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Old April 17th, 2013, 02:35 PM
Daveacksh Daveacksh is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Montreal
Posts: 5
Kidney Disease in my 2-year old cat

Hello,

I introduced myself a couple of weeks ago in the "introduce yourself" section (http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=83735). You can see a picture of my cat Lily there . I'll post another at the bottom of this message.

She was diagnosed with 'kidney disease' or as I understand it, reduced kidney function. (She's only 2 yrs old)

She has always been a sensitive cat, vomiting once every 2-3 weeks but never acting like she was ill. She was always happy and energetic, eating and drinking normally. She does drink more often than my other cat though...

She has always been picky with her food. She doesn't like canned food and her favorite dry food is Royal Canin Indoor adult 27 which is what she is eating now. (Same as our other cat)

In mid February she vomited for 24hr (roughly once an hour) and was obviously ill. The vomit started out as undigested food, to bile, to small amounts of white foam.

I took her to the vet, who suspected pancreatitis or that she had swallowed something. X-rays and blood work were all negative (the x-ray revealed no foreign object, and the blood work showed no sign of infection and no elevated levels of anything that would indicate a problem with her pancreas/liver, or that she was diabetic)

She rested the next day and that evening she was eating/drinking and back to normal.

Over the next 2 weeks she vomited every few days, but otherwise seemed fine (she was acting normal, happy etc..). I switched her food to Hill's Gastro-intestinal Health i/d which she seemed to love. She was more energetic than ever.

2 Weeks later after switching her food (1month since the first episode) she had another episode where she vomited for 24hr straight. I waited a little longer before taking her to the vet this time because she recovered quickly last time.

After not eating or drinking much for a couple of days I took her to the emergency vet (it was Sunday evening). They gave her medication (antacid, anti-nasea) and re-hydration fluids. Once again, she got better relatively quickly. After this episode, she rejected the Hills food and only wanted to eat the Royal Canin.

I made an appointment with a specialist to determine the cause of these episodes (I have no plants, I don't feed her from the table, I clean her dish each day, there are no toxins she can get into etc..)

So after an ultrasound, blood work, urine test/cultures, it was determined that she had reduced kidney function based on elevated creatinine levels in her blood (She was at Stage 2 level kidney function, or disfunction?). Her kidney profile (blood work) was checked again 2 weeks later and had improved slightly, but her creatinine levels were still in what the vet called "early stage 2 kidney disease"

She had no protein in her urine and did not have hypertension which are apparently symptoms of more advanced kidney malfunction. The vet did say her urine was dilute.

He recommended famotidine (2.5 mg/day) which is an antacid as well as Hills Renal Diet.

She was on famotidine for 2 weeks before I started her on the Hills food. Once I started her on the Hills food (Slowly mixing with her regular food) she vomited a few times during the week, so I took her off the food and just kept giving her famotidine.

The vet wants her on the food, but she doesn't really like it and it seems to be upsetting her stomach so I am keeping her on her regular diet which has the same protein % as Hills renal.

She seems fine now and hopefully she won't have another episode for a while.

Does anyone have any similar stories to share? I've read alot about CRF on the web (Tanya's site) and others.

I'm not so interested in hearing about how dry foods are bad etc... it's the only food she will eat.

I'm more interested in hearing about similar situations and any advice people may have.

Thanks for reading!

p.s. I don't have copies of her lab results yet. The vet seems to keep forgetting to get them to me.
--
Dave
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