Crumbs was rescued from a bad situation where people fed him without regard for his health. Now he’s got a lot of work ahead of him as his new caretakers help him lose weight so he can walk on his own again.
Crumbs, the morbidly obese tabby who was rescued from the basement of a Russian hospital last week, is already putting in the work to melt pounds.
That means he’s enduring two things most cats hate — exercise and water. You’ll recall from our earlier post that Crumbs weighs 38 pounds and cannot walk under his own power, so his new caretakers at Matroskin animal rescue in Perm, Russia, have him on a special waterproof treadmill where he gets the benefit of buoyancy while he gets his steps in.
The big guy is not a happy camper in the video, but he’s doing his best.
I’ve heard horror stories about the hospitals in Russia and Ukraine, so if it sounds strange that the staff at a hospital would feed cookies, soup and other inappropriate food to a cat, well, let’s just say it’s not the kind of environment most of us picture when we think “hospital.” (Which is another reason to be grateful for living in the west, where we have it much better than most of us generally realize.)
Non-native English speaking staff at the Hindustan Times may have confused Whiskas the cat food brand with whiskey, the alcoholic beverage, or there may have been a translation error.
Interestingly, a Hindustan Times story about Crumbs claims the hospital employees served whiskey to the obese cat in addition to the junk food, a claim repeated in the headline and article.
That would add another wrinkle to an already ridiculous story, but thankfully it’s not true. Your intrepid friends here at PITB checked the original text and with the help of translation software, determined it used the Russian word for “Whiskas,” as in the cat food, not whiskey. (It probably goes without saying, but never give alcohol to your cat. As little as a teaspoon of whiskey could be fatal.)
So if there’s some small comfort here, it’s that the people who fed Crumbs for so long weren’t completely ignorant to his needs, and it appears he got at least some species-appropriate food.
Crumbs shortly after he was rescued. Credit: Matroskin animal shelter
The abandoned cat found his way to the basement of a hospital in Russia, where staff members provided him with inappropriate food — and way too much of it.
Animal rescuers in Russia have their work cut out for them after taking in a mega-chonky cat weighing 38 pounds.
The orange tabby, named Crumbs by his rescuers because he leaves none in his wake, is so overweight he can’t walk and has been placed on a strict diet to meet his first goal of becoming ambulatory.
After that, his rescuers said, the real work begins as they try to get Crumbs down to about 10 pounds, which they believe is a healthy weight for a cat of his original size.
Crumbs with one of his rescuers who is helping the morbidly obese feline shed pounds.
Staff at Matroskin Shelter in Perm told Russian media that Crumbs was abandoned by his owners and was living in the basement of a hospital in the city.
It wasn’t clear if Crumbs was already obese when he was surrendered, but hospital staff were not providing him with the kind of protein-rich meat cats need to stay healthy. Instead, they plied him with cookies and calorie-dense soups, apparently putting no limits on his food consumption.
“Kroshik’s story is an extremely rare case when someone loved a cat so much that they fed him to such a state,” shelter volunteers said.
Crumbs is in for a shock as he adjusts to his new diet, but the more difficult challenge may be the treadmill sessions that await once he’s able to move under his own power.
Barsik suffered the indignity of being labeled “The Fattest Cat In New York” and even made the front cover of the New York Post, but the former chonkster and his new human had the last laugh:
The problem of overweight cats has received more attention in recent years, with veterinarians warning people not to intentionally overfeed their cats. Unfortunately, some people have taken to fattening up their felines for the sake of social media success, looking to copy others whose extraordinarily “chonky” cats have earned equally massive online followings.
In Poland, Gacek the cat was removed from his street-side tiny house and taken indoors because visitors to the city of Szczecin would not stop feeding the overweight celebrity chonkster, despite signs pleading with them to stop. (It also didn’t help that people tried to steal Gacek after he became internationally famous.)
Above: After Gacek went viral for being the top-rated attraction in his home city of Szczecin, Poland, a steady stream of admirers made the pilgrimage to see him in person, offering tribute in the form of snacks.
Here at Casa de Buddy, I had to put His Grace on a diet because he was pushing about 12 1/2 to 13 pounds, up from his natural weight of about 10 or 11 pounds. That might not seem like much, but Bud isn’t a very large cat despite his belief that he’s a hulking tiger. Two pounds is as much as 20 percent of his ideal body weight.
As you might imagine, the little guy was not happy about his significantly reduced snack allotment and made sure to communicate that to me loudly and often.
“I am NOT chubby, I am meowscular!”
There have also been success stories. Barsik, once dubbed “The Fattest Cat In New York” after tipping the scales at an astonishing 41 pounds, made a second round of headlines after he shed a significant portion of his weight. Nowadays he’s looking happy and healthy as he’s able to run and jump like a cat should.
“People aren’t ready for us to turn carnivore cats vegan but I’m going to do it,” the CEO of a vegan cat food brand has vowed.
In September of last year, a research paper about feline health was published to the open-access journal PLOS-One, going mostly unnoticed.
