Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. Really pleased today to have two good friends of mine, Kat Hempstridge and Victoria Sabluck, on Victoria Works for Purina. Kat has just opened.

Her own practise but is somebody who I'm sure many of you will know talks a lot on the public facing on social media trying to to always promote good health and good ways of practise for cat and dog owners. So I'm really pleased to have you both on and thanks very much Purina for making this episode possible because we're gonna be talking about. Our senior citizens, I just turned 60, about a month and a half ago, Kat, I had a big party.

I paid for people's drinks, but I, I'd locked the door and then it was my party and I sang if I wanted to, so I am, I don't know if I'm classed as a senior citizen at 60 or 65, but maybe with some of these diets, I may have to start looking at them myself. But anyway, joking aside. If you wanted to just cos some people amazingly Cat will not know who you are, so if you want to just introduce yourself and then obviously Victoria as well and then we can get into the, the meat of the discussion, talking all things senior citizen, but no jokes about my age, Kat, that's the only rule.

I promise, I think then the way to know how, how old you actually are and should be classified as is you should look at the IA care, classification for ages for cats and you know, normally we do it for cats to people, but you could do it from, you know, people to cats and and and figure out that way whether you're a senior or a super senior these days. It's it's probably quite helpful. Anyway, yes, hello everybody, thank you so much for having me on.

My name's Kat. I'm a small animal vet in clinical practise in the UK. I have been for over 20 years.

I recently opened my own clinic with my husband, we're just over a year old now, and senior pet care is genuinely something that I've always really enjoyed, and it's something that we've placed at the heart of this clinic, and it has been really interesting seeing how centering them in a lot of the things that we do and focusing on them has actually been incredibly positive for the clinic, for our staff, and obviously for the patients themselves. Brilliant, Kats, thanks so much, and then Victoria. Hello, my name is Victoria Saluk.

Thank you very much for making this possible as well, this type of podcast. I think it's going to be a very interesting discussion. So both myself, I'm a vet as well.

I'm an expert in pet nutrition and I work in SA Purina pet care as a science and nutrition lead, focusing on therapeutic diets, on veterinary diets. Thank you, Victoria. Great, well, let's, I, I suppose first of all, before we absolutely dive in, it sounds like the practise is going really well, but you've got a, you've had a real focus on senior citizens as well.

Yes, so there's two vets, there's myself and my husband Dave, we're we're still just the two of us at the moment, and we both genuinely have a real interest in in senior pet care, and so, yes, it is, it is going, going well, but what has been really interesting is watching how clients have. Come to us because we have demonstrated that we are interested in older pets. So on the bios on the website for both of us actually, we wrote them independently of each other, we talked about our clinical interests and for both of us, one of that is senior care, we have, you know, specific senior clinics, and clients have obviously been on the website, read about us, checked us out because we're new.

And we have had clients come specifically because we have expressed that interest in senior pet care, so it's definitely something which clients are interested in, they want to know that you care about their older animals, they want to give these senior pets really good care, and entirely by accident, we seem to have tapped into that, and because it's been organic and not, not been a cynical move, it was genuine one, it, it, it has, you know, been really good for us. Brilliant, I suppose I mean obviously as vets I think we probably all have an idea of what you would define as a senior pet but I know sometimes you know other people are, are listening to this as well so how would you define a senior pet, you know, dog and cat? So, I hope, I'm sure Victoria can come in as well, but I think the, the sort of overall definition is a senior pet is senior when they enter the final third of their expected lifespan, which is sort of a helpful benchmark because, you know, they all get to seniority in a different way, and obviously, you know, cats are fairly consistent, but breeds of dog are very different, you know, the, the ancient Yorkshire terrier that seems like it's going to go on forever, versus, you know, our larger breed dogs who sadly.

Don't. There's some really great charts, so I mentioned earlier the IA care chart, you can find that on their website, it is fantastic, and they now classify cats from, you know, babies and juniors and adults to mature, senior and super senior, so because cats are animals, all of them, but cats particularly are living longer, they've actually expanded that definition of. Seniority, to have different classifications, because it does change as they age, and clients love those, because you can pull it up on the, on the practise computer.

