r/RenalCats

I see that there’s some that are pills I don’t love the idea of ramming a pill down his throat twice a day. Aren’t there any shots out there? Is anyone doing anything with peptides?

He doesn’t really like wet food. I do give him the hydopackets. Anytime I try to put any powder on any kind of food, hard or wet. He just won’t eat it so what’s the best method to getting these supplements to him?

Our 11-year-old kitty Chloe recently progressed to stage 3 CKD. We have a 10-day vacation coming up in a month that was previously planned, to look at properties in a different country. She just started supplements and we're still getting things under control - inconsistent eating schedule (though better appetite than when I took her to the vet 2 weeks ago), and she hates the oral supplements we give her, though we can usually get most of them in her. She is on aluminum hydroxide gel, and potassium gluconate powder mixed with water, both given via oral syringe since she will only eat out of a shared bowl with her sister (who does not have CKD and should not be getting the supplements). I'm worried about what to do with her while we are gone.

Previously, anything over 7 days, we leave both cats with my in-laws who love them. But I don't want to make them responsible for giving her oral meds/any health issues that might arise. Thus, my husband and I are torn on how to move forward with their care during our trip.

1. I lean towards boarding them at a place with little indoor rooms for the cats (not cubbies, not cages), that can watch them 24/7, monitor health, and are trained in giving medications.
2. My husband wants them to stay at the house to reduce stress of a new place and thinks it will be enough for someone to come by twice a day to administer the supplements, e.g. from Meowtel.com or Rover.com.
3. I proposed having someone stay at the house that my coworker trusts implicitly/has experience staying at her house and watching her cat that needed sub Q fluids, but my husband isn't comfortable with a stranger staying in our home all day for 10 days.
4. He has also suggested bringing them to his parents still but having someone from Meowtel/a vet tech come over to administer the supplements.

My concern with both of his proposals are that Chloe isn't eating at consistent enough times that we can guarantee she'll eat during the 20 minutes someone comes to check on them, which means we can't guarantee they'll be able to give her the aluminum hydroxide. And for his first proposal, I'm paranoid that, because it's only been 2 weeks and we haven't gotten the supplements dialed in yet, she needs someone to monitor her more than just 20 min a day, twice a day.

What recommendations do you all have for how to proceed (other than canceling the trip)? Please understand that we just want to do what is best for Chloe. The cost difference isn't significant enough to me to be the deciding factor between what we do.

She had stage 3 Kidney disease and weight was down to 4.5Lbs (from about 9 pounds 9 months earlier), was only eating a few licks of treats and was going to further lose weight etc, BUT she was still able to walk with bit of back legs shakiness, drank some water, go to litter box to urinate, even jump on couch for her bed....but I decided to avoid sudden painful crisis and euthanize...Now I'm having panic attacks feeling that I potentially robbed her of weeks of ok lifespan

Hello everyone,I’m so thankful for this subreddit, I was scared to post but today the love of my life L’ami is not doing too well :(

First I want to speak about L’ami (which means the friend in French, I’m French living in the u.s) L’ami lived in the street for a long time til we cross path, he started sleeping in our little outdoor room, I got him fixed, vaccinated, microchipped, he was pretty “wild” til may last year, when he decided to move in, he became a total love bug baby, and is still!

But this happy story became quite challenging (challenge accepted) last August I brought him to the vet because of his breath that became smelly, and after some bloodwork we learned that L’ami had some kidneys issues, his creatinine was 3.4. The vet didn’t speak to me about stage or anything but he got prescribed subcutaneous fluids therapy, as well as renal food, he hates renal food, I tried all I could find with his prescription and it was a big flop. We did the fluid, here and there because he also hates it…

In January this year, I’m bringing him back, his creatinine number had dropped to 1.6, my vet couldn’t believe it and said that it was good, and stupidly I thought it’s probably his teeth infection, let’s get them remove. Financially I wasn’t able at that time, I got some coffee gigs and last week was the day I wanted to start speaking about the procedure, we did bloodwork and his creatinine was up to 8.9… I was so upset at myself, I am still, wondering if those fancy gems that he loved were slowly killing him, the churu, the litter, the tap water (that I also drink)…

Today his saliva was greenish, I wiped his face and that was also blood, I called my vet and they got us this afternoon, L’ami has now ulcers in his inside cheeks, the vet gave him a steroid and told me that if it wasn’t working we will have to think of saying goodbye…

I have been pre grieving all last week and didn’t cry today, I also didn’t want to do it in the front of him.