The paper’s authors claim their research proves cats fed a “nutritionally complete” vegan diet are not only just as healthy as their meat-eating counterparts, they’re actually less likely to need veterinary visits, less dependent on medication, and more likely to be given a clean bill of health by their veterinarians.
When a company called Wild Earth announced the launch of a new line of vegan cat food this month, the company pointed directly to that paper as proof that “cats fed nutritionally sound vegan diets are healthier overall than those fed meat-based diets,” as the paper’s lead author put it.
Wild Earth CEO Ryan Bethencourt, who does not have a professional background in veterinary medicine or feline nutrition, summed up his goal in a tweet: “People aren’t ready for us to turn carnivore cats vegan but I’m going to do it.”
Bethencourt calls the effort to put pets on vegan diets “vegan biohacking.” Credit: Wild Earth
He painted the new offering as a bold counter to skeptics who say vegan cat food is unhealthy.
“We expect aggressive resistance from the meat industry on the launch of this industry-pioneering vegan cat food, but we know there are A LOT of cat parents looking for healthier plant-based and more sustainable options and we want to be the leader in providing them with that choice,” Bethencourt wrote in a statement.
What he didn’t mention was the fact that the loudest voices opposing “vegan cat food” are animal welfare organizations like the SPCA and Humane Society, as well as veterinarians and nutritionists, the same people who see the consequences of cats who are deprived of meat. Over the years they have reiterated that felines are obligate carnivores who have evolved to get their nutrients from meat, with digestive systems that cannot process most plants, meaning they can’t break them down and derive nutrients from them. That’s why we don’t see servals or leopards foraging for fruit in the wild.
In addition, the announcement did not mention that the 2023 research was funded by ProVeg International, a non-profit dedicated to reducing global meat consumption, weaning people and animals off of meat and onto plant-based food.
That didn’t stop other credulous reports, like one from GreenQueen claiming Wild Earth’s vegan cat food is “built on research proving that felines can be healthy on a vegan diet.”
And that’s exactly the point — the “study” was conceived and published so that advocates of vegan cat food can point to it and say “science says” cats can survive on plants.
Bad data makes for bad science
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but the 2023 study did not examine veterinary records or log the results of vet visits over years. Instead, the data was self-reported by participants.
A total of 1,418 people responded to the survey, and only 127 of them said they feed their cats exclusively vegan diets. The claims that their cats get sick less often and do better in veterinary check-ups are based on their subjective assessments and recollections. The paper’s authors don’t know which vegan brands the 127 respondents were giving to their cats, nor do they have information on whether the food was wet or dry, how often the cats were fed, and how much they ate.
A cat eating Wild Earth’s Unicorn Pate, which is made entirely from plant products. Credit: Wild Earth
One of the metrics cited by the authors is “guardian opinion of more severe illness,” which means arbitrary feedback from people who aren’t experts in veterinary medicine or nutrition.
If including respondent opinions as “data” doesn’t bother you, consider how many people buy products like Airborne, concluding that it works because they didn’t get sick once on a cross-country flight. Airborne, you may recall, was “invented” by a teacher who claimed she figured out how to cure the common cold, something no physician has done in centuries of trying.
Like vegan cat food proponents, Airborne had its own “study” that claimed its efficacy. The company eventually paid out more than $23 million in a class action settlement for its false claims. That’s not to say vegan cat food makers are precisely like Airborne, but pointing to poorly conducted research is a tactic that works because most people won’t go to the effort of finding the study and reading it.
Current global meat consumption is unsustainable, but…
I’m a vegetarian and I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me that the current rate of meat consumption, especially in the first world, is untenable as the global population rises toward its expected 11 billion-plus peak. Those forecasts and the horrors of factory farming are motivation enough to hope human civilization consumes less meat in the future.
But I’m also a guy who loves his cat, and I think if you’re going tell me that my little pal, designed by nature to be an obligate carnivore with a digestive system and body plan that hasn’t significantly changed for ages, can stop eating meat entirely with no deleterious effects — despite the experts saying otherwise — then you really need to show me something better than a self-reported survey paid for by a vegan advocacy group.
This cat is not happy. Credit: r/cats(reddit)
Especially when veterinarians who have no financial interest in the pet food industry relate horror stories of their four-legged patients slowly going blind and cats with no other ailments suffering catastrophic consequences, with their organs shutting down because they’re not getting the vital nutrients and proteins they need to survive.
It’s a horrific way to die, and it happens because misguided people think human morals should apply to cats. Notice in the press releases and marketing materials from vegan cat food manufacturers, there’s no mention of what’s in the best interest of cats — it’s all about people making “bold” choices, “disrupting” industries and leading the Earth to a shiny future without meat or suffering.
The truth is, felines cannot synthesize the proteins that are absolutely necessary for their survival, and their digestive systems aren’t evolved for breaking down nutrients from plants. Those are well-established facts, and ignoring them will not change reality. So anyone who claims “vegan cat food” is healthy faces a much bigger task than asking people to take a self-reported survey. A survey paid for by a nonprofit that lobbies for veganism isn’t proof, it’s wishful thinking masquerading as science.
