Purr Podcast

Dr. Serge Chaloub, starts our podcast like a pro in the second part of the CKD purrpodcast. Serge explains that we need to start testing our cats from 8 years and older for CKD because you want to catch the disease as early as possible. You should weigh your cats regularly as weight loss is not normal in the older cats. We talk about when should you give SC fluids and appetite stimulants, Implantable ports and tubes. Serge talks about how to control phosphorus and why it is important in CKD cats. Serge likes to take a humane ‘feline’ approach to the older cats with CKD. Last but not least we discuss CKD and hypertension, quality of life scales, dialysis, and renal transplants.

We have a Canadian guest this time: Dr. Serge Chaloub. Serge lives in Cow Town, Calgary in Canada and is a natural podcast introducer. Serge has had a great career including a renal transfusion fellowship. He loves anything to do with kidneys and he loves cats (no surprise there). Lots of older cats will get chronic kidney disease (CKD) and Serge was part of a white paper about CKD guidelines. These are super practical and give lots of good tips to apply for your daily practice. We are talking about the role of blood pressure in CKD and many other topics. What a great episode!

And we are back with the amazing Dr. Caroline Mansfield. Part two picks up where we left with the microbiome. Caroline explains what we are looking for in the microbiome to make conclusions about the exact function. There is so much data that we often do not see the woods for the trees. One of the topics we discuss is the Hill’s Global Symposium which had the microbiome as a major topic. Did you know the microbiome is relatively stable except for the early years and when you become an older ‘animal’? Disease will affect the microbiome and according to Dr. Mansfield we need to use the microbiome to predict and track upcoming health events of the individual patient

Dr. Caroline Mansfield is a famous internal medicine specialist from Downunder! She works currently at the University of Melbourne but has traveled the world before settling down. She loves the area of gastroenterology and talks with us about how stress in cats can change their GI health and microbiome and we all know that the GI tract has a major influence on any organ in the body. Did you know that bottle-raised kittens have more behavioral problems? Dr. Susan and Dr. Jolle explore the similarities between kittens and human babies. Love Caroline's accent by the way!!

Wow, we can't believe it! Dr. Susan and Dr. Jolle talk about 50 podcasts ago, how it all started and how there is no end in sight yet. 50 podcasts and 18 months later, with some cool stats and favorite podcast musings. What is better than cats, laughter and good info? It is the purr podcast!!! Thanks for making it a great success and cheers to the next 50 and the PPC celebration party in Rio de Janeiro!

Dr. Adronie Verbrugghe is back, at last, with the second part of her excellent podcast about feline nutrition. We were talking about morphometric analysis of body condition, dexa-scanning and starting an obesity clinic. Adronie talks about how to weigh your cat and how to stimulate cates to work a bit harder to lose weight. We need to treat each cat as an individual and look at lifestyle and the cat’s personality. Is gradual calorie restriction the way to go or do we need to go full force? Adronie gives some great tips on how to deal with owners that have problems with getting their cat back to a normal weight. Did you know that you only need to let your cat lose 5% BW to see beneficial changes?

Part two of our purrpodcast with Dr. Jessica Quimby, we pick up from where we left and answer the why FDA-approved dermal application of mirtazapine works the way it does. As pilling cats is truly difficult and we do not see as many side effects compared to the oral route, a dermal application makes a lot of sense. Jessica explains how to apply the drug and if we should worry about human exposure. Although it was originally meant to be an antidepressant in people, its current use is mainly as anti-emetic, improving weight gain and appetite stimulant. In cats, the FDA-approved transdermal mirtazapine is classified as a weight gain drug for the management of weight loss. Jessica has no problem giving the drug for longer periods. This episode is made possible by an educational grant of KindredBio.

The purrpodcast is back with Dr. Jessica Quimby, a famous cat internal medicine specialist at THE Ohio State University. She teaches, runs the clinical medicine service and does research in her specialty, feline nephrology focusing on weight loss and appetite stimulation in cats with renal disease. Did you know gabapentin was excreted 100% by the kidney? Mirtazapine, the relatively new drug, comes in many routes of administration and dosing and can cause toxicity, including extreme vocalization, tachypnea, tachycardia, being restless and frantic. This is more common in the oral and compounded forms and less likely in the transdermal form that is FDA approved in the US. Cycloheptadiene is the antidote but weirdly enough they both seem to stimulate appetite in cats. Mirtazapine, however, is just so much better at it! This episode is made possible by an educational grant of KindredBio.