I do it all the time, and I say, you know, look, she's 18, she's the equivalent of a 75 year old woman or or whatever, and, and it really helps them to understand, you know, to get a grip and a, and a, and a understanding. Of where their pet is, and then for the dogs, there's actually a really cool one from the American Kennel Club, that again, you can find it online, it's a really lovely graphic, and it's split it by size, you know, breed of dog, because, obviously they age, they age differently, but again, I think it's really helpful because our clients aren't looking at their six year old Labrador and thinking you're old. But it's, and I, I, I, Victoria, I'd love your insights on this from a nutritional point of view, but that, that is the age, you know, 7+, isn't it, was when the food starts to change, and it is those ages where they don't look old, they don't seem old, especially our cats at 7, you think oh they're fine, but there are changes that are happening.

And we don't need to have a, you know, 78 year old cat in come in for a vaccination and suddenly start talking to the owner about how old they are and how, you know, we must be looking out for things, but I think, it's really helpful for vets to sort of be aware of those changes so we can start introducing concepts of, Not being ancient, but being on that life journey. And needing maybe a little bit more monitoring than they did when they were year olds. Yes, you know, exactly.

Victoria, any comments there? So, yeah, I can add on that on nutrition from the nutritional point of view, we can see some changes, that's why we define the senior cats. First, we're talking about cats, starting from 7 years, because there we start to see some regression in their functions, like the impaired.

Disability and the sensory system they may have, they start losing their smell or they're not able to digest the some nutrients properly so it started at the age of 7, but as Kat said before, we have differentiation between, we call it geriatric. Cats like senior cats and then geriatric cats, so from the age of 7 to 12 cats, they have a little bit, they're more prone to overweight, so they need a little bit less calorie intake in that age, but starting from the age of 1112 years old, approximately, they're very prone to underweight. So we have to think about increasing their calorie intake.

So even on some packs of the cat food, you may see that from 8 to 7. From 7 to 12, you may have the, I don't know, the, the dose of 50 grammes per day, and then starting from 12th year, you are gonna have, you're going to give them 70 grammes per day. So for example, I'm inventing, I mean, the, the requirements are changing and in cats it's very, very useful to know and yeah, a lot of pet parents, they think that my pet is senior, the seniority starts at this age and, and that's it.

But in dogs, it's a little bit more consistent and we count approximately 25-30% of their lifespan. And yeah, there are some opportunities to measure approximate lifespan of the dog depending on the breed on its health status, and so on and so on, and then you can calculate what age it starts to age and well, for small and medium dogs it's approximately 9 years old, we can call it senior and for big dogs it's starting from 67 years old. Victoria.

And our CFO at the webinar that is, is 20 he adopted me during the pandemic, and so, that's sorry that's Chief Feline Officer, not Financial Officer, he, he isn't that good at counting, but I suppose at 20 he's still amazing, he still jumps up on the shed. He's the cock of the street if people know what that is, so he, he's still trying to fight with all the other cats on the road. 20 I, I suspect must be super, super senior in your definition cat.

I think, I think he probably is, isn't he, but I think that that point you make about him jumping is a really good one, because, you know, when it comes to thinking about the health issues that our older pets have, arthritis and mobility problems, I think probably top the lot, don't they, through for all of them, for dogs and for cats. But cats in particular, it's really hard to diagnose it, and also to persuade owners that there is a problem because they're so naturally athletic, you know, they think nothing of leaping up onto the kitchen side or, you know, onto the top of the shed or up onto the garden wall, and they can still do it at his age. And so certainly in clinical practise, I'll say to them, oh I think he's getting a bit arthritic, and I, and I, they'll say to me, oh no, I don't think so, he can still jump X Y Z.

And we have to have those conversations about how I know he can do it, and that's great that he can. But I bet if you watched him carefully, he's not doing it as freely as he used to, he's thinking about it, I bet he's not doing it as often as he used to, and I bet he's struggling, and there are things we can do to help, to help him to be able to do that more freely, but there is, there does come a challenge in sometimes in particularly, Especially pain for, for helping owners to understand there are signs to be looking out for, and also that their pets are managing their pain really well, and so they are not showing signs that we might necessarily expect them to, or certainly owners would necessarily expect them to. Cat, you'll be proud of me, he's on a monoclonal injection and he's on meloxicam as and when necessary and we monitor his kidneys every year for a 20 year old cat he has per you know, he has no issue with urea or creatinine so his kidneys looking remarkable, isn't that amazing.

