I'm a proud owner of a siamese cross cat. She's only one and a half year old (sterilised) and has been with me for about a year. She seems healthy but I'm concerned if there's any signs or health problems that I should look out for..and at what age do problems usually arise?
Answers:
If you get annual vet checkups for your cat, that can reassure you that your pet is healthy. I think Siamese are usually a very long-lived breed of cat. My friend had one that was 22 and only started having health problems in her later years.
As with humans, sometimes the health of a cat can be determined by it's genes. If the parents were healthy and long-lived, the kitten could, too. If the parents developed diabetes or kidney problems, the kitten may also. Keeping a cat inside can extend it's life by about 5 years.
I had a domestic longhair that didn't start having problems until he was 14 years old (average age for cats to live). I had 2 littermates and they had problems at that age, too. They had stopped absorbing the nutrients from the food they ate and lost weight dramatically, but did not have any parasites.
At the present time I have 3 Scottish Folds, one age 9 and two age 8, which have never, ever been ill. I have no information on their parents, but they are inside cats and have no problems.
It's good you're concerned about your cat's health. Get yourself a good cat health book so you can have a reference book for cat health. I'd recommend 'Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook' by Delbert G. Carlson, DVM and James M. Giffin, MD. (available online thru Amazon or other book stores)
I think once they become a senior cat you need to keep your eyes peeled for health problems, starting at around age 8 you may be on the lookout for kidney problems.
If you are concerned about health problems in the future, lets talk about nutrtion and what to feed your cat
Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat鈥檚 health
Contrary to what you may have heard, dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i鈥檚 and a host of other problems. The problems with it are that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process. Most of the moisture a cat needs is gotten
out of the food and 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Also, most use horrible ingredients and don't use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn't have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods.Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics...
There's no age limit to health problems. You just keep a close eye on their condition and behavior, and when you see something that's not normal, you ask your vet.
Siamese cross cats sometimes get the same problems full Siamese get--the binge and purge eating (Royal Canin Siamese 38 is a food designed to stop that), and overly vocal antics (if you encourage talking, the cat will ALWAYS be talking to you even after it's not cute anymore). They're very smart and like to climb.
Keep her on good food, play with her for exercise, and interact with her. They bond strongly to one person and can do major grieving when given away or separated for two weeks.
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