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- May 31, 2022
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Hi,
I'm going to apologize in advance if this is a long winded post. I did try to look this up via the search, but didn't quite find the answer I was looking for. Here's the situation: We took our sweet old lady (13 or 14), Molly, in for her monthly Solensia injection (her 3rd one) on Saturday. They also ran her T4 and renal values. She had the "precursor" for CKD and so they told me to keep an eye on it and try to feed her renal foods. We hadn't switched her to renal food because I was trying to get her to eat more wet food and less dry in hopes that this would help.
She was my parents' cat and when they had her they only fed her dry food. When she came to live with us about 7 years ago, we did give her wet as an option and she would eat some, but she does prefer the dry. I have gradually reduced her dry food over a very long time and now I'm giving her about half to one table spoon of Royal Canin Renal dry food per day and she is eating non-renal wet food for the rest. Anyway, at the vet her values tested as BUN 43, CRE 1.8 PHOS 5. Her values are slightly higher than her last visit from a couple months ago, which were BUN 39, CRE 1.6, PHOS 5.3. The vet said we really need to focus on switching her over completely to renal food. So, I am working towards that. I do have a handful of the Weruva Wx Phos Focus on hand and she sort of eats them, but not so much that I would bank on her eating them consistently.
We had a past (utterly loved to bits) kitty on Royal Canin renal wet food for about 6 or 7 years and he never complained and just ate what we gave him. I did not realize how lucky we were with this. Molly will eat the Royal Canin renal food when it is offered to her. Now I'm kicking myself for donating like 8 cases of this stuff when our last CKD cat passed last year. I was trying to "use up what we had" of the lower phosphorous options because I cannot tell you how much money I have wasted over the last 2 years with of our other cat that was recently diagnosed with possible IBD (and also beginning CKD). Anyway, that is besides the point. Now it is clear that I should just try to switch her over completely to renal food. So, that's what I'm going to work towards. I know she will eat the Royal Canin Renal T and D. So, I'm going to order one case of each.
With our last CKD cat, our vet never once suggested any supplements or anything extra that we should have been giving him. We've had a lot of loss over the last 3 years (we lost 3 cats in 18 months) and I've spent so many, many, many hours researching food and individual needs for each of these cats, plus the two eldery that we still have, that I am just exhausted and feel like I'm going down an endless maze of rabbit holes, but it feels like a horror choose your own adventure and none of the outcomes are good. I get so much information that it's just overwhelming to me and I get too overwhelmed and filled with anxiety to even process most of it. Before you suggest it, I have been to Tayna's page many times over the past few years and I do refer to her website still.
So, While I have learned a lot with our last CKD cat, I still feel like I barely know anything and I just feel like a deer caught in the headlights most of the time. My apologies for this long rambling post. My main question right now is: Should I be adding the Renal K supplement to her food? Or is this some sort of specialty thing I need to wait for? I know that I did the best I could with what we had with our last CKD cat, but I still can't help but feel like I could have done more for him if I had known more. I can ask our vet about this as well, but it didn't occur to me when we were there on Saturday to ask her this. Are there any other supplements that I should consider adding to Molly's food? She already takes 2.5mg of Methamezole twice a day for a fairly recent diagnosis of hyperthyroid, 1 capsule of Gabapentin twice a day for arthritis (in addition to the Solensia injection), Proviable-DC Probiotic, plus I am currently and very slowly weening her off of Prozac. I have tried adding in omega oils or salmon oil but she isn't a fan. Thank you in advance for your help with advice and in unscrambling my brain.
I'm going to apologize in advance if this is a long winded post. I did try to look this up via the search, but didn't quite find the answer I was looking for. Here's the situation: We took our sweet old lady (13 or 14), Molly, in for her monthly Solensia injection (her 3rd one) on Saturday. They also ran her T4 and renal values. She had the "precursor" for CKD and so they told me to keep an eye on it and try to feed her renal foods. We hadn't switched her to renal food because I was trying to get her to eat more wet food and less dry in hopes that this would help.
She was my parents' cat and when they had her they only fed her dry food. When she came to live with us about 7 years ago, we did give her wet as an option and she would eat some, but she does prefer the dry. I have gradually reduced her dry food over a very long time and now I'm giving her about half to one table spoon of Royal Canin Renal dry food per day and she is eating non-renal wet food for the rest. Anyway, at the vet her values tested as BUN 43, CRE 1.8 PHOS 5. Her values are slightly higher than her last visit from a couple months ago, which were BUN 39, CRE 1.6, PHOS 5.3. The vet said we really need to focus on switching her over completely to renal food. So, I am working towards that. I do have a handful of the Weruva Wx Phos Focus on hand and she sort of eats them, but not so much that I would bank on her eating them consistently.
We had a past (utterly loved to bits) kitty on Royal Canin renal wet food for about 6 or 7 years and he never complained and just ate what we gave him. I did not realize how lucky we were with this. Molly will eat the Royal Canin renal food when it is offered to her. Now I'm kicking myself for donating like 8 cases of this stuff when our last CKD cat passed last year. I was trying to "use up what we had" of the lower phosphorous options because I cannot tell you how much money I have wasted over the last 2 years with of our other cat that was recently diagnosed with possible IBD (and also beginning CKD). Anyway, that is besides the point. Now it is clear that I should just try to switch her over completely to renal food. So, that's what I'm going to work towards. I know she will eat the Royal Canin Renal T and D. So, I'm going to order one case of each.
With our last CKD cat, our vet never once suggested any supplements or anything extra that we should have been giving him. We've had a lot of loss over the last 3 years (we lost 3 cats in 18 months) and I've spent so many, many, many hours researching food and individual needs for each of these cats, plus the two eldery that we still have, that I am just exhausted and feel like I'm going down an endless maze of rabbit holes, but it feels like a horror choose your own adventure and none of the outcomes are good. I get so much information that it's just overwhelming to me and I get too overwhelmed and filled with anxiety to even process most of it. Before you suggest it, I have been to Tayna's page many times over the past few years and I do refer to her website still.
So, While I have learned a lot with our last CKD cat, I still feel like I barely know anything and I just feel like a deer caught in the headlights most of the time. My apologies for this long rambling post. My main question right now is: Should I be adding the Renal K supplement to her food? Or is this some sort of specialty thing I need to wait for? I know that I did the best I could with what we had with our last CKD cat, but I still can't help but feel like I could have done more for him if I had known more. I can ask our vet about this as well, but it didn't occur to me when we were there on Saturday to ask her this. Are there any other supplements that I should consider adding to Molly's food? She already takes 2.5mg of Methamezole twice a day for a fairly recent diagnosis of hyperthyroid, 1 capsule of Gabapentin twice a day for arthritis (in addition to the Solensia injection), Proviable-DC Probiotic, plus I am currently and very slowly weening her off of Prozac. I have tried adding in omega oils or salmon oil but she isn't a fan. Thank you in advance for your help with advice and in unscrambling my brain.