His birthday is this month and if you're around Liverpool in the next couple of weeks you can come in with birthday treats for him, cos we're gonna have a, we're we're gonna have a small party, nothing too elaborate, but I think it's gonna, is he gonna lock the door and force people to listen to him sing, do you think? Well, he, he, when he wants something, he lets you know that he wants it. I remember one of the companies, I won't name the name, and I was at a conference, I think it was London Vet show but it, it may not have been.

And they said, we communicate about your cats because your cats can't communicate, and I said hm I don't think that's right, they can very much tell us what they want, can't they? Yeah, 0, 100%, they, they definitely know. Is he nice?

Because, well, what I noticed from my experience, the worst character the cat has, the longer it lives. Yes, well, he came to us and, and to be honest, I was a bit frightened of him because he would snarl all the time and you couldn't go near him. And, and he was actually, we knew where he'd come from, we've searched for the owners on Facebook, we found them.

And then the cat was still coming back. So after about 3 or 4 weeks, we said, you know, is the cat coming to you because he was going out each night. So we thought he was going back there.

Oh, we've been worried sick. We didn't know he'd been missing. So we kind of realised what was happening was that the house was very busy where he was, and I think he just wanted a retirement home, so it's just me and my.

Wife with a little garden in the front, so he's living his best life and cats live so mindfully, don't they, they just sit outside in the sun, stretching and we just look after them and all their little butlers and servants, so I think he's . He, he has calmed down now and now he's he he demands to sit on your lap and to be cuddled and to be stroked, and if you don't do it he he bites you but he has no teeth so it's just a nasty suck, so it's OK. But it took me a while to realise he didn't have any teeth because I was a bit scared of approaching him and I'm pretty good with handling cats.

Yeah, I think you're right, Victoria, the ones with the spirit last the longest. Always. But I think it's a great point, you know, you were saying about the hiding of pain because of course they don't want to show weakness, but that's where we've got to convince clients that actually monoclonal injections, meloxicam, you can't stop a cat wanting to jump, you know, and it obviously is a sign of health if they can.

Do it cos if their arthritis was so so bad, they wouldn't be able to manage it, would they? Absolutely, and there's so many things that we can do to help them and I think that, you know, we shouldn't be afraid of pain relief, you know, we worry don't we, I think a lot about the non-steroidals in our older cats if their kidneys aren't so great, but the wonderful Sarah Kenney has done some fantastic work showing that kidney disease is not impacted and sometimes even improved. I'm sure it was her paper.

Because, you know, we need our older cats to eat well and drink well, don't we, Victoria, they're very vulnerable to dehydration, we need that nutrition, we don't want them to become sarcopenic and lose their muscle because that's going to make their joints even worse. And so if we can keep them pain-free and moving about, they're going to be far more likely to go to the food, to go to the water. And so, you know, to look after their health in that way, and pain is miserable and debilitating and a massive impact, negative impact on quality of life, so we should absolutely be really, really proactive in pain relief for our older pets if we think they're arthritic, but owners miss the signs, understandably, so, because like you say, that our pets manage it, and obviously the cats are the worst.

Or the best, depending on how you look at it, at managing it, the one thing that I'll often do as well for my clients with cats is I will point out the line, so you know that line they develop in their hind legs when they, they lose the muscle, the gluteal muscle starts to degenerate, and a lot of the time I'll be like, look, look at the line in his back legs, and it's kind of proof, you know, a sort of physical something they can latch onto to go, oh, I see what you mean, right, yes, and then I talk about, you know, we can talk about muscle and. How important it is that WSAVA have got their muscle condition scoring, which is another great way of monitoring it, then that can open those conversations, can't it, Victoria, about nutrition and digestible protein, and the need, the need for really high quality digestible, digestible proteins to keep that muscle bulk, to keep that muscle bulk up. Do you want to comment any anything there, Victoria?

Yeah, so I can start with the the whole nutritional advices for the senior pets, starting with the protein, yeah, as I've told you before, both cats and dogs, they have the decreased ability to adequate absorb some of the nutrients, including the micronutrients like the protein, carbohydrates, and fats, and here protein is essential, that's true. So we have to Maintain their lean body muscle mass and for that we need to, to think not about put more protein in their food, but also to think about the digestibility and bioavailability of this protein. So for example, there is a big difference if you put a dehydrated poultry meal, for example.

You put a frozen fresh meat into the kibble. So the bioavailability of these two ingredients is super important and it's super different. That's why sometimes it's important to understand even this type of not very obvious things.

