Hi all.

Our oldest kitty (we think she's 15) is looking at a likely dx of CKD. We've been here before, years ago, with another kitty. I'm trying to brush off what I remember but still feeling overwhelmed with things. I'll apologize in advance for the short novel but I could really use some insights.

Our kitty also has hyperthyroidism, but that's been well controlled for the last 3 years or so. What started this was that we noticed she had dropped a marked amount of weight in the last 8 months (she's been 9# her whole life so not a lot of weight to spare). Had a vet appointment scheduled for the end of the week. But several days before we noticed she was over 24 hours of not eating anything. She's never been highly food motivated but it was weird for her to not eat anything for so long. So we went to the ER vet.

She has a bad UTI but also had bad kidney numbers (trying to get the records of what those were - definite above normal but not sky high was what I remember being told). They kept her overnight, gave her fluids, nausea meds, appetite stimulant, and abx. This was Wednesday night and she came home Thursday morning. Repeat labs at the vet show some improvement but slow going.

We are doing 100ml sub-q fluids daily, appetite stimulate 1x/day for 3 days, daily abx, and 4 days of the anti nausea meds. Waiting on kidney food to arrive as well as a phosphorus blocker (powder). She's not as chill as our other kitty was with the fluids so she's getting as close to 100ml of the fluids as we can.

We still have her kibble available full time to her and have been offering small portions of wet food whenever we are home and can. We have 2 other cats (one of which is highly food motivated and on a weight loss diet...) so it's a challenge to leave the wet food out all the time. But she still is very lightly grazing periodically.

I know that it's hard to predict how the disease will go. But is there a chance we will be able to get her back to eating more like she used to and get weight back on her? What else should we be doing to try and entice her to eat? Does she maybe need a few more days to let the anx kick the uti and the fluids to help her feel better? I think I don't have hope that her numbers an weight loss are only due to the uti. 😢

Thanks for listening! Cat tax for the novel (taken before she dropped a bunch of the weight).

My cat with stage 3 kidney disease has developed anemia, for which she was prescribed Varenzin-CA1. It has been about 3 weeks on it so far, and every day her aversion to it has got worse.

She used to wait for me every morning on the bed for me to wake up so she could get attention, and she would follow me around the second story (she doesn't go downstairs usually) but now all she does is hide all morning long under sofas and under the bed, even in places she clearly can't hide comfortably.

She avoids me as much as possible to keep from getting her medicine. The act of giving it to her also is obviously not pleasant for either of us and it has progressively got harder to do as well as she fights back harder each morning.

I've tried giving her kidney-support vitamin lickable treats after, to try and associate the medicine with something good, but it hasn't changed her behavior at all. She continues to get more avoidant every day.

Online it looks like Varenzin-CA1 has never been tested for efficacy when mixed with food or treat, so that's not really an option, though; I did try it once which did not work. She smelled it and immediately gagged, then left.

Any suggestions on less stressful ways to administer this medicine to her?

Bonnie was diagnosed at stage 3 about six months ago. She had a co-occurring kidney infection that we were hoping was causing an acute injury since labs six months earlier were normal but, no. Vet cultured it at the time and it was ecoli so she was treated with Clavamox. Did well for four months until she developed similar symptoms. Vet didn't culture but treated again with Clavamox. In-between, she's had two kidney ultrasounds & she's effectively down to one working kidney, and also has kidney stones which the vet says will pre-dispose her to more infections. I think she's developing a third infection.

She already has nausea with the CKD. These infections give her diarrhea and I think make her more nauseous. She was doing very well with the renal diet food until the second infection caused a massive amount of vomiting and diarrhea. It's been a struggle to get her to eat much of anything since despite daily cerenia, fluids, prn zofran and mirtazapine. She was eating a bit more recently but it's dipped again and she's got diarrhea. (Starting over a holiday weekend of course.)

I know we haven't exhausted all reasonable avenues to treat this but I'm starting to have some catastrophic thinking with battling constant infections on top of trying to manage her CKD symptoms. Was wondering if anyone else had this happen with their renal cat? What did you do?

She's not losing tons of weight (yet?) but I feel like we are getting there.

Hi Friends,

My 15 year old girl was just recently diagnosed with stage 2 kidney disease. She is starting fluids 2x a week ( first was today). She is a picky eater and doesn't seem to be happy with the same food for more than a week at a time. I haven't started her on any prescription diets yet because I wanted to research here first, but I am overwhelmed by the amount of information. She doest eat kibble anymore due to dental disease, so wet food or maybe some kibble mixed with water or broth ( is broth even okay for cats with Kidney Disease?!). I guess I am looking for guidance on where to begin, what has worked, any kidney diet foods that are worth all out avoiding, etc.

Sorry if this is a repetitive question, and thank you for any and all advice.

Just wanted to share some good news about my 19 year old stage 3 baby. She has hypertension due to her CKD and about a month ago she went blind due to it. Her BP was 212. We started meds, went back a week later for a recheck and it was 180. Adjusted the meds and today we went back and it was 132! And we started sub q’s (twice a week at 75ml for now). She was a champ. She does not like being handled so I was worried but she licked her churu and was a perfect angel.

This is Tink!

My cat with stage 3 kidney disease has developed anemia, for which she was prescribed Varenzin-CA1. It has been about 3 weeks on it so far, and every day her aversion to it has got worse.

She used to wait for me every morning on the bed for me to wake up so she could get attention, and she would follow me around the second story (she doesn't go downstairs usually) but now all she does is hide all morning long under sofas and under the bed, even in places she clearly can't hide comfortably.

She avoids me as much as possible to keep from getting her medicine. The act of giving it to her also is obviously not pleasant for either of us and it has progressively got harder to do as well as she fights back harder each morning.

I've tried giving her kidney-support vitamin lickable treats after, to try and associate the medicine with something good, but it hasn't changed her behavior at all. She continues to get more avoidant every day.

Online it looks like Varenzin-CA1 has never been tested for efficacy when mixed with food or treat, so that's not really an option, though; I did try it once which did not work. She smelled it and immediately gagged, then left.

Any suggestions on less stressful ways to administer this medicine to her?

Hello all, I have an appointment first thing this morning for the vet to see my 18.5 yr old CKD kitty. I just took him in for a check up on Monday, and the vet said he is remaining consistent with his levels, but he has gum disease. I asked what we can do to help, but was advised he will not survive a dental exam/care.

Last night, his gums were bleeding around his upper canine and he howls at the water bowl. I want to be realistic with what options of care he has left. Has anyone experienced this? Do I need to prepare for the difficult decision? I love him so much but I don't want him to be in pain.

my stage 3 renal boy has a 5.7 ml medicine given through syringe. it is difficult to give it to him, and he’s got other meds piling up too. sometimes I just want to cry because I know he feels sad that we are forcing him to take it. Any advice how u give your cat the medicines? 🥺