Any vets around?

[MummyDoIt]

My very elderly cat (20 years old) has kidney trouble and has been on tablets and renal diet cat food for about two years. She's been doing fine on it but has recently taken a dislike to the food and is refusing to eat it. She licks off the gravy or jelly, then leaves the rest. I've tried mashing it up and adding extra liquid but she still turns her nose up. She's lost quite a lot of weight and seems determined to starve herself rather than eat the food. In desperation, I've given her normal cat food and she wolfed that down and demanded more. It's clearly the renal diet food she's objecting to, not a general loss of appetite. So, do I give her normal cat food, in which what are the consequences for her kidney problem, or do I keep trying the renal diet even though she's fading away before my eyes.

It is much more important that she eats than what she is eats is always my feeling. The Renal food slows the progression of the kidney disease, but is not curing it, not eating will ultimately have a far greater effect. Other tips are warming the food as the molecules then pass across the mucous membranes of the nose easier making it easier for your cat to smell the food and therefore eat it. There are different types of renal food k\d I find lots of cats will not eat, of the RCW ones the tuna flavour wet seems to go down better than the beef or chicken.

Thank you, Lizcat. I've tried every type of renal food our vet can provide and she's gone off all of them. Her teeth are too bad to cope with any kind of dried food so it has to be wet Tuna was the favourite variety but she's even stopped eating that. I'll try warming it and see if it helps, otherwise I think I'll just give her normal food that I know she'll eat.

can you mix the two types of food together, then at least she'll get some of the renal food, but the taste she likes.

is the other cat food softer, perhaps its her teeth, older cats can get a lot of tooth decay and thus toothache .

When our old lady was in her dotage (she died in June, aged 22) her kidneys were failing, but she too turned her nose up at the renal food. The vet put her on a sort of think liquid supplement renal medication that we added to her food - renalzin, or something like that. She seemed to tolerate this more, and ate most of it when it was mixed with something tasty (tuna or chicken).

My cat hasn't been on renal food for months as she refused to eat it after a while and the vet has okayed this. She has renal biscuits for supper before going to bed so gets the necessary through them.