Except of protein, what is very important, first of all, we have to think about the oxidative stress. So with the ageing, the cells are, are being oxidised and that brings to the cell damage and it can lower the immunity. So we have to think about the increasing of antioxidants in the food, which is more important than for normal healthy adult pets.

So this could be vitamin E, vitamin C, beta-carotene. Then we have the the sensory problems, we may have the sensory problems in cats and dogs, so we have to think about the palatability because yeah, they can smell or taste worse and that's also very important, but not very obvious for some owners that sometimes a cat refuses to eat, not because he does not feel good, but maybe the food doesn't smell as good for him as it was before. No that's, that's really good.

Victoria, I'm interested. Buddy's, again, I'm sorry we keep on talking about Buddy, but he's on Live Clear because my wife is allergic to cats. So obviously we put him on this diet and then she's a lot better and from being ambivalent about cats, she is now totally besotted by him and spends quite a lot of her time looking at cat videos, so there's been a transformation, so thank you for Live Clear.

Clearly I can't change the diet because you know I actually care for my wife a tiny bit more than I care for the cats or or love the cat if you want to call it, so. He's going to probably stay on Live Clear, but I know you've brought out some diets looking particularly at older animals and you know particularly we we see a lot in in studies that come out that cats and dogs are living longer, obviously loads of reasons it's cos we've got brilliant vets like cats, but obviously also, diet is such an important part of helping with health, I remember, The studies that were done on kidney disease and just simply having a cat on a very good kidney diet would almost double their life expectancy compared with just continuing to feed ordinary food, so I think your your new diet, your longevous diet, tell us a little bit about that and how that kind of fits in with what we've been talking about. At the moment, we've got to call this a podcast cos we've just talked about cats, but we will then move on to the podcast when we start talking more about dogs because.

I don't want the doggy people to feel that we're not looking after the dogs as well as the cats, but if you can talk a little bit about the longevity diet and why that, you know, should be thinking about it that would be really good. Sure, so first of all, thank you for the feedback about the Leaf Clear, and second of all, you are safe because we have the Live Clear for senior cats, and it has the same blend lookevity that you mentioned, and it has the same benefits. So actually this diet is not new, this is something.

That we have for already, I, I don't remember how many years, but we have it for already a long time. So, and that's very special because we have like a claim on pack that we can say that this diet prolongs cats' life and that is based on studies. So we conducted the study taking 90 cats, splitting them into 3 groups.

One, we were feeding the regular high premium balanced diet with all the needed nutrients. The second group were fed the same controlled diet, but with added antioxidants because there was a thought that maybe only antioxidant, antioxidants can help to extend the lifespan. And in the third diet, we put our patented blend which consists of antioxidants, prebiotic, and pollen saturated fatty acids like omega 6 and omega 3.

And in that study, what we saw, so these cats, they were fed till the end of their lives, monitorize their blood cell count, their hair, their coat quality, their muscle mass, their weight, it's so on and so on. And in the end, so the group 3 who were fed with this combination of nutrients, they lived in approximately, on average, 1 year longer than other groups, so the group that ate the normal food, they. Lived the less, the one who ate food enhanced with the antioxidants, they lived a little bit longer, but the food with our nutritional blend lived approximately one year longer than so longer than the other, and yeah, that's very strong actually, that's very strong because we have this, you know, combined approach, so we have the prebiotic to support the healthy microbiota.

Which is very important not only in terms of of metabolism or digestibility of the ingredients but also for the immune system itself. Then we have the fatty acids, which is essential for the to reduce inflammation or to support the skin and cold house and actually we had one of the of the findings was that elasticity of the coat of these cats who were supplemented with omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, it was much better. So it means that their skin itself was younger and it really, it really played a role.

Yeah, and antioxidants, for sure, it's obvious that helps to, to, to a little bit slow down the the ageing. Yeah, brilliant. Victoria, and that's super, perhaps going back to cats.

And we'll maybe come back and speak about the dogs in a minute, but how. How should we as vets in practise, how should we be kind of selling that whole concept of food, you know, to our clients who perhaps don't understand all the kind of scientific talk that you know Victoria has just given us then. Yeah, well I mean wasn't that fascinating, good old omega threes and probiotics and the microbiome, I just find it completely fascinating, I, I love it.

