I have an older cat, 8+, who grew up on raw hamburger; not exclusively. Now on occasion he gets raw beef tips, deli sliced chicken and turkey, Sheba chicken, and crunchy Purina Healthful life. His “girl” age 7+ primarily eats Fancy Feast Ocean Fish and the Healthful Life. Now we have the 5 mo old who is a monster(huge feet on that boy)(part Siamese part Maine coon) who eats 4 little cans of food a day. They all like canned tuna. One recently brought me a big mouse that I have yet to find and I am hoping they will find it and kill it.(peanut butter on the “better mouse trap” has not yet done it’s job). And we have been brought ground squirrels, birds and baby rabbits. oh, and lizards.

My older cat, Butty, had his annual vet visit. At his age they do the blood test thing. They called and said he had a point something elevation result in the part that indicates the beginning of renal failure but not to worry as it was not that much elevated over the normal range. Ok, so I hear “renal failure” and block out all other words being said. So I go out without doing any research and buy that urinary tract dry food. And because the monster “Tibbit” is eating me out of cat food I decided to put them all on just dry food. Then I read the forum about cat food and see that I should do the canned food again. Can I use the dry food as bird food?

Guess I will have to go online for the Wellness and others mentioned as we do not have a pet food store in our town, and Walmart? forgetaboutit.

I bought the Feline Pine from Walgreens and am impressed and will use it in all my cat boxes now. So I went online and have found so many wonderful posts to the forums, very informative.

So, if Ms. Michele would kindly take it upon her knowledge and let me know what I should do to keep Butty healthy I would appreciate it. I had my DW for 19 years and he finally succumbed to congestive heart failure. I fed him cooked chicken, raw beef, canned food, dry food, combos, tuna and lots of love.

Kudos to all you cat lovers,
Rhoda
Tennessee

I have had 2 cats with renal failure and I have fed both of them Sciene Diet KD (kidney diet).  They make a dry version, but the wet version is better because it has more moisture content.  Also, depending on how advance the renal failure is, you might also have to give the cat sub-q fluids.  I get the k/d directly from my vet, and your vet should advise you on any things you should be doing with your CRF kitty.

Good luck!  My oldest cat, who turned 20 in January, is the one with renal failure.  She’s doing well eating the canned K/D.

A few thoughts for you on kidney disease in cats… Chronic renal disease (CRD) in cats has a spectrum, varying from mild/early loss of kidney function to end-state renal failure.  Unfortunately, some veterinarians use the term “renal failure” to describe even mild forms of this disease.  I’ll try to give a brief overview of the subject, then we can talk about things to do.

The kidneys have two main functions:  They concentrate the urine and they dilute the urine.  Because our domestic cats are descended from cats who developed in the desert, their kidneys are especially adept at concentrating the urine.  This makes sense, since if you live in the desert, you want to conserve water.  As a result, the normal cat in health produces a very small amount of concentrated urine daily.  As the kidneys age, they lose the ability to concentrate the urine, so that a dilute urine is produced.  As a result, you’ll see larger urine puddles in the cat box and the kitty will be seen drinking more water. Generally (again, because of the cat-desert connection), cats in health drink a very small amount of water.

There are various indicators of kidney disease and as the disease progresses, you may see increases in some lab values (BUN—blood urea nitrogen--, creatinine and phosphorous) and decreases in the red blood cell count (hematocrit) and potassium.  Increases in the BUN and creatinine are referred to as azotemia.

The urinalysis is an extremely important (and sometimes overlooked) test for kidney health in cats.  Typically, cats begin this slow decline in the ability to concentrate urine before they get elevations in the bloodwork.  So, a urinalysis is an absolutely critical piece of the puzzle.

The BUN is not actually specific for the kidneys and can be increased with the feeding of a high-protein diet, as well as with stomach bleeding.  The creatinine is a better indication of the filtering ability of the kidneys, but can be increased a bit in overweight cats and decreased in very thin cats.  Often times we see these very, very thin cats in end-state chronic kidney disease that have normal creatinines.  Those “normal” creatinines in the skinny-minnies is due to the loss of body weight.

Given the high-protein smorgasbord that your kitties are eating, I wouldn’t be surprised if the BUN was up a bit.  I’d talk to the veterinarian about this (and bring in your kitty for a urinalysis collected by cystocentesis, where urine is collected by placing a small gauge needle in the bladder).  Cats with dilute urines are at risk for bladder infections, so if the urine is dilute, you’ll want to have the urine cultured.  Please, please, please, don’t put a cat on antibiotics for a “bladder infection” without a urine culture.  A urinalysis by itself won’t be of any help in diagnosing whether an infection is indeed present and what the best antibiotic is to use.

As far as treatment for kidney disease, I have some general guidelines : Kidney-friendly diets (like the K/D mentioned above) may be helpful because they reduce phosphorous.  I generally don’t recommend a kidney-friendly diet unless the kitty is azotemic (elevated BUN and creatinine) and many of my kidney patients won’t eat the kidney-friendly diets, so are eating regular diets.  If the phosphorous is elevated, phosphorous binders (aluminum hydroxide) may be useful.

I don’t use sub-cutaneous fluids unless the kitty is dehydrated.

I am a huge fan of beginning calcitriol early in the course of kidney disease.  This helps to blunt one of the hormones (parathyroid hormone) that is considered a renal toxin.

Since the kidneys in health produce a hormone (erythropoietin) that helps make red blood cells, cats with late-stage kidney disease are often anemic and benefit from injections of this hormone.  Cats with kidney disease also are at-risk for hypertension (high blood pressure), so need to have that checked periodically.

As you can see, one high value on one blood test isn’t enough to jump to the conclusion that the kitty has “kidney failure” (or even kidney disease).  I’d recommend going back to your veterinarian and reviewing the the labwork with them in person.

And, as an aside, I’ll say that one of the problems of outdoor cats is their negative impact on the local small mammal and songbird populations.  These small prey species serve an important role in the local ecosystem.  Cats who are highly predatory can cause a huge problem in these fragile populations.

With my best,

Michele Gaspar, DVM, DABVP (Feline)