- Joined
- Apr 17, 2018
- Messages
- 1
- Purraise
- 0
Hi everyone! Not sure if I am posting this in the right spot. Please bear with me.
We were a three cat household until my oldest cat (Emma) passed away in September. I thought I was content with two (Radar and Tiger) until I saw a FB post about an older cat with stage 2 chronic kidney disease who'd been in the shelter for 200+ days. I'd been kind of thinking about getting an older/special/medical needs cat for a few weeks, actually. I'm a RN by trade and also have experience managing end-of-life issues with Emma and feline diabetes with Radar. (He's off his insulin these days and diet-controlled!)
I did some research on caring with cats with CKD and thought I could give this a shot. So now I have a third cat again - Eleanor. She's ten with "stable" stage-2 chronic kidney disease and fairly severe, imho, arthritis probably from being declawed by her previous owners. The ladies at the shelter said she was a decent eater with her kidney diet - preferred the wet food but would also eat the dry kibble.
We are on day four at home. She won't touch the kidney diet, of course. I'm mixing the wet kidney with some Fancy Feast (not ideal - fairly high phos content) and bonito flakes and having luck finger-feeding her. But I'd be lying if I said trying to get her to eat is causing me a LOT of stress right now.
I know that ideally CKD cats do best when allowed to free-feed. I can't free-feed everyone because Radar will just eat everything. I'd hoped to slide by with offering new kitty a few small meals a day and/or gating her in our cat room or office either during the day while we are at work or maybe in our bedroom at night while we sleep to let her free-feed. But I'm starting to worry that might not be enough to sustain her, and also worrying that finger-feeding her is going to set a precedent that will be hard to break. I don't mind it right now but I can't see myself doing this for years if that's the time she has left.
Obviously we haven't made pet-pet introductions yet although everyone has seen each other in passing and done the requisite hissing. We also have a geriatric puggle that leaves our cats alone for the most part but new kitty caught a glimpse of the puggle and hid in our closet for like two hours afterwards. So now I'm also worried that once she's allowed to free roam in our house, just the presence of the dog will cause her to hide all the time.
Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this? Or recommendations for getting her to eat more? I am starting to wonder if we really aren't the right fit for this cat. I know it's still extremely early but I am good at catastrophizing things in my head. Ideally she should probably be in a single-cat house where she can roam and eat all day, with someone who is there a lot to encourage her. My husband and I work full time but are around pretty much all the time after work and on weekends -- not exactly social butterflies. But still.
We were a three cat household until my oldest cat (Emma) passed away in September. I thought I was content with two (Radar and Tiger) until I saw a FB post about an older cat with stage 2 chronic kidney disease who'd been in the shelter for 200+ days. I'd been kind of thinking about getting an older/special/medical needs cat for a few weeks, actually. I'm a RN by trade and also have experience managing end-of-life issues with Emma and feline diabetes with Radar. (He's off his insulin these days and diet-controlled!)
I did some research on caring with cats with CKD and thought I could give this a shot. So now I have a third cat again - Eleanor. She's ten with "stable" stage-2 chronic kidney disease and fairly severe, imho, arthritis probably from being declawed by her previous owners. The ladies at the shelter said she was a decent eater with her kidney diet - preferred the wet food but would also eat the dry kibble.
We are on day four at home. She won't touch the kidney diet, of course. I'm mixing the wet kidney with some Fancy Feast (not ideal - fairly high phos content) and bonito flakes and having luck finger-feeding her. But I'd be lying if I said trying to get her to eat is causing me a LOT of stress right now.
I know that ideally CKD cats do best when allowed to free-feed. I can't free-feed everyone because Radar will just eat everything. I'd hoped to slide by with offering new kitty a few small meals a day and/or gating her in our cat room or office either during the day while we are at work or maybe in our bedroom at night while we sleep to let her free-feed. But I'm starting to worry that might not be enough to sustain her, and also worrying that finger-feeding her is going to set a precedent that will be hard to break. I don't mind it right now but I can't see myself doing this for years if that's the time she has left.
Obviously we haven't made pet-pet introductions yet although everyone has seen each other in passing and done the requisite hissing. We also have a geriatric puggle that leaves our cats alone for the most part but new kitty caught a glimpse of the puggle and hid in our closet for like two hours afterwards. So now I'm also worried that once she's allowed to free roam in our house, just the presence of the dog will cause her to hide all the time.
Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this? Or recommendations for getting her to eat more? I am starting to wonder if we really aren't the right fit for this cat. I know it's still extremely early but I am good at catastrophizing things in my head. Ideally she should probably be in a single-cat house where she can roam and eat all day, with someone who is there a lot to encourage her. My husband and I work full time but are around pretty much all the time after work and on weekends -- not exactly social butterflies. But still.