Yes, I think nutrition has to come along with a conversation about everything, about seniority, and I think that one thing that we can do in practise is keep these conversations going through the pet's life. What we don't want to do is suddenly have a 13 year old cat plonked, plonked on the table in front of us. We might if we've never seen it before, but really, we should have been having conversations about ageing well before then, and it should be part of the sort of philosophy of, of the practise, I really very strongly believe that, that, You know, so we're not launching something awful at an owner at this age, they're ready, they're understanding the changes that are happening, and I think it's down to trust as well, isn't it Kat, you know that if people trust you, you don't have to give them, A 26 page booklet or spend an hour in the consulting room, you know, if it's the sort of thing that you would do for your own cat or dog, then it's, it's easy to, Justify it in that basis, isn't it, you can give people too much information as well, can't you?

Yes, there is a real balance to strike between overloading them and confuzzling them or making it seem like you're trying to blind them with science and not giving them enough, and that's going to be hugely individual depending on the clients, you know, so having that relationship, you know, again and being able to have those conversations and that trust is really important. And being able to package nutrition up as part of an overall health plan, care, and also I think discussing how there's so many things in these senior diets that mean that we don't have to supplement or do extra things like, you know, the joint supplements with the omega threes, if we're giving a great senior diet, then maybe they're in there in, in enough that we don't have to. Try and get extra tablets into them or spend more money on things, because I think a lot of patients, a lot of pets are now on loads of different supplements, you know, I don't know about you, but my Facebook feed is absolutely full of them, and I think a lot of clients are recognising ageing, they are aware of, you know, mobility changes, they probably have a lot of them have done something already at home.

So they're already on that journey, where we can come in with, with that, with that expert advice and support, and figuring out what's gonna work for them. It's all about that contextualised care, isn't it, and you know, are they interested in changing diet, how does the cat feel about that? What texture do they like, what flavour do they prefer, and again, like, like Victoria says, you know, pointing out that senses change, I think that's really, really important and something quite, potentially quite impactful for the owner.

To, for you to say, well, obviously, you know, he's older now, so, did you know that cats can't smell as well? Oh, you know, is that, that might be why he's leaving his food, it's not that he doesn't like it, it's, it's maybe that it's just not as tempting, you know, and obviously we need to keep an eye on things like dental disease and all sorts of stuff, so there's, The thing that I love about looking after older patients is they're all an individual, them and their owner, they've all come to seniority on a different journey with different problems, and it's about having that conversation and relationship to figure out what that animal and their family needs for successful senior care. Yeah, no, I think it's a really good, point.

I would like to just ask, is that a word you've made up, or is it actually in the dictionary, cause I think it's a royal Dallism that confuzzling is a word I want to take under my belt if, if I'm allowed by you, because it's, you're very welcome. You, you can have some I'm allowed to use confuzzling more often, great word. Yeah, and I think it's .

It, it is about giving, as you say, the appropriate amount of information, some people want more than others, won't they? And directing them to resources like the Purina Institute or the Purina websites has got loads of stuff, you know, the centre square that's on the Purina Institute is absolutely fantastic for information, isn't it, Victoria, and it's not branded either. So, you know, I think we always come under criticism for selling things or just, you know, biassed sources.

The great thing about the Purina Institute is obviously it has a Purina name on it, but it's not actually recommending any diets, it's explaining what you should look for in terms of nutrition, and you know, one of the things it covers on there, I'm sure it does, doesn't it, Victoria, is is senior pets. Yeah, exactly. So Purina Institute, it's like an independent organisation.

Yes, it's sponsored by Purina. That's why it's called Purina Institute. But anyway, it does not link, it's not linked to any of our products.

But when it does any, I don't know, revolutionary type of achievements or they have something new, they discover something new, then they implement it in our diets if they have some, some, you know, some innovation in the, in the pet food industry, but yeah, they, they, they work independently. I think it's quite interesting as well, you know, if you're trying to tablet a cat, it can be quite difficult, whereas if everything is in the food, it makes it easier and often it's cheaper than, you know, buying all these things separately, just as a point of clarity because I think you said a probiotic, but my understanding is that longevitous diet actually has a prebiotic in it rather than a probiotic, is that right, Victoria? Yeah, correct, it's prebiotic, yeah, in terms of probiotic, we have a different separate product which is 40 flora because to add probiotic just for into food, it will not survive probably, so you have to have an appropriate, an appropriate form of it, so we have like a special capsules for this type of probiotics and we can add them separately, of course, yeah, my apologies, prebiotics.