Even if the authors of the paper had the complete veterinary records of the same cats, it would only be one tentative first step toward challenging everything we know about cat nutrition. Questions aren’t settled after one study, especially with such a small data set. Studies must be repeatable, and the difference between correlation and causation isn’t settled with a single well-designed, unimpeachable study, much less a self-reported survey.
When the stakes are the lives, happiness and health of innocent animals, we should be absolutely sure we’re doing right by them.
People whose cats are infected with FIP can now get a legal prescription and buy it from a US pharmacy. A full course of treatment will cost a few hundred dollars instead of the thousands charged on the illegal market.
Starting on June 1, people whose cats are infected with deadly Feline Infectious Peritonitis won’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to shady middlemen importing the cure from China.
FIP is a virtual death sentence for cats, but there’s a drug — GS-441524 — that has a cure rate somewhere around 90 percent, a Godsend for people whose beloved felines are afflicted with the virus.
Previously the only way to get it was through predatory online middlemen who charged exorbitant sums, but thanks to a partnership between UK pharmaceutical company Bova Group and New Jersey-based compounding pharmacy Stokes, the FIP cure will be available legally in the US.
The legal version of the drug will come in a tuna-flavored tablet format and customers can expect to pay a few hundred dollars for a full treatment instead of between $5,000 and $15,000 some paid for the FIP treatment from importers.
A US company invented the drug and held the rights, so it seemed like bringing it to market for cat caretakers would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, GS-441524 is similar to COVID drug Remdesivir so the company was worried if they submitted the FIP cure to the FDA for approval and the FDA did not grant it, the denial could lead the agency to revoke its approval of Remdesivir due to its molecular similarity.
As a result, innumerable people whose cats were suffering with FIP turned to groups like Facebook’s FIP Warriors to help them obtain GS-441524 illegally. The drug was manufactured by facilities in China, sold to middlemen in the US and Europe, then marked up by eye-watering amounts for sale to people with sick cats.
Jupiter, a British shorthair, was diagnosed with FIP. His human, a young professional from London, paid almost $10,000 for FIP treatment obtained through middlemen.
Last year the feds announced they’d exposed a GS-441524 smuggling ring, alleging a woman from Texas and another from Oregon had made almost $10 million from selling the FIP treatment to panicked cat lovers.
GS-441524 importers knew their customers were desperate to save their beloved feline friends so they’d be willing to pay the extraordinary mark-up — and pay they did.
Here at PITB we’ve interviewed and written about several people whose cats were diagnosed with FIP. One of them, a student, spent her entire savings on GS-441524 obtained through the Facebook group and relied on help from generous donors to raise the rest. Another, a young professional in London, paid even more, spending £7,500 (about $9,400 at the time) on the medication alone, not including vet visits.
A Texas woman whose cat, Seth, was diagnosed with FIP said the middlemen — and women — said the sellers “saw our desperate situation and took advantage of us.”
“It was a very stressful time for us, and every time we needed to refill, they charged us more,” she told PITB. “They knew we couldn’t say no.”
For readers interested in more details about GS-441524, Stokes pharmacy has a resource page that breaks down pricing, shipment times, availability and more.
Parsnip, the cat pictured at the top, and Jupiter, the British shorthair pictured within the story, were both cured after taking full courses of GS-441524.
For the first time, the Budster has a patch of matted fur. Luckily, because this is a frequent problem for cats, there’s a lot of detailed advice out there about what to do.
Ruh roh!
In a first for him, Bud’s got a patch of matted fur. While it’s clear he understands I’m trying to help him, he’s not particularly keen on my efforts to comb it out.
He’ll tolerate limited brushing, but after a few attempts he pulls away. I don’t think it’s a sore spot in general. He hasn’t minded when I examined the area and he doesn’t pull away if I scratch his lower back, but his limited tolerance for the brush and his body language all say he’s uncomfortable with repeated attempts to clear the fur.
The dandruffy stuff is from the combing and looks like dead skin. His coat is normally clear of anything like that.
The mat is hard, like the bristles of a paint brush that hasn’t been cleaned properly. Bud’s white underfur is much more visible in the matted area as it sticks up.
After reading about matting in cats and the causes, I don’t think we’re dealing with fleas or an infection. I realize indoor cats can get fleas, but I very rarely see the little guy scratching himself and there’s no indication he’s in any general discomfort.
My best guess is that he’s, ahem, maybe still a little too much on the chubby side and can’t groom the area as he did when he was a younger, slimmer feline, before he moved down to Florida, joined the Del Boca Vista retirement community for cats and immersed himself in the exciting world of bocce.
As you can see, he doesn’t look chubby and his coat is otherwise very healthy.
He’s a tiger!
Of course any talk of weight issues is very hush-hush around here. Officially, Buddy has the physique of an athletic tiger. Anyone who vocalizes doubts about that does so at their peril.
Right now my plan of attack is to get a fine metal comb specifically for jobs like this. I’ll try to remedy it with short brushing sessions and encouragement in the form of treats and praise for Bud being such a brave little guy.
If that doesn’t work, the next step would be a groomer or veterinarian. These things don’t resolve themselves, unfortunately, and the longer they’re allowed to persist, the worse the problem becomes.
Pain In The Bud 