When we came back home, he is full of life, he just jumped on the couch and is hugging my husband, he wants to eat but he struggles, probably because of the pain, I’m hoping the steroid will ease the pain…

When am I supposed to say goodbye ? :( I know food will be a big indicator, but I can’t even imagine in how much pain he is because of his mouth, I’m at loss of words, i have a call on Friday with the vet to assess the situation, part of me believe how this little guy is strong, he showed us so many miracles already (too long to tell) that he can fight it, but the other part is that it’s not how it works specially with issues like this…

Thank you for reading me, I’m finally balling crying, I had to step outside so he couldn’t see. I hope you are all well and sending you all my strength for your babies

hi all. i have 11 year old female identical twin girls and a 4yo girl. this will probably be a wall of text, but please bear with me. not sure what to flair this as. not pet loss, i think, because she’s still with us now.

gemma (11yo) had labs done last month. i do not have a copy of those labs, but her vet told me that everything looked good at the time. they did not do a urine sample.

last thursday, gemma started acting a little odd. she didn’t sleep beside me that night, which is weird for her. on friday, she seemed like she was sleeping more than usual, but i brushed it off; the twins have a 4 year old “daughter” who loves to play a little too much, and sometimes she just tires them out. by saturday afternoon, i realized that something wasn’t right. she kept opening the closet door to sleep in there and wasn’t as social as usual. she is my velcro baby, but sometimes she just has an “off day”, but never two in a row. by nighttime, she had started meowing very loudly at me and didn’t sleep much, which struck me as weird. i decided to take her to the vet on monday. on sunday, she was mostly sleeping, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was screaming at me, but still eating, drinking, and using the bathroom normally, no vomiting.

well, monday rolls around, and the soonest appointment the vet has is tuesday morning. i called both other vet offices in my area (semi-rural, not a lot of resources) and neither had an appointment open monday, so i settled for her normal vet at 9am, but with a different doctor at the practice (but same one as before, who did labs last month; regular vet is on paternity leave). not ideal, but i wanted her seen asap.

we go in this morning and basically, she has two infected premolars. we decide to do a blood test and a urine test under the impression that she will have surgery next monday to remove the infected teeth, as long as her labs come back good. he decided that her weird behavior likely because of dental pain. nothing else seems wrong with her, but i do tell the vet that she didn’t want to eat last night, and only pecked at her food this morning, and that she has stopped eating dry food entirely. we both chalk this up to pain because of her teeth. he gives her a dose of zorbium for pain and an injection of convenia to fight the infection before surgery. she also gets subcutaneous fluids, because she is dehydrated, but he doesn’t say much about it other than “maybe she isn’t drinking as much because of the dental pain”. we even talked about an appetite stimulant if she hasn’t eaten by noon tomorrow. he also says her very stinky breath is because of the infection; the stinky breath began about 2 weeks ago and got bad around thursday as well.

well, around 5pm, my entire world gets shattered. her labs came back early, and they show severe, advanced chronic kidney disease. he diagnoses her with end-stage renal failure. the vet himself admitted that he was shocked by these results and did not expect to see this from her. he advises that i take her to an emergency vet for overnight treatment and fluids. i get in the car and drive an hour to the nearest 24hr emergency hospital.

on the drive there, she starts to decline. she is very quiet, still, spacey/dazed, and her general vibe is completely wrong. at the emergency vet, she is taken in immediately and marked as “critical condition”. they start an iv catheter to give her fluids while we figure out what’s going on, and what to do. eventually, we were quoted $2500 for a single night in the hospital, with only monitoring and continuing fluids. the vet reviews her labs, palpates her kidneys (very small), and tells me to consider making a compassionate choice for gemma because she’s going downhill fast. i mention her bloodwork last month and how the vet said that it looked normal, and asked what happened between then and now; she tells me that she doesn’t have an answer, but gem has likely been suffering from this for some time now. i reiterate that she had quite literally zero symptoms of anything weird until thursday, and again, she tells me that she doesn’t have an answer.

