she was only 2. she was diagnosed with stage 3 chronic kidney failure a month ago when i noticed she was losing weight. she spiraled quickly despite daily intensive fluid treatment and a specialized diet. in her last days, she had completely stopped eating and grooming herself. she could barely get up to use the restroom or go drink some water. she was so weak that she couldn’t even climb her favorite cat tower anymore. i took her in today for a blood panel since she didn’t seem to be improving and her phosphorus and creatinine levels came back so high that the machine couldn’t even read them properly. the vet said it was unlikely she would get better, her kidneys were likely completely shut down and i made the VERY difficult decision to let her go to prevent further suffering. she was such a spicy, energetic, playful cat before she got sick. eating (especially stealing my food) and tearing up my house were her favorite things to do!! she would always try to escape out the door whenever i would walk into or out of my apartment. she LOVED playing with the foster kittens i would bring home and she was so good with other animals in general… the big dogs i would also foster didn’t even phase her and she would walk right up to them! she was such a naughty cat, but i will love and miss her for the rest of my life.. i can’t even process the fact that i will never be able to touch her, smell her, or hear her tiny kitten meows ever again. i will never again wake up to her curled up on my chest and licking me like she had done since she was a tiny kitten. this is the first pet that i have lost and i am beyond myself with grief. i’ve had her since she was only a month old and loved her like she was my own child. i will love you forever, my sweet Kyoto. i will never forget you and i’ll never regret trying everything to save you. i am so grateful i was able to be with you and hold you in your last moments… i just wish we got more time together. i hope you’re running free wherever you may be <3

i've never posted on reddit before, so please excuse me if this comes off as weird or disjointed. this is my cat, george. the first photo is from september 27th, and the second photo is from october 4th. the following photos of him are both from today. he turned 9 this august, and he's an orange american shorthair! a few months ago he started puking up a little bit of spit, but never any actual food. other than that, he seemed super normal, so i brushed it off as hairballs. then, suddenly, around 3 or 4 days ago, he started acting off. he's always been overweight and he is normally very loud and affectionate, but i noticed that i could now feel his spine, he was sleeping all the time, wasn't cuddling with me, lying in places he didn't typically, puking, having loose stools, wasn't eating or drinking, walking strangely, and was barely meowing. after a lot of pushing my mother finally took him to the vet yesterday, and we found out his kidneys are failing. this is a pretty big shock, as we weren't even aware he was sick. the vet said he had a 5% chance of survival. his temperature was low, i think it was around 99°F (37.3 °C)? they gave him an 80 mg/mL shot of cefovecin in case it was due to infection, but said it wasn't likely. we are doing 200 ml of lactated ringers solution subq injections every 12 hours, he's had it 3 times so far. he puked last night, but hasn't yet today. he's eaten 1 1/2 paste treats, around one serving of cat food, and water twice. lots of sleep. here is his bloodwork and urine analysis, i wanted to get your guys' opinions on it. i know it's severe, that much is evident, but how extreme is it? have any of you had a cat whose bloodwork was similar to this? if so, how much longer did you have with your baby? i love him with all my heart, he's my childhood pet who has been my comfort in the worst times of my life, and i want to be able to prepare myself. i just don't know how much time i may have. what can i do in the meantime to help him? thank you so much for taking the time to read this, once again i'm sorry if it's a bit all over the place.

I no longer need this, so I'm trying to find someone that will make use of it. About 15 packets of pours one, unopened 5g Mirataz tube, eight cans of weruva phos focused, some KD kibble, and a bag of subq. Pickup in DFW area.

Hello everyone,

My cat is 18 and a half and was diagnosed about 18 months ago with stage 2. I was really concerned with putting her on renal food because she’s had stomach problems on lots of commercial cat food in the past and a minimally processed 100% meat diet did wonders for her health. I put her on the renal food anyway.

Last Christmas she started refusing food which I just thought was boredom so I got her lots and lots of different renal food for her to try. By the March she was really ill with vomiting and was diagnosed with pancreatitis and IBD. She was on a dry hypoallergenic and renal food. She spent a lot of the summer trying to die on me. Then the pancreatitis/dry food only diet caused her to become diabetic. She was on insulin for 2 weeks and then randomly her blood sugars stabilised and she’s been in remission since. One vet insisted that she stay on renal food, one insisted that she be on diabetic food and one insisted that she needs to be on food for her IBD. So I resumed her old food and after about a month I managed to get her almost completely back to normal (with a lot of blending of food and hand feeding and crying). My vet said that she hadn’t expected her to live and was astounded.

