Just adopted senior cat with elevated kidney levels

[daryl the cat]

nansiludie - Currently k/d kibble, Iams wet, Royal Canin wet.  She doesn't like any of the wet ones I've tried.  I haven't talked to a vet yet who promotes the high protein food idea.   I'm going to talk to my vet tomorrow about the eating issues and bring this up.  I'm sure she'll agree that if I can find a good quality food Mittens likes, that is certainly preferable to her not eating the kidney foods.   Her phosphorous dropped from 5.3 in early April to 4.1 this past Thursday, so that part is good news.   

 

[PushPurrCatPaws]

... 

I wish these kidney foods offered trial sizes.  At the vet's I had to buy an entire case of the Royal Canin wet food.  They said that's the only way it's sold, but if she wouldn't eat it I could return it for my money back.  I asked them what they did with the other 23 unused cans since now the case was broken and couldn't be resold.  They send it back to the company and they throw it away!  How silly and wasteful.  I don't get the logic in that at all.  If they can't be resold, why not let the vets give away the unused cans as a trial size?

I have had vets give trial cans of food, so I think you ask a good question ("If they can't be resold, why not let the vets give away the unused cans as a trial size?").

In any case, IF you can afford it, what I have often done with extra cans of food that didn't quite work out for my own cat was to donate the extra cans to a no-kill shelter.

 

[nansiludie]

Here is a link to a site I found. Might want to read it, hoping for good progress for Mittens. I have a cat named Mittens, she's a tuxedo and has dainty white mittens. http://feline-nutrition.org/health/diet-kidney-disease-and-the-urinary-tract

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

 
Mrsgreenjeans, I will get some tomorrow!  The Temptations are pretty brittle to whittle on.  Is there ever a day when your cat is actually hungry and eats with no prompting?  Mittens won't just walk up to her bowl and eat.  I have to always prompt her by handing it to her.  I've had success with baked chicken breast mixed into her renal wet food.  I pour a little hot water over it to warm it up.  She licks up the broth mostly but I can hand her pieces and she'll eat it.  She's not wild about the k/d kibble either. 

I wish these kidney foods offered trial sizes.  At the vet's I had to buy an entire case of the Royal Canin wet food.  They said that's the only way it's sold, but if she wouldn't eat it I could return it for my money back.  I asked them what they did with the other 23 unused cans since now the case was broken and couldn't be resold.  They send it back to the company and they throw it away!  How silly and wasteful.  I don't get the logic in that at all.  If they can't be resold, why not let the vets give away the unused cans as a trial size?

That ARE some days that my little Callie eats with no problem.  They are few, but she has them.  BUT, I don't feed her k/d.  I use that list from felinecrf.org and try to pick out foods high in protein and low in phos.  Sometimes she likes them and sometimes she doesn't.  And I switch them around all the time...for every meal.  (sorry if I am repeating myself...there are several threads going right now for kidney cats, and I can't remember what I've said on which one

)  I offer her very small servings at a time  around .5 ounces per serving, but 2 - 3 different servings per meal, and those may all be different foods.  I also warm up the food if it's not freshly opened, and then I add just about a teaspoon of water to surround the food before I give it to her.  That seems to make it easier for her to lick it up.  I used to make it really soupy, but she doesn't seem to like it that way anymore.  My girl will ONLY eat pates.  Although she will eat Temptations during the night, for some reason she acts like she cannot chew soft food.  Guess she just doesn't like to, because if she encounters something to chew on while she's licking away, she'll stop eating

.  Anyhoo, I feed her 5 MEALS a day.  All together, on a good day she may eat a total of 3.25 ounces.  This is because she rarely will completely finish any of her servings.  But I can tell she's still hungry because she doesn't disappear.  That's why I will then bring out the next serving, etc.  ALSO, I use toppers.  Right now she's crazy for FortiFlora.  I don't start with it, but if she's eating pretty well and then walks away, but doesn't go far, I bring out the packet of FortiFlora (ever present in my pocket), and she walks right back over and will at least eat a little more.

Right now she's eating Wellness Beef and Chicken, Chicken, Beef and Salmon, Wellness Core Beef, Venison and Lamb, and Sheba Beef.  She's obviously my BEEF eater

.  

 
nansiludie - Currently k/d kibble, Iams wet, Royal Canin wet.  She doesn't like any of the wet ones I've tried.  I haven't talked to a vet yet who promotes the high protein food idea.   I'm going to talk to my vet tomorrow about the eating issues and bring this up.  I'm sure she'll agree that if I can find a good quality food Mittens likes, that is certainly preferable to her not eating the kidney foods.   Her phosphorous dropped from 5.3 in early April to 4.1 this past Thursday, so that part is good news.   

Depending on which Iams you are feeding, some of them are very good in the phos department. 

MY Vet advocates good high quality protein and low phos.  She said she went to a conference and this was definitely the new way of thinking.  I believe that was at least a year ago.   But no matter, above all, our Vet thinks its better for any cat to eat ANYTHING than no eat.  There are other things that can be done if the only thing they will eat is absolutely terrible for their kidney, ie extremely high in phosphorus, like using phos binders. 

Now as to her nausea.  Is she actually vomiting, or just throwing up kind of a frothy type stuff?  If it's just the frothy stuff, that's excess stomach acid, and the pepcid should cover it.  If she's actually vomiting bile or not eating and licking her lips when she smells food, then the Cerenia should help.  I've never had a kidney cat need Cerenia, because they've always been helped by the pepcid and sub-q fluids

 

[coneja]

Sorry to hear she's not eating a lot. I'm glad the sub-q fluids are going well though.

I'm sure you've seen Tanya's food lists ordered by phosphorous? There may be something on there that you could bring the phos values to the vet and ask if a binder would bring them down to more comparable levels? I'd link the page here but can't seem to get on her website for the last couple days; I keep getting error messages... Dr. Pierson over on CatInfo.org has one too, and it's ordered by mg Phos/ 100 kcals instead of dry matter, but that's included as well. At 37 pages, it might be easier to look up foods you have questions about, rather than sort through the entire thing: http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf (And I believe I can link it here? If I'm in error of site rules someone please let me know.)

I commend you for  doing such a great thing for her when so many people would have just turned away and not even tried. Best wishes, and crossing my fingers for your vet visit. Hopefully they can suggest some more things to try...

 

[coneja]

Where you able to find her a food she liked?