Whitey is eating on her own, some dry and wet foods, Fancy Feast and Meow Mix. She goes more for that than the kidney diet food but the goal is to get her to eat on her own and then I will mix some kidney food with the regular food. The vet said that sometimes you just got to let them eat what they like and if they don’t like the kidney food too much, he recommends Fancy Feast as a backup. We do have her on fluids twice a week, we will administer them tomorrow and Thursday. She still sleeps a lot but gets around better, albeit still a little slow and we do hope she keeps on improving. I know kidney disease in kitties are tough but I had one cat live for 2 and a half years on what we are doing now.
Terrific news! Sounds like Whitey has some very devoted caretakers. :-)
Ditch the Meow Mix, it’s garbage.
We had a kitty in renal failure, kept her going for six years, and it never did take her. She eventually got lymphoma and passed on last year just after turning nineteen.
Can’t remember when or who but I got this from another Freeper on a doggie ping thread. He had a dog with kidney failure and, instead of the kidney food he went with .... are you ready.....?
Grain free.
I thought, “Can’t be. That stuff’s all high protein.” So I googled around a bit and, sure enough many pets do really well on it.
Her dry food was a challenge but I found two grain frees that were relatively low protein. One was Taste of the Wild Chicken Flavor and I can’t remember the other. Didn’t have the guts to take her off the renal food completely (Hill’s KD) so I blended it with the TOTW.
Canned was much easier, and I set a ceiling of 10% protein. There’s a lot out there for that, much more so now. Good one to start with is Wellness (NOT “Core” though) as they have several flavors and they all top out at 10%. Make sure it says “grain free” on the label, as one or two of their flavors are not.
Did that for two months, then took her in. Lo and behold sure enough her values improved. One of them even bounced back to “normal.”
The speculation as to why is that grains in a cat’s diet are inflammatory, and any inflammation is going to be tougher on the kidneys. Unlike us they’re carnivores in the wild, so their systems aren’t built for carbs anyway.
The vet also said that the super low protein is “controversial” among veterinarians. Not necessarily helpful as long as protein is within reason.
Also, get her a kitty fountain. She needs to be drinking as much as possible, and these really do help.