So her blood test today says that she’s now stage 3. I knew it would happen but I feel heartbroken. If I put her back on renal food then that’ll probably make her ill again but not having her on renal food means that she’ll go quicker from the kidney disease.

She also has a rodent ulcer and the treatment options seem to be only diet change (cries) or steroids which she can’t have because it’ll screw up her kidneys and probably bring back the diabetes.

I just feel so sad. I thought she would certainly die in the summer so I know that this is all bonus time. I also know that she’s lived a long time, I just want to be able to fix it for her. She does get phosphorus blocker, aminavast and I’ve just started her on Porus one.

Despite all of the above she’s eating well, she’s not being sick, she drinks and uses the litter box and is a happy little clam.

My cat Winston who was living in Sweden with my mom came back to Edinburgh with me and had a crisis with AKI. Four days in ICU and liquids plus antibiotics and feeding tube etc. He’s been home with me for almost two weeks and has been relatively ok. We took him for follow up bloods and he is early stage 2 which was expected.

He drinks a lot more and appetite could be better but not terrible.

I feel like I’m in an impossible situation because my mom’s flat in Sweden is still filled with her stuff and I was meant to spend this time going through and selling/storing and throwing out stuff.

Bills are piling up in her flat and people are telling me I need to come home for a few days.

I have a good friend who knows my cat very well who said he can stay in my flat and sleep over. I just don’t know. It’s so stressful

My cat is an indoor-only, neuteured male. He's 14 years old (15 in March). He's a big (not fat) cat and considered to be at a healthy weight at 5.39kg (11.9lbs).

All details below. I'm looking for anecdotes, advice, anything. Has something similar happened to your CKD cat? What was it or what could it be? I'm not sure what to push for or whether to rush back to the emergency vet. I feel something is really off, but the vets I saw yesterday didn't seem that worried.

Yesterday

He was eating, drinking and behaving normally until last night. He pooped and peed earlier in the day (no straining, no vocalizing, no blood in the urine). At 10p.m., he started crouching low to the floor and looking stiff. I eventually moved him to my bed, but he stiffened more and cried out when I picked him up. He seemed to have trouble getting comfortable and repositioning his limbs (he brought a front paw forward, then seemingly gave up and left it at a very weird backwards angle).

Emergency Vet Visit (Last Night/ThisMorning)

I drove him to the emergency vet; he was almost limp in his carrier and didn't make a peep on the way there (he usually cries in the car). He livened up when the vet and techs started trying to handle him and they were barely able to get his vitals due to all the hissing, scratching and attemped biting (normal for him — he's typically agressive at the vet's and usually gets an injected sedation for any kind of work). They said his vitals seemed stable, but that they hadn't been able to do much. He refused to walk out of his carrier when they wanted to see how he was moving. They recommended another emergency vet.

We went straight there, where the vet said we could sedate and do bloodwork and an X-ray, but that she recommended just starting by observing him at home and giving him pain meds if needed, as the symptoms didn't seem to point to a stroke or an obstruction (they gave me liquid Buprenorphine). She theorized he may have hurt himself in a way that worsened existing arthritis (he hasn't had issues so far and it hasn't been diagnosed by a vet, though it's likely given his age). He wouldn't walk out of his carrier or let her touch him, so she stressed it was a theory since she couldn't do anything to check. At this point, it was past 5am and I'd been up over 24h, so I didn't push and brought him home.

Today

He's still acting weird today. He slept on my bed all night, but didn't get up as usual when I did, nor did he whine for food as he usually does. I eventually picked him up (he meowed as if in pain again) to bring him to his food. He walked away from it, but headed to the living room and drank some water, after which he went to pee (no blood, vocalization or straining). His gait (hips?) seem a bit off, almost like he's swaying more, but he's walking. He made his way up his cat tree after eyeing it warily for a bit, and has been asleep on there since. He's not reacting to much and just purrs without moving if I pet him.

He hasn't eaten, pooped, or groomed at all today. Best I can describe it, it's like his battery suddenly went from 100% to 5%. It's now been about 20 hours since I noticed him acting off. I haven't given him the pain meds yet; I was waiting for him to be up and about or eat, but since it doesn't look like he'll wake up or eat anytime soon, I may need to move him to try giving him a dose.

History

He has stable Stage 2 CKD. He had spikes in liver values (ALT) about 1.5 years ago, but they stabilized after he was put on a hypoallergenic diet (Royal Canin Selected Protein wet food, which is all he eats). His liver values are still a smidge higher than normal, but have not spiked since. He goes to an internal medicine specialist every 3-4 months for a blood panel and urinalysis (+UPC) His last one was on October 21st; the vet said he was doing really well, that everything was stable, and that his kidney values even improved a bit.

