Sick Cat is at the Vet - Possible Renal Failure? Advice/Reassurance required

jillyvn

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Hello everyone,

Some time yesterday my three year old cat became listless, not eating or drinking, not grooming and began vomiting. I noticed it at around 6:30 pm when I came home. He was clearly dehydrated, so I sat up with him giving him water by syringe. This am, he peed but only a little, and it seems to be an effort. He won't drink or eat. I got him into the vet this am, and drove down on my lunch to check in with him. Here's what the vet says:

It doesn't look good. Kitty has a low temperature (abnormally low). Clear breathe sounds on the right, but muffled on the left. Bladder felt empty. Due to financial constraints, I couldn't afford the full spectrum of tests but we agreed to:
rehydrate kitty through sub-q fluids
draw urine
run urine analysis

Vet suspects that this will be kidney failure due to the vomiting/licking lips, lethary/listlessness, straining to urinate this am, very dehydrated and mostly the low temp is not a good sign. What else could this be?

I guess I want to know if anyone else had these symptoms with their cat, and how things turned out, whether or not I should be preparing myself for euthanasia? When the vet says "it doesn't look good", does this mean things are really dark for my boy Jacob? Basically, I need some assurance that I've done the right thing, and what I might be facing here.

Jill
 

pat

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Jill, the low temperature would bother me almost more than hearing there are kidney issues, simply because I am more comfortable dealing with that.

Your best bet is to go to the stickied thread on crf - read the top messages where many links are given, and detailed discussion begins on what I and others have experienced in treating chronic renal failure (crf).

3 is very young, if this is ARF (acute renal failure) I believe there is a section on that at the site I so often recommend - www.felinecrf.org and that would change how I might manage things.

If it is not a case of your kitty is so ill there is no point, I'd truly try to afford the kidney function labs to see exactly what the numbers are, it may help you know what direction to go in.
 
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jillyvn

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Thank you for replying to my message. When you say kidney function labs - is that the bloodwork?

Here is what I learned at the Vet after work.

The urinalysis revealed white blood cells and some casts in the urine. The vet explained that the white blood cells were a clear sign of infection, but couldn't be specific about the casts - she said that they could be a result of the infection, or could indicate renal issues. After a lengthy discussion, we decided to treat the cat using the following:

Sub-Q fluids (120 cc 2x per day)
Syringe feed diluted wet catfood, 20 cc at a time, as much as the cat can take without stress (to a limit, of course)
Syringe feed water
Antibiotics - broad spectrum Amoxicillin and something else I can't remember, in a suspended mixture - it has to be kept in the fridge.

I'm going to monitor Jacob to see if he improves, but this has me thinking maybe a urine tract infection? White blood cells in the urine seems to point to this... perhaps I didn't notice it in time and it had kidney involvment - I know this can happen in human untreated UTIs. However, the vet could not be specific about the type of infection without doing a full blood panel.

The next step is to wait and see - keep up fluids, try to get food down, watch the litterbox and give the antibiotics. If he doesn't get better, I guess we go the blood culture route.

My vet was just amazing through this - I just moved to the city and she's never seen me before, but she bent over backwards for me. I'm reading the CRF material now to see what I can learn. Jacob is certainly not well right now, but he looks a bit perkier, and he fought me when I tried to feed him, whereas he was utterly listless last night. I'm hoping that is a good sign.

I appreciate this forum and the chance to talk out what I've been dealing with today - thanks again for your help!
 

pat

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Hi, yes, I meant checking BUN, Creatinine levels, phosphorous levels, potassium, and calcium as all these may be off with kidney failure - specifically, the BUN & Creatinine(blood urea nitrogen, and the creatinine levels if above normal, indicate kidney issues).

btw...a prescription canned food - Hills A/D is good for short term use, and has a soft pudding like consistency - easy to syringe feed


I'm glad you've a good vet to work with and that your fellow is feeling perkier. I hope to hear more good reports
 

pookie-poo

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Originally Posted by Pat & Alix

Hi, yes, I meant checking BUN, Creatinine levels, phosphorous levels, potassium, and calcium as all these may be off with kidney failure - specifically, the BUN & Creatinine(blood urea nitrogen, and the creatinine levels if above normal, indicate kidney issues).

btw...a prescription canned food - Hills A/D is good for short term use, and has a soft pudding like consistency - easy to syringe feed


I'm glad you've a good vet to work with and that your fellow is feeling perkier. I hope to hear more good reports
I have to add this....Hills a/d is horribly high in phosphorus. High phosphorus content is something that is contraindicated with CRF. If you decide to go the Hills a/d route, you should only do it short term. If you use it longer than, say, a week, I would definitely go with blood work to find out serum phosphorus levels AND add phosphorus binders to it for syringe feeding. That being said, my CRF Angel Spooky ate exclusively Hills a/d for the entire last three years of her life. She simply refused anything else (and believe me, I tried!!!) I just kept it liberally laced with phosphorus binders.

Good luck to you and your sweet Jacob! It sounds like you have a good plan in place. I hope he continues to feel better for you.
 
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jillyvn

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Things do not seem to be getting much better. He had a good night last night, slept fairly the way through and didn't seem in much pain. In the AM, I gave him sub q fluids and fluid by mouth, plus his medicine and went to work. Then, I came home at 5 to find that he had puked twice behind the couch. I rehydrated, gave him meds, sub q fluids and fluid by mouth. I then put him on the heating pad to sleep for a bit. Three hours later, he puked again. So, back out to the living room for rehydration - another 30 cc' sub q, a bit by mouth. After about 45 minutes, I gave him some very diluted wet cat food the vet gave me. He did not tolerate that well. About 15 minutes after that, he puked again, but not as much. It seems like he is upchucking any fluids I can get into him and he is going downhill.

The vet mentioned the medicine might make him puke - is there anything I can do to counteract this? He's had antibiotics for 24 hours now. Last night he tolerated two doses (one at the vet, and one late in the evening) with no puking, but today suddenly we are back to the puking? I don't understand!

I will contact the vet first thing tomorrow, but in the meantime - does anyone know how long before I should start seeing some improvement from the antibiotics, if this is in fact an infection?
 

hissy

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I would ask the vet to run a tox screen. Does he get better after you give fluids? Does the pocket stay around a long time or does it go down fairly quickly? Is he an inside cat, inside/outside cat is he vaccinated? Have you wormed him recently with wormer from the vet? have you bathed him with a pet shampoo or a flea treatment you buy at the grocery store?

Those are just some of the questions going through my head-because he really isn't at the right age for CRF unless he has been exposed to contaminated pet food. On the website Howl911 they keep a daily record of all the pet food still being recalled.

Good luck with your kitty, if he is vomiting talk to your vet about giving him a coating agent to help soothe his stomach. My vet gives me barium to give vomiting kitties.
 
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