Renal cat food vs. regular one + phosphate reductor?

So my pussy had blood works done a few days ago and it turned out her creatinine and urea levels are elevated (2.0mg/dL, 107.4mg/dL respectively). The veterinarian recommended giving my cat the Ipakitine powder for a week and conducting the blood works again to see how she reacts and I'm curious as to what the best cat food for her now is. Namely, would it be better to give her the food marked as renal, such as Royal Canine Renal wet food or can I just stick with the regular cat food she's always been eating but adding the Ipakitine powder? I heard quite extreme opinions about the renal foods such as that they don't provide enough energy to a cat and aren't appropriate for a predator the cat is and should only be used if your cat doesn't want to eat anything else. Is that true? Can I settle for the regular food +Ipakitine combo or would Renal + Ipakitine be better?

First of all, I'm sorry your cat has been diagnosed with what I am guessing is kidney issues, although from what you posted as the creatinine and urea levels, I cannot tell.  I've never seen them listed as mg before .  I have a kidney cat, and in looking at the chart, I'm going to go with creatinine as simply 2.0 in U.S. measurements (because in international measurements they are  the triple digit ranges).  That would be Stage 2.  Honestly, I'm on my third kidney cat and we have NEVER kept tract of Urea. BUN and Creatinine are the two main items we look at whenever we do a blood workup.

Anyway, that''s not answering your question about food.  Basically with kidney cats, you want then to EAT.  So the key is to feed them what they like.  If they will EAT the kidney food, that's great.  Most cats don't like it, that's why it get a bad rap .  If your cat is a picky eater, she may not like it.  If not, she may LOVE it.  Also, if she's picky, she may not eat her regular food with the Epakitin powder in it.  Mine won't allow me to add ANY supplements of any kind in her food or she won't eat it, silly girl.  I keep telling her she's only hurting herself, but she won't listen   As to adding the Epakitin TOO kidney food, I'm guessing it would be ok, since it's a kidney supplement with phosphorus binder in it, and the idea of kidney food is to lower the phosphorus, but I would definitely check with your Vet on that. 

Here is a website on Feline kidney disease that is constantly being update on all things FCK.  I refer to it constantly.  I'm directing you to the section on food, but be sure to check out the entire site:  http://www.felinecrf.org/which_foods.htm

I was given a liquid phosphorus binder for Oliver and that made a huge difference, but as far as I can tell, its an uncommon thing to use. My veterinarian knew how awful he was to feed, so she gave me something I could put down him with a syringe. One less thing to worry about.

Thanks a lot for the great answers. The website you linked to, mrsgreenjeens, looks great and I'll surely learn a lot from there!

Thankfully my cat is not a picky eater. Sure, she had two or three occurrences when she didn't want to eat _anything_ for almost two days in the last month (that's why I took her to the vet in the first place) but other than that, she devours everything. Since getting on Ipakitine, she doesn't seem to be doing this fasting of hers (which she used to do because of high urea levels from what I read) and eats whatever is given to her.

Having said that, do you think I should still give her the renal food or if she wants to continue her usual diet, should I let her just do it? Renal food is also astronomically expensive but if that was a better option for her, of course I'd work something out to be able to afford it.

Greezee said:

 
Thanks a lot for the great answers. The website you linked to, mrsgreenjeens, looks great and I'll surely learn a lot from there!

Thankfully my cat is not a picky eater. Sure, she had two or three occurrences when she didn't want to eat _anything_ for almost two days in the last month (that's why I took her to the vet in the first place) but other than that, she devours everything. Since getting on Ipakitine, she doesn't seem to be doing this fasting of hers (which she used to do because of high urea levels from what I read) and eats whatever is given to her.

Having said that, do you think I should still give her the renal food or if she wants to continue her usual diet, should I let her just do it? Renal food is also astronomically expensive but if that was a better option for her, of course I'd work something out to be able to afford it.

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If expenses are an issue, then I'd probably wait and see what happens with just the Ipakitine added to her regular food.  If that helps, then just use that (although I don't think one week is enough time to see, personally).  BTW, since I did my last post on your thread, I learned that Urea and BUN are the same thing