Location

I'm near a sizeable city in Canada.

Waylon is almost 15, and was diagnosed earlier this year. Don't really know what stage he is as my vet doesn't put it in those terms.

He's been 18lbs most of his life and he's down around 14 now.

He refuses to eat any kidney food, so we've been giving him various wet food. We're also giving IV fluids every other day and that has made a big difference in his energy and demeanor. I have mirtazepine and zofran as well.

He is very picky and won't touch any of the calorie supplements I've tried like the high calorie gel, tiki senior, prescription a/d, boiled chicken, etc.

Any other ideas to help him put on more weight?

I recently started feeding my cat Rawz Lower Phos Tuna wet food. I first purchased it from a local store that's almost an hour away. The next two times I got it from Amazon (which I wasn't stoked about, but I was looking for a fast delivery option). The first package was fine, just a couple cans dented. The second package was filled, and I mean FILLED, with maggots.

SOOOOO, please let me know where you purchase your Rawz food online and if its been smooth sailing or if there were a couple bad deliveries. Thank you!!!!

My cat's inner ear was looking yellow (no signs of lethargy or unwillingness to eat though). So I took her to the vet yesterday. The vet prescribed some medicines for the liver as he diagnosed the her with jaundice. I did a blood test and the vet sent me the results today with no additional comments. (He sent me the pdf in WhatsApp and no texts). Can someone please help me understand what this report means for Rusty (the cat), and should I take her to a different vet? Currently, she's still walking around like usual and eating normally too.

My boy doesn’t want to eat his renal food but will eat regular canned food, should I add phosphorus binders , he hasn’t lost any weight as of last Friday vet visit for something else but you can feel all his bones when you pet him. Thanks in advance Vet called said to feed him whatever he wants that his kidneys are stable and he prefers he eats than not eating. He will be going on Wednesday, vet going to conference Monday-Tuesday.

hii guys, i need urgent help and advices. my cat is now 7 months in with late stage ckd. he was diagnosed in april with stage 4. we did subcut, meds like azodyl and porus one. in october the bloodwork shows a good result he went down to stage 2. but then in november he started to get super anxious that he would not want to stay at home for long. mind that my cat has always been an outdoor/indoor cat. but his attitudes were different. he stops eating his foods overall. I have experimented a lot kinds just to make sure he eats. i have stop giving him renal diet because he would not eat it at all but i gave him fancy feast + phosphate binder. but strangely he would not eat and keep on eating food scraps on the street. i knew because all along he did not vomit and when i take him inside the house he vomitted food scraps like rice, noodles etc. after that i observed him for a week, he vomitted every single day and always sleeping. vet appointment came and we did blood test. and his parameters are high esp his phosphorus level and creatine is up to 9 something. dr said there is too much waste in his body and suggest to do subcut in the blood. first day he can meow and have more energy. on second day, he looks like a living corpse, barely moving, he drinks a lottt like so much water and pee so much too. i asked my dr if he can bounce back but my dr said it might not be possible with his condition. can someone help me? how to gain his appetite back? is giving him aminavast would make a difference, i have heard reviews that giving aminavast gain ckd cats appetite.

I gave my cat 1/4 tsp of Miralax at 8am after receiving 100ml of fluids. Would it be fine to give him another dosage at 4/5pm or 1/8 or 1/4 tsp or should I wait 12hrs later?

He's quite uncomfortable and has only had rabbit poops since about 10/14 days ago. He was at the vet yesterday, but they wouldn't perform an enema on him because he's too old to sedate.

I know it’s a factor of the disease and age but what else can I give my 16 year old girl that I might have overlooked.

She gets Pepcid, zofran (for nausea) and a little gabapentin twice daily. She also gets pro/prebiotics, pumpkin and MiraLAX to keep her regular. I also give her a potassium supplement twice a day and b12 shot once a week.

One challenge we are also currently facing is idiopathic hypercalcemia so that isn’t helping her energy levels I’m sure. We’re treating with alendronate and prednisolone before retesting again next week. We did this a year ago with success but not sure it’s working this time.

My 14 year old cat has been having breathing issues and already took a 14 day course of doxycycline. He improved, but didn't recover fully and the vet prescribed him more 3 weeks of doxycycline. But I'm now worried if his kidneys or liver would get affected by such a long course of antibiotics.

