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My cat has stage 3 CKD which I've been mostly keeping under control with her diet and sub-Q fluids at home. She gets frequent UTIs (I've posted about them here before) and is currently dealing with another, and she's also being treated for hyperthyroidism (numbers are good). This past spring we ran a culture on her urine which turned up a type of bacteria (forget the name) which the vet told me is quite common and usually doesn't cause issues, so since then we haven't been treating her with antibiotics whereas in the past we always did. After this recent run of blood/urine work they discovered her creatinine is above 7 and her urine has a very high level of bacteria. We've dealt with dangerously high numbers before. Last fall she became very ill, likely due to an unchecked UTI which made it to her kidneys. With meds, fluids, and forced feeding I was able to get her creatinine back into the 3 range. Those high numbers would suggest kidney failure but she doesn't show any other physical signs of it. No bad breath, no excess weight loss (weight has been stable at 5.8 for months), solid thirst and appetite, active and playful, jumps up on the windowsill with ease.
The current problem I'm having though is her obsession with water. She has a nasty habit (encouraging bad behavior on my part) where she will only drink if I swish her water or my finger is in her dish, or I have to run the bathroom faucet, and she won't touch her fountain anymore. Now she's waking me up several times in the night for me to swish her water. She'll take 5 laps from the dish and run away. It's affecting my sleep and overall daily productivity because I'm a zombie. My hope is that this new water obsession has more to due with her UTI than her kidneys, because since last Fall she's been getting 50-100~ml of fluids at home almost every day. She's only just gotten her 4th dose of her oral antibiotic so I've got a few more days before I might notice any positive changes.
Has anybody dealt with this before and have any suggestions for me on what to do? If this continues my next step might just have to be locking her out of my bedroom and wearing earplugs as I sleep, but that might only make her scratch at my door and meow louder. Any suggestions would be great!
The current problem I'm having though is her obsession with water. She has a nasty habit (encouraging bad behavior on my part) where she will only drink if I swish her water or my finger is in her dish, or I have to run the bathroom faucet, and she won't touch her fountain anymore. Now she's waking me up several times in the night for me to swish her water. She'll take 5 laps from the dish and run away. It's affecting my sleep and overall daily productivity because I'm a zombie. My hope is that this new water obsession has more to due with her UTI than her kidneys, because since last Fall she's been getting 50-100~ml of fluids at home almost every day. She's only just gotten her 4th dose of her oral antibiotic so I've got a few more days before I might notice any positive changes.
Has anybody dealt with this before and have any suggestions for me on what to do? If this continues my next step might just have to be locking her out of my bedroom and wearing earplugs as I sleep, but that might only make her scratch at my door and meow louder. Any suggestions would be great!
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