I can't spend £180 on cat food a month - does anyone have any ideas

[LauriesFairyonthetreeeatsCake]

All 3 now need k/d wet pouches as they all have kidney disease - the cost is £180 a month from any providers I can find (including the vets).

Any thoughts?

Blimey. What brand - and weight of food per month (for all three) is that ?

What's special about the pouches?

Have you thought about switching them to this kind of prepared raw food?

www.naturalinstinct.com/categories/Cat-Food/

We use this company for our dog food. I rate them very highly.

www.naturalinstinct.com/categories/Cat-Food/

www.felinecrf.org/canned_food_uk.htm

I found this website when Bear was poorly. They have a really good comparison table between foods with regards to suitability for kidney disease in cats. Perhaps you can find a similar cheaper option?

I hope you find something, £180 p/m is a lot of money!

This sort of food is hideously expensive. We have cats who have been either on sensitive tummy or weight loss food since we got them and it costs us a fortune.

I don't want to give bad advice, but I do remember my childhood cat had kidney disease (very nearly died of it) and was put on a diet of white meat and fish for the rest of her days. She lived very healthily for many more years, until she was 16, so it was presumably good for her. It was cheap (frozen bargain packs of coley and chicken, basically). Vets nowadays seem keener to prescribe specially made prescription food. Might be worth asking the vet if stuff like this could be a viable alternative, even for 50% of their diet, with the rest the special pouches. That would reduce the bill.

I would phone the PDSA and your local cat shelter for advice. You may find that there is either financial/practical assistance available or that they can help with bulk buying or recommending cheaper alternatives. Remember that your vet is a business and will be sold the food at a higher cost than your local shelter who may be lucky enough to get a better deal.

I know alot of people who have cats with a similar condition, they either feed a very high quality wet food (bozita etc) which you can order online from Zooplus and add extra warm water to keep thier fluid intake up or they feed raw. One of my boys is on Cystophan after he had a blockage which I buy on Amazon rather than from the vet, not sure if yours get regular water infections but it calms the cat and helps keep thier water works ticking over nicely.

Raw would probably be your best option with having three cats, it's cheaper and as close to nature intended as possible.

I'm not sure if this will help, but we have a small supply of both wet and dry Hills KD (for CRF) that we'd laid in for our beloved Rufus who (with impeccable cat timing) crashed and had to be PTS shortly after we got it. Depending on where you life, you can have it for free or cheap or donation to the PDSA or CPL.

PM me for any details.

We live in South Essex, by the way.

Theres a product called Renalzin you can spray on food for cats with renal failure. Its a phosphate binder. It isn't as good as the diet (diet is the only thing proven to extend survival) but it may be cheaper and at least something?

the dry version of k/d would cost about a third of the wet version and most cats prefer it

Hi,

I'm going to third feeding raw if you can find an appropriate recipe. It'll be the highest quality cat food you can get, but cheaper than canned if you make it yourself. Have a read through this webpage Making cat food. It looks like she has written a recipe especially for cats with kidney disease. I can't vouch for any of her recipes as I use the recipe on this page: Recipe because I don't want to be grinding anything (it's beneficial for them to chew on the bones).

I really wouldn't take the advice to feed them a dry k/d diet, as dry food can be the culprit behind kidney disease developing in the first place :(

I would do some research on why you have been told to feed them this food. The pet food industry is not a nice place, and on top of that vets don't seem to be very informed about animal nutrition. Have a read of this to get you started: Diet, Kidney Disease and the Urinary Tract.

Thank you all so much for your advice. I am going to go with a mixture of foods to try to extend their life.

One of them can't eat the dried k/d food because of struvite crystals so he's wet food only. None of them will eat the only wet k/d pouches available as they only do chicken flavour - they only eat fish flavour.

I'm going to feed them a mix of cheap fish, cheap chicken/turkey and occasional k/d dried. After reading all the information online it seems that a natural diet is possible. I'm also going to give them one of the natural foods you linked to.

As starvation and anorexia is the biggest worry with kidney disease in cats this is going to be an uphill struggle as they currently only eat one type of food, whiskas fish pouch

Good idea to try right now to broaden their diet. It may feel like a struggle but imagine if they decide to take against that one pouch that they'll eat happily now.

As you say, its most important that they keep eating, so ultimately the diet will just have to be the stuff they eat.

Good luck, by the way :)

Have you checked all the online vet pharmacies for their prices? Much cheaper than your vet. Feeding a diet designed for cats with kidney disease is proven to extend life so please don't feed raw in the belief it will extend life too. Potentially be far too high in protein. Totally right that they need to be eating something rather than nothing though. What about checking online prices for other kidney diets? Royal Canin and Purina also produce wet food for cats with kidney disease.

High protein food is very bad for kidney disease . How about the dry k/d biscuits from science plan . My best cat had kidney failure .

If you are feeding raw make sure you do your research if you are planning to get thier food from the butchers and not use the pre prepared minces. Cats need Taurine in thier diets otherwise they can have heart problems, you have to feed them raw heart a few times a week to provide this. The easiest way is to buy the cat minces which have everything in the right quantities, it also works out cheaper this way.

I priced up the wet kidney food online when my cat was on it, it was slightly cheaper than the vets but was still very expensive.

Your cats will die from k/d whether or not you buy special expensive food. It won't matter to them if it's a bit sooner or later, the end is the same. I'd give them what they like.