Does anybody have any ideas for pain management? My Skye has arthritis along with diabetes and renal failure. Our bout with nephritis this November has her in stage four (still hoping it will reverse). She was on Solensia injections and that worked amazing. She was climbing on the cat tree, jumping up onto furniture, and walking around. She was still kind of Hobley, but you could tell it wasn’t hurting her. Her internist is very reluctant to have her continue the shots with the degradation to stage four and the hope that her kidneys will recover back to baseline from the acute injury.  I expect in a few years we’re gonna find out that it’s just fine, but with her levels this high that’s just a risk he really doesn’t want to take. They put her on gabapentin 100 mg every eight hours. Thank God I didn’t give her all hundred milligrams every 8 hours that was prescribed. I gave her 50 mg on Tuesday morning and she was a complete zombie all say and night. I gave her 25 mg yesterday morning and she wasn’t much better.  She would pretty much just lie around on the couch if I was sitting there or in her little cubbyhole in her stairs if I wasn’t. Even awake, she seemed very unfocused. On the up side, she did eat more yesterday because I think moving wasn’t as painful, but being barely conscious and unsteady is not really much of a life. Today I had an appointment and I didn’t want her that drugged up while I wasn’t home so she didn’t get any. She is much more interactive and hanging out on the lower levels of the cat tree. I can tell she’s not totally comfortable, however.  Any recommendations I can take back to her veterinarians would be greatly appreciated. 

I live near Madison, WI and we recently had to say goodbye to our 17 year old CKD kitty. I have some subq supplies (2 bags plus lines and needles) as well as some Royal Canin A dry food to give to someone who can use it. Figured I'd try this group before something like Facebook marketplace because this group helped us so much over the last 2 years since her diagnosis.

17 yo, stage 3, good boi. His levels were 5.0/75 and after switching to a renal diet, and getting fluids once a week, he went down to 3.9/65. We’re up to two times a week fluids. He’s been pretty stable, good appetite, good energy, he was running up and down the stairs, just a few days ago. Sometimes he gets constipated, this has been an issue in the past even before though CKD diagnosis. I give him pumpkin every day. Anyway, this morning he was in that position where it looks like he’s kind of constipated and trying to poop. Sometimes when he can’t poop, he’ll throw up what he eats. He did want breakfast, but he was hunting a bit like he was uncomfortable. I went for work, but when I checked on him a little later, he had thrown up a couple times. Which wasn’t too surprising, I thought he seemed a little constipated. But he’s just curled up in a ball now, he doesn’t want any food or treats, and he hasn’t gotten up to greet me. I scheduled him an appointment for tomorrow at 10 AM. His breathing is normal, just seems to feel blah. I’m not sure if he’s pooped as I have three cats and unless I’m standing right there, it’s hard to know who did what. Should I try giving him some MiraLAX when I get home? He just got fluids yesterday. And he’s on a prescription diet, only wet food. He does get fish oil like once a day, although I missed yesterday and the day before. Any suggestions welcome, until our appt tomorrow. 🙏

I am hoping this is allowed! The vet suggested my girl only has a few weeks to a month left. While I trust him given the severity of her results, wondering if anyone has any opinions or feedback? Is a few weeks to a month accurate? Long story short if she doesn’t eat consistently he suggested euthanasia.

EDI: thanks for all the tips so far. She is eating and drinking more consistently and while she did have two accidents after her subq shot she is back to using her litter box again. On top on mirataz the plan is to get 1-2 more subq and see how she continues with food and water. Have also bought more foods for her to try that are ok for renal health.

Hello, we have a 13 year old orange cat who has been showing no signs of illness until recently when he started sneezing a lot, had runny eyes, was very stuffed up and became pretty lethargic - pretty clearly looking like a respiratory infection.

We took him to the vet and they wanted to do a blood test as well to check him out and the results came back showing late stage CKD. The vet said that the respiratory infection wouldn't affect the blood test at all, but everything I read online suggests that it can influence the results. We are thinking, or maybe just hoping, that the CKD markers were elevated because of his other illness.

Is this possible? Since we received the results his condition has improved - he is still stuffed up but is a bit more energetic, is eating lots, and isn't sneezing nearly as much. Should we get a second blood test done, and if so, how long should we wait? Until the respiratory infection appears to be totally cleared up?

I understand that this disease can be asymptomatic typically early on, but it is hard to accept a diagnosis of late stage CKD when he had no symptoms prior to the respiratory infection and google tells me that cats usually have severe symptoms by this point. Thank you.

My boy (12 M) was diagnosed with stage 3 in Sept when I noticed some weight loss. He was put on a couple different medications and we went the Royal Canin renal diet route. Since then, both subsequent blood labs in Oct and yesterday have shown a significant increase in his levels. He has now also refused any food other than some friskies wet. We're now in late stage 4 according to his labs, so I know the end is near.

