I'd just like to pass on what is working for my kitty. Kali started freaking out on her food, had really bad breath, was drooling alot and acting strange at just 2 years old. She was getting really skinny because eating food was irritating her mouth somehow - in the middle of a meal, she would cry out and shake her head. Then she would leave her food. It was as if she had a sore in her mouth or something, but the vet could find nothing. It got so bad, he even put her to sleep once so he could thoroughly check out her mouth and throat. The vet finally tested for leukemia and it was positive. He pretty much told me he could do nothing. But that was okay because I had just cured myself from CFS and I know a lot about health, particularly the immune system. So I pretended she had what I had - it doesn't really matter what's wrong with you because most chronic diseases start with the same problem: the guts/immune system needs attention.
So long story short, we started her off on some antibiotics for a few weeks which helped the mouth. Then I googled a few things and came up with Transfer Factor for FLV. So I've been treating her like I treated myself, paying special attention to the guts/immune system. I don't give her commercial cat food unless it's specialty food from Trilogy. Normally she eats canned tuna, canned sardines (which are cheap where I live) or red meat cooked medium rare. To the food I sprinkle on pet vitamins, taurine (for the red meat since it doesn't have enough), probiotics (very high quality ones from Biotics Research which are what I take) and the Transfer Factor by 4Life. She has perked right up. No more stinky breath, just a slight drool once in awhile, no more freaking out on her food and she's much less stressed. And she's back to a normal weight. She seems to be doing fine now so I'm going to stick with this regimen.
We did a mouth culture on her because of the eating difficulties and one of the normal mouth bacteria came back a bit high, but it isn't a problem like it was when I started all of this. I asked the vet if we should go after this particular bacteria but he said she is doing remarkably well and I shouldn't do anything different than I'm doing right now. She doesn't take anymore antibiotics, either. It's all good. So I recommend tossing the commercial pet foods, first of all. Then use transfer factor, probiotics, a multivitamin/mineral supplement for cats, and make sure of the taurine level in whatever food you give your kitty, sprinkle some on if you need to.
