for us." You can take it or leave it. The bashing is completely uncalled for and, frankly, rude. If I posted something that was grossly inaccurate (or dangerous), then sure, smash me. But as others have replied, RC 34 & 40 has worked for them.
---Regarding the grain content, my intention was to point out that grain/corn is not the main ingredient in RC foods. Many cat foods use grain or cheap proteins. The point was that psyllium husk was the key ingredient in the RC 34 that did the trick for Roscoe. We actually tried mixing metamucil into his food (dry and wet), but he is very smart and wouldn't eat it. The few times we were able to trick him, it worked...so I started searching for a food with psyllium husk already in the food as an ingredient - which eventually led me to RC34. I researched 40+ foods and RC34 was the only one I could find that had it.
---I find it interesting the differential of brand quality image in the US versus UK for Royal Canin. Here in the US, RC is regarded as top tier quality by both vets and pet owners. Based on responses to this thread, the opposite seems true in the UK. I suppose it is possible that the actual food composition here in the US is different than what is available in the UK. This would be interesting to test because it would obviously change the applicability to my recommedation.
---Wet versus dry food is a contentious arguement. You'll always get folks advocating for or against it. It is indeed fact that in the wild cats don't drink water because they get their liquids from raw meat. It is thus logical to say wet food is better for cats than dry. However, domesticated cats have evolved (because we made them evolve) to eat dry food, so they have changed and now drink from a water bowl to get their fluids. After owning cats for my entire life, I pesonally think that dry is better for domesticated cats than wet. However, to each his own. Especially when dealing with a TF cat, it will probably require lots of trial and error - including testing out wet and dry foods. At the end of the day, go with what works for your particular cat. =)
---I know lots of people that really advocate the BARF diet. I'm sure for lots of cats it works great. I've consulted with numerous vets on BARF, and not one of them will recommend it citing concerns about the introduction of other risks associated with feeding this type of food. They believe the risks outweigh the positives. Regardless of that, I tried it with our bengal, and it made his diarrhea even worse. Your experiences may differ. I certainly will postulate that Bengals are different and less evolved than a domesticated cat (ours is an F5). I'm sure strong arguments can be made (and much different experiences using raw foods) on a bengal that is closer to the asian leopard cat (e.g. F1, F2, F3, etc) than they are to the domesticated cat.
---My experiences are based on my personal research and testing. I'm not some dummy just parroting back anecdotal evidence that I was told by others. I scientifically went about my trials with TF diagnosis, testing, and diet. I even built my own incubator to develop cultures in my 'kitty' quarantine, and working with my vet did my own diagnosis. I used the same knowledge gained to successfully treat another female bengal and savannah.
---Diet in general is an important topic with TF. The needs of each case will be different depending on the type of cat, how long infected, general health, and other parameters. I think our Roscoe would be considered worst-case senario. But, the Savannah I cured required nothing special. She responded immediately to the RDZ, and needed no change in diet. The other female Bengal required two rounds of RDZ, but after that got better pretty quick.
At the end of the day, read as much as you can and make your own decisions. The more you know will lead you to solutions faster, and cheaper, than going about it alone. This is really important because here in the US, not many doctors are aware of TF and it is commonly misdiagnosed as IBD.
To those that got something out of this, you're welcome. To those that just wanted to bash it, you read into things too much.
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