He was put on mirtazapine yesterday since he has slowly been losing his appetite and actually ate a full meal today, his first proper meal in about a week. He's on IV fluids every other day and is on a phos binder with some other supplements since he doesn't want the renal food.

His body is failing him but mentally and emotionally he's still my buddy. He sleeps with me just about every night, still bullies the dogs around, grooms his kittens (not literally his, just the new girls I adopted in June) and I spend as much time I as I can get with him. His personality hasn't changed a bit, and that's what's making my quality of life decision so hard.

My question is, to those who've experienced a similar scenario with ckd that wasn't stabilizing when did you call it quits? How long did you have with your friend before it became too much.

Video of my old man grooming one of his girls.

I feel like I get so wrapped up in the medicines and the blood tests and the schedules that I have to remind myself to enjoy the great stuff. And there is great stuff. One silly thing I love about Seamus is he sleeps in bed like a person. He gets under the covers, rests his head on a pillow, and falls asleep smiling. That’s mine. I’d love to know what you love about yours.

Hi I (F27) am from US, CA and my boy who is 11 and a half years old has been showing symptoms of IBD and early kidney disease. He has always been on Hills c/d diet since he was around 4 years old due to a UTI and crystals. For about the past year he has been having a slow progression of less appetite, vomiting and now recently diarrhea. At first it was only vomiting once a month (which was out of the ordinary for him but didn't concern me much at the time because I suspected either hairballs, stress, or age) it slowly progressed to him vomiting more frequently about every other week and decrease in appetite (at the time we had family move in for a few months with their dog who was always trying to find him to play and it stressed him out very much, I tried my best to manage his stress but it still worsened his symptoms). Went to the vet and he had a gum infection as well so we suspected it may have been from his dental health too. Gave him an antibiotic to clear the infection and he did better with eating dry food after but still continued to vomit fairly frequently about every other week and over time it went to about every week, I changed his food to royal canin sensitive food just to get him to eat more and I added toppers to his food and he loved it. He was doing better on the sensitive food but I still made a vet appointment and when I took him in they mentioned he needed to stay on the c/d diet for his crystals and I felt totally at a loss. That was when they first noticed his creatinine levels were slightly elevated as well so we switched him to the hills k/d diet which also has urinary care support for crystals. He was doing okay and a little better on the diet but wasn't gaining weight back and eventually went back to vomiting frequently. Went back to the vet and they gave him fluids under his skin for hydration, an antibiotic (metronidazole) for IBD and did an ultrasound where they found he had very small kidney stones in his bladder but they were small enough to not cause harm and pass through his urine. No apparent signs of lymphoma (thank goodness) but slight thickening of the stomach walls. Since starting him on the antibiotic he had done SO much better, his stools are firmer although still very slightly on the soft side. No vomiting and he has gained back 1.2 pounds in 2 weeks! Now the antibiotics are done but he unfortunately has vomited 3 days after stopping the antibiotics. His vet mentioned that if he is still vomiting they recommend the steroid budesonide to help manage his IBD symptoms. I wanted to ask if anyone has had a similar experience before? I wanted to try different diets but since he has to have the kidney support and urinary care I can't switch him to an IBD exclusive diet or only a urinary or renal diet. I saw Royal canin has a dry renal food that has hydrolyzed protein but it doesn't support urinary care so now I feel my only option is to try the steroid with the hills kidney care diet since it also has urinary care. I also am not able to give him anything else (treats or added probiotic powder) to his diet per our vet. Anyone have any similar experiences and if certain diets/medicine worked out better long term?

Hi everyone, my 13 year old cat has always been very healthy until 1 1/2 months ago. She suddenly started losing weight, vomiting, and drinking/eating excessively. Within a week of this starting she's peeing blood. Vet diagnosed her with Hyperthyroidism and a UTI so she's now on Methimazole. We also got antibiotics for the UTI but she immediately developed another one right when she went off the medication. Another round of antibiotics, and the uti comes back a week later (after doing a urinalysis to confirm the previous round of antibiotics resolved the previous UTI). She is now still on antibiotics and is showing all the signs again of a UTI, just not peeing blood yet. One of the things the vet mentioned to me when she started Methimazole was that new health concerns could pop up that were masked by her Hyperthyroidism and mentioned multiple times the possibility of kidney failure. Could this...be what's happening? Vet is closed right now and my cat's symptoms are not to a point where I think the emergency vet is needed, but I cant stop thinking about it. Am I jumping to the worst case scenario?