Dr. Susan and Dr. Jolle are still in Las Vegas, running around to find the best cat tech solutions for you. This episode mainly focuses on cat litter robots, which seems to be the hot thing of this year. Dr. Susan shares her experiences and discusses what a good litter box should look like. We will also share who won the Purrpodcast Cat Tech Award 2020. An exciting episode for techies and cat fancies, alike.

Your hosts Dr. Susan and Dr. Jolle traverse millions of sq feet to bring you the latest and greatest of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020. What is new in tech for our furry friends? Did you miss CES this year? No worries we were there to find out what is hot and what is not. In their usual unscripted way, Susan and Jolle break down tech barriers for you and show you what could work and what may not. We start with pet robots and automated feeding stations in this episode and throw in some human tech too. Did you know that Dr. Jolle signs like Kermit the Frog?

We have Dr. Adronie Verbrugghe on the podcast and this is the first time that we are hosting a nutritional expert. Adronie works at the University of Guelph Ontario Veterinary College and she is a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Nutrition. She loves feline obesity, and this was part of her Ph.D. Obesity is a big problem in cats (up to 60% in cats). Tips for obese cats is to make them work for their food. Make sure that there is a lot of environmental enrichment. If cats are bored, they eat more. When we talk about treating disease, we need to look at diet as a drug and an essential part of their therapy. There are lots of nutrition tools available at wsava.org. Adronie thinks we need to do a body condition score and a muscle condition score in every patient, and she has a cool hand trick to estimate if a patient is too thin or too fat.

Part two of our exciting podcast with veterinary nurse, Megan Brashear. Megan is talking about her two cats, one abandoned, polydactyl barn cat and a Seinfeld-character-look-alike brown tabby. Her cats are loosely domesticated as she describes them herself. In her words, cats would benefit from another 50k years of evolution. Also, if you need tips about driving around the country with a menagerie of pets, call Megan (as she has just endured and survived that adventure). Megan has a lot of responsibility for training the next generation of veterinary nurse students and loves to talk about the future role of veterinary nurses. For Megan, the most important to do is to get recognition and making veterinary nursing a true recognized profession including proper licensing and enough credentialed schools. In Megan’s opinion, there are very specific tasks that can be done by veterinary nurses with proper education. Megan shares a couple of ideas for a great future for vet nurses in your practice. Last but not least, we have to retrain our brain to be positive. That means I am always assuming good intent, remember the good things that happened and accentuate the positive in your life! You are allowed to vent but don’t do it at work! What a great episode.

Yay, we have another awesome veterinary nurse on our show. This time it is award-winning Megan Brashear, speaker of the year at least 2 times and in her real life a super tech at Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine. Megan loves lecturing and she talks to us about her three favorite topics: critical thinking, acid-base balance (we did not know that there was anyone that liked that topic) and the art of nursing. She is an amazing individual and we had quite a lot of good laughs!

This is part 2 of the purrpodcast with Dr. Sue Ettinger. Dr. Sue Cancer Vet is a social media celebrity and produces lots of great content on her web page. Sue uses a media release for all her patients so she can use pictures and the stories on her social media sites. Not all owners are eager and sometimes it takes a bit of time before you gain their trust. Sue’s main goal is to raise awareness and most clients are happy to share their pet story. Different people, however, process things differently. Dr. Sue celebrates her patients when they finish their treatment protocol and does tributes when she loses patients. During the podcast, Dr. Sue is open about how she deals with trolling on social media and with abusive clients. She advises us to not pay as much attention to negative reviews (‘dropping the duds’). We discuss highlights in cat cancer news with Dr. Sue including inappetence, injection site sarcomas, oral squamous cell carcinoma, and mammary carcinoma.

For our 40th #purrpodcast we have another awesome guest, the famous, Dr. Sue Cancervet. Dr. Sue has made it her life goal to educate pet owners about cancer and we know how important cancer is in older cats! We have to be vigilant about lumps and bumps in our pets, the earlier we find them the better we can treat them. Dr. Sue uses social media as a positive influence to educate pet owners about pet cancer. We are talking about myths and misconceptions about cats with cancer. Cats tolerate chemo the best (compared to the D-word), for instance. At the end, we talk about feline lymphoma!