Pre and post that's fantastic. I love, I love them all and symbiotic as well. I think just to finish, just so that we have no complaints from er from the the vets er who who.

Like dogs the most, I think we're OK with, we all obviously love cats and dogs, and let's not have a fight about it, but obviously you've also got age defence on the dog side, so how does that differ, what are the sort of the super ingredients in that that make that make the difference? Do you want to go with that Victoria? Yeah, so it's a little bit different, we do not claim that it prolongs the dog's life, but anyway, we can say that dogs need the same nutrients to support their healthy lifespan, healthy ageing, so these are antioxidants, appropriate energy to fat to protein balance because they're more prone to overweight and more prone to lose muscle mass, as well as the microbiota support, so add a prebiotic, additionally probiotic.

It would be also nice, but what we have interesting is that we found an alternative source of energy for the brain cells. All the dogs, they experience with the age, approximately at the age of 9 or more, the brain cells, there's like a a natural death of brain cells and that can lead to a gradual brain dysfunction. So what we discovered that why that's happening because these cells are no longer able to ingest a glucosa as an energy source, to use glucosea as an energy source, and that's why they're declining.

And what we discovered that the supplementation of medium chain triglycerides, which is then synthesised in the liver into ketone bodies, these ketone bodies, they can then support the production of ATP in the brain cells. I'm sorry if it sounds too hard, but this is something that can fuel. Will the brain cells and can help slow down the progression of the brain dysfunction.

So what is the brain dysfunction? It's when, for example, a dog becomes disoriented or he develops anxiety or vocalisations or phobia, like, yeah, the brain does not work as good as it was. And we noticed a huge extreme difference in the dogs who were fed with this alternative energy source for brain cells, and that's why this food is, I think it's an amazing option for for senior dogs, even if they now don't have any problems, but to prevent them, it may be very, very useful, and it really works.

Thanks Victoria, that's fantastic. See this is what I love about nutrition, and it's just how impactful it can be on things like this, you know, I, I just think it's amazing and, and then, and I'm so grateful for companies like Purina to doing this research to, to help us to know. And then you know, having it in the diets, it just makes everybody's life so easy because yeah, we've talked loads about cats, but obviously our dogs get to seniority as well, they are good at managing problems and hiding things and, and I think, you know, mobility issues are huge, but brain ageing is something which, Just doesn't come up in conversations with clients, they don't, unless you talk about it, that is one of the things I don't think they'll bring up until the dog is, howling the house down at night, or staring at the walls, or doing something really quite extreme, but when you can talk about, Forgetfulness and vacancy and just not being quite as switched on, a lot of clients will then volunteer that that is what they have noticed it, but you know these things are just put down to normal ageing or not even being really appreciated, as something that can even have something done about it, you know, you know, oh she's just getting old, yes, but there's so much we can do.

Exactly, I think one of my sort of most annoying times was when somebody brought in a moribund cat which was skeletal and they dropped it on the table, you know, they put it on the table and they said we didn't bring it any earlier cos we knew what you would do. And you would go well you haven't really given me any choice today, whereas it could have been hyperthyroidism, it could have been kidneys, you know, with relevant treatment, you know, often just dietary. That cat might have lived for another year or two with reasonable quality of life, so it's it's right, we, you know, prevention, we've got to get them in early and then we can do more for them, can't we?

Yeah, and things like that are so understandable. I understand why owners leave it that long, I do, and the worry that we are just going to say it's time. But that's where we come back to where we started, which is about, it's about that relationship, it's about the trust and it's about the communication and it's about being really proactive, in older pet care on, on social media and websites and in person and in clinic, to be able to.

Help owners feel supported, and then they'll come to us, and they're ready for changes and understand what's going to happen, and, and yes, as soon as we start talking about ageing, obviously they're going to think about the end, but if we can really communicate that there's so much we can do in between those two points, you know, and nutrition can do an enormous amount of heavy lifting in there, then that is, you know, that's what makes vetting so fantastic, I think it's one of the most satisfying, satisfying things we can do. I think these cases were often, you know, particularly with cats, you'll hear people saying oh he gets too stressed out to go to the vet, so therefore they never ever go. And of course you've never seen this cat before and it comes in, you know, like a living skeleton, so yeah we've all seen them, little dried up dishcloth of a cat, yeah.

