The 27th of April 2010 was our fist day with Tigani. Since then a lot of things happened: funny, good, entertaining, but also sad things.

The first three month with Tigani were turbulent and partially exhausting.  It was nearly impossible to calm this little, furry guy and he was literally climbing our walls. Even though some of our inventory was damaged (couch, curtains, chairs, …) we were unable to be angry with Tigani because we love our little, furry monster. And believe it or not, he is also able to be kind and well-behaved (only if he is in the mood ).

In the beginning of August, Tigani started to behave strange: he was calm, slept a lot and ate nearly nothing (before he ate 300 grams a day). Therefore, we went to the vet, bu they did not find something suspicious only that he was teething. The vets assumption was that Tigani stopped eating because of his teething. We were pacified and went home, unfortunately Tigani’s condition became worse. He continued with his hunger strike, was flabby and not his former self. We were desperate and went several times to the vet for blood testing, ultrasound, and X-ray. The tests showed that Tiganis blood work did not look good with regard to his kidneys. His blood work was unbelievable for such a young cat. From that on we regularly went to the vet for two weeks for subcutaneous fluids to improve his blood count. Fortunately his values improved, but a new problem showed: Tigani’s calcium level increased drastically. His medical case became so complex that our vet sent us to the veterinary university clinic of Vienna.

We are still visiting the department for internal medicine at the university clinic, however Tigani’s blood work improved essentially. Finally, we found that among other things Tigani was suffering from vitamin D poisoning. His calcium and renal values are still elevated, but still lower than in summer 2010. Unfortunately, Tigani’s blood work  points with high probability at chronic renal failure The triggers are unknown, but could be found by a biopsy of his kidneys. We are not doing the biopsy because it can be a dangerous procedure and it will not help Tigani.

In spite of Tigani’s chronic disease he is doing great. He is active and rascally like before and started to eat normally again. At the moment he weighs 4,7 kilos. Tigani is a very clever cat. He learns new tricks very fast, walks on a leash, reacts on his name and is especially creative when it comes to wicked things e.g. to reach unbelievable places (refrigerator). Besides his cleverness he is self-confident, flexible and brave. Driving with cars, foreign locations, dogs and so on are no problem.  One of Tigani’s hobbies is playing Tarzan – he loves to climb trees (look at the pictures).

It is difficult to tell you everything about 2011, but they say a picuture says a thousand words … (none of the pictures are faked, Tigani likes to show himself in really funny positions)

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And last but not least a video taken in summer in our fruit orchard.

In the following you wil find some pictures of the building process and a Video of Tigani in Action on his Catwalk:

- Status of Tigani: alive and rascally
- Status Martin & Niki: alive, exhausted and amused
- Damaged furniture (prey and victims): chairs, coach
- Number of damaged curtains: 2 out of 4
- Damaged humans (scratches): 2
- Tasted cables: all cables in the living room

- Helped dusting the apartment on inaccessible places for humans
- Meow record: 6 hours non-stop (during the first night with us)
- Consumed proteins: 1450 grams
- Gained weight: 200 grams (from 1550 to 1750 grams)
- Number of fans: 12 humans
- Improved climbing skills: from 30 cm to 180 cm
- Number of water guns bought: 4
- Water wasted to control Tigani’s crazies: 3 liters (improved the humidity in our apartment)
- Taken pictures: 133
- Minutes of film: 47 minutes
- Produced feces: 17 loads

Recently, we received the scratching post we ordered from Petfun. Of course we took some pictures of the show of strength when mounting the thing. The scratching post is completely made out of wood, so there are no cardboard boles. Therefore, it is very heavy and robust

Here are some pictures with comments:

Things to buy:

• Transport box to pick up your cat from the breeder and for vet visits in the future
• Food if possible, (for the first days) the same as your breeder to reduce the stress for your kitty
• Feeding dishes made out of ceramics or stainless steel
• Toys
• Scratching post
• Litter box
• Litter for the beginning it would be best to buy the one your breeder used
• Bed
• Brush
• Harness if you plan to get your cat used to it from the beginning as we do

Things to do:

• remove or hide fragile things (perfume bottle, vase, …)
• remove or hide dangerous things (hair tie, wool, aluminum foil , …)
• remove or hide poisonous things (cleaning products, cosmetics, …)
• bring poisonous plants in your office or give them away (ask google for a list of poisonous plants for cats)

I am going to update this list if I forgot something important.

During our visit we fixed the date when we are going to pick up Tigani. It is the 27th of April at 5 pm

I read several times that cats like routine in their live, especially when it comes to feeding. As Martin and I love to sleep in on weekends, I bought a feeding machine to feed our cat in time and give us some peace

After some research I decided for the “Call-O-Matic”.

The Call-O-Matic looks and moves like the upper part of R2D2 It has compartments for 4 meals and you can program when the meals should become available.  The Call-O-Matic has a display and some buttons to set the desired feeding times. You can program only full hours (e.g. 8 am, 2 pm, 8 pm, 8 am), but that is ok, at least for me. A nice feature is the possibility to record a feeding call. This call is played three times when the Call-O-Matic starts to move and a compartment is opened.

As you can see I informed myself quite well about the topic cat food (this link list is only part of the information I collected).

Results of my research:
I agree with the authors of the above websites that dry cat food is definitely not the healthiest possibility to nourish your cat. BUT: It is a possibility to allow your cat to eat small bites of food over the whole day (especially for people who are not at home during the day). The choice for a high-quality dry food free of cereal is a good compromise if one is not able to handle the food issue without dry food (whatever reason). I chose for myself the following two products:

Wet cat food which you can find in supermarkets is mostly of low quality.  Low quality means that it contains sugar, caramel (other kind of sugar), synthetic pigments, attractants, flavorings and a bunch of antidegradants. Cats who are used to these synthetic additives may even reject high quality cat food. A change from low to high quality food pays off, as these additives are bad for teeth (sugar) and my lead to food intolerances or allergies and other disease. I will directly start with high quality food and I chose the following brands/producers:

Now we need to wait and see which food of our choices our cat acutually eats and likes. The best would be if he likes all of them. Every producer adds different amounts of additives like vitamins and minerals to the food and therefore it is good to mix different brands to avoid overdose or deficits.

Besides wet cat food and a little bit of dry cat food during the day, I am planning to continue my studies on the topic of BARF (Bones and Raw Foods). At the beginning I will limit the BARF part of our cat’s food to less than 20%. With this limit I do not need to worry about necessary additives.