unable to pay $2500 upfront, we decide to take her home for the night (and my family drove down immediately to say their goodbyes to her), and we’ll put her to sleep at our home vet tomorrow morning. at home, she seems to be in the same condition as she was at the second vet’s office. she is wobbly (started after a few hours of zorbium), laying down, and occasionally meowing at me, wanting me to hold her and cuddle her. she is not sleeping, only small naps. she is drinking water but still refuses food, and even refuses a chicken churu. i made a joke last week that feels kind of haunting now, saying that gem would have to be on death’s doorstep to turn down a chicken churu.

this is such a gut punch. my entire world has been turned upside down. this sweet girl is my baby, my whole life honestly. she is my velcro cat and my best friend. she is with me literally every single moment except for when i’m cooking (she tries to sit on the stove, so i have to put her in my room while it’s on). i consider myself to be an attentive cat mom, and my vet literally prided me on it when my late cat was going through diabetes, that i noticed small things that others wouldn’t. i have a lot of health anxiety and worry so much about my girls. they sneeze the wrong way and i’m worrying if they have a respiratory infection.

so, at the end of things, my question is: how in the world did this progress so fast? what happened? is there any way that i could have stopped this, or at least noticed it sooner? how did her labs look fine last month, and then come back w/ a creatinine of 9.3, bun 229, sdma 71, phosphorus 30?

TLDR: 11yo female cat is completely fine until thursday. slowly progresses into lethargy, not eating, and bloodwork/urine comes back insane. vet diagnoses her with end-stage renal failure. bloodwork last month “looked good”. what happened? does anyone have a similar experience?

This was my post some days back about my kitty who seemed fine on every test but was still extremely nauseous to the point she didn't want to eat anything.

I took her to the vet the following day. I didn't mention the CBC, platelet count, BP measure, and ultrasound; after hearing my concerns regarding her my vet suggested all of those so we did that. BP was normal, platelet count was also normal, everything was normal, she also had no fever so an infection wasn't it according to my vet. Upon recheck, apparently the pain she felt when they pressed near her kidney was gone so I don't know if that's relevant, I thought I'd mention.

However for the ultrasound the earliest they could slot us in was Wednesday last week so we patiently waited. It has been nearly a week and they haven't gotten back to us yet. This was very unusual, we have another cat who has cancer and he had an ultrasound done also at the same vet last year. The result came back the same day, they reported a big mass and that led us to discover he has cancer. The year before that one of my other kitty also underwent an echocardio and we had the result within 3 days (with them consulting a cardiologist for us).

My vets are good vets, I don't doubt that but the lack of update regarding the ultrasound is very confusing to me. I have read that sometimes they will consult an internal medicine specialist if there's something notable in the result hut does it usually take this long? I just want to know if there's anything at this point. My husband said if we don't have any update tomorrow night he wanted to take our cat to an emergency clinic and have them do an ultrasound right then and there. Does that sound like a good plan? Money is not an issue, we just want to know.

On our side, we switched her to a limited ingredient diet just in case it was IBD. So far so good, she has only thrown up once since but she also hasn't eaten much. Upon hearing about aminavast and probiotic we got them the next day and she's been on them for 9 days now. Pepcid didn't help in the past but i figure it couldn't hurt trying so I started giving her that 3 days ago too. Thank you for listening, I'm just tired so forgive me if I make any grammar or spelling errors.

UPDATE: Our vet called today. They consulted with a radiologist (not an internal medicine specialist, my b) and they found some concerning thickening in both her stomach and intestinal areas. There are 3 candidates: lymphoma (cancer), inflammation in the bowel area, or carcinoma (also cancer but this is much less likely). Not the news I wanted to hear but at least I have an answer. To know for sure we need to biopsy the thickening but for the first 2 we can give her steroid. I'm discussing with my husband to see what we can do for our baby. Thank you.