Just a final one, obviously we're we're talking about senior pets and often they will have concurrent problems, so how can vets tailor nutritional plans for senior pets with concurrent issues like kidney or disease or dental disease or obesity. Is is there a way, should we just be going on to the prescription diets that we have or do we feel now that these diets we've talked about today, will often cover a number of conditions and so therefore are really good diets, You know, an older cat with kidney disease, what would you be advising to do cats? Well, I think you've got to know exactly what's going on with all the different issues and then try to sort of balance it out, haven't we, but I think with the prescription and the therapeutic diets that we've got now, they know, you know, Purina knows that our kidney cats are gonna be, Older, in the vast majority of cases, so they will be making adjustments within those diets for those problems.

Victoria, what, what is happening on that, on that level? Yeah, that's absolutely true, of course, if the cat has a chronic kidney disease, of course it's a senior cat, in most of the cases, so then we have to support their healthy agent as well, so we will add more antioxidants, more microbiome support and so on and so on. So yeah, but in terms of other conditions, sometimes you have to decide the priorities.

So for example, if you have a highly sensible cat with a very bad allergy, food allergy, whatever, you of course you have to choose the hydrolyzed diet, but here again, there are no separation on hydrolysed diets for senior cats or for adult cats. Here what can help is to support the microbiota, so maybe to look for a diet that has some prebiotic sources on it or to add some probiotic, to think about the fatty acids, again, to look on the on the food, which has more omega 3. Fatty acids, so maybe consider supplementing it, and as well as the high protein levels, you just take two packs of food and you, you see the protein levels of both of them and you better choose the one that has more protein or.

Unless the cat has the renal problems and allergy at the same time, so you know, there are very, very challenging situations, but it's, it can be, it can be resolved, and, but it requires, a very special approach. But, yeah, but it, it could be resolved. But in terms of pathologies, I would say that it's very important to define the priorities like what is life threatening at the moment?

Is it the support for The antioxidant support or the support of renals or the allergy or hearts or whatever. Yes, and you can speak to the nutritionist at Purina, can't you? So, you know, if you have got a question often, and I will do, about a diet, or you know, which one to pick under a particular circumstance, you can contact their teams and you will get, You know, an email back from often like a board certified veterinary nutritionist, so someone who really, really knows what they're doing, who can, who can support you, and they'll give you advice, because I, I've done it myself, there's, there's no fee for it, and it's incredible, and not only will they give you advice on nutrition, but also they'll give you advice on treatment and be like, OK, fine, we'll use this diet, but add this supplement or use this diet and, you know, have you thought about this medication or this different kind of approach, or have you run this test, it's, It's really for those complex cases where nutrition is going to be an important part of the puzzle, but sometimes it can be hard to put it together.

There is that support from companies like Purina, which is fantastic. Exactly, yeah, we have very, very knowledgeable people working in offices all over the in in in different markets, and some of them are like. PhD for sure.

Some of them are very knowledgeable in the, in the clinical overall practise, in, in the past, now in nutrition. So you can always refer if you have any questions or to ask your vet advisor and then if the vet advisor doesn't know the answer, it may go later to the UK office, for example, and then after the UK office, it goes to the central office. And so on and so on.

So yeah, we were always happy to help and we have people who are really knowledgeable in that. Fantastic, just, just to finish off, just to be clear then if if you know there was a cat in front of you. That obviously had kidney disease.

You know, diagnosed, then you would recommend the prescription kidney diet rather than the longevitous diet. Longevitous diet is for a senior cat, we know that kidneys will start to fail but not be clinical, but that will support the cat's kidneys and so on, but at some point you may have to move on to the, the kidney diet. Yeah, if you have your, the diagnosed the clinically diagnosed the renal disease, yes, of course, because the olangitis diet, it's appropriate, like it has a slighter less phosphorus levels in it, but anyway, we do not do it until the cat is diagnosed with the, with this disease.

So yes, you have to switch and anyway. Once again, these renal diets usually are aimed to support healthy ageing as well. Brilliant.

Victoria, thank you so much, thank you to Purina for making this conversation possible today, it's been really interesting for me to see how the new, well not so new diets, but the diets are developing. Obviously Cat, always good to speak to you as well, thanks for all your wisdom and yeah I really enjoyed speaking to you both and hopefully everybody else has enjoyed it as well and I look forward to seeing you on a webinar or a podcast or podcast.