- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #21
You were very helpful! I do think like you do - for medication - probably "fasting" overnight while she's sleeping and then give her medication as soon as we get up and then the kitchen opens again until bedtime!I don't know if I'll be able to help much, as I'm not knowledgeable in the lab numbers, etc. and I don't know what any of these medications you mentioned are except the fluids. I can give a few suggestions in terms of food though. Have you tried mashing up the renal food? My kitty that passed away last year ate the same food and did the same thing. I started mashing up his food with a fork and he would then eat it instead of licking all the gravy off. For Fancy Feast, honestly, you could try any flavor. I think that food is like crack to cats. Our cats will eat almost any flavor. I know some of the gravy lovers and the grilled versions are "lower" in phosphous. There are several of the petite version that are "lower" as well (but not the pate in either the cans or the petites, they can be higher in phosphorus). Have you checked to see if you can find any of the Weurva low phosphorus foods? My cats have liked several of the flavors. If you can find them locally, you could try a few of those? Maybe try the pate as the other kind is more shreds and our cats tend to leave the shreds. I would recommend mashing the pate up with a fork too as it's sort of like "meat jello". There are also a lot of foods that are lower in phosphorus that you could try. Here is a good resource that may help. Weurva and Hills are really easy to find the phosphorous numbers on their website. Weurva, you just go to the food you want to look at, then "view product nutrition info" and then scroll down to "Detailed Nutrition Information" on the left of the screen. Hills is similar, but you just click nutrition information or something like that and you can see the phos amount in the foods. She may like the Weurva BFF OMG (oh my gravy) flavors if she likes gravy stuff. I can find Weurva at the smaller local pet shops in my area. If you just want her to eat and don't want to worry about the phosphorus right now, I'd honestly just grab any of the fancy feast options. I haven't had our cats turn any of those down except when they were sick due to unrelated reasons.
Also, for an empty stomach, the general rule when a cat needs an x-ray or ultrasound and needs to have an empty stomach is 12 hours without food, but I don't know how "empty" they need to be for medication. Probably not 12 hours. Can you call your vet and ask what "empty" would mean in terms of hours when she last ate? My guess would be overnight would probably be fine. I would have really hesitated to do 12 hours with no food for my boy. So, I probably would have just picked up the food before I went to bed and then given it to him first thing in the morning (6-8 hours).
So sorry I can't be more helpful, but I hope that helps. I'm sorry you're going through this. I would have done just about anything to keep my Bubby around for as long as possible and I did everything within my power to do so. Good luck to you and I hope her numbers improve!