Kidney Disease

[Tadpoletoatoad]

I'm after a little advice.
I have an aged cat (14.5) who went to vets over Xmas with dodgy eye. Turned out to be a tooth absess which caused an ulcer on his eye due to the infection. He only has one eye so we've been in and out of blooming vets to remedy it.
Absess now gone but ulcer was proving difficult to shake. They did blood tests which have shown kidney disease.
Of course vet has gone off about this and that. Specialist food, meds and on going treatment.
They did want to remove tooth but im not keen on that due to age and ability to cope with sedation.
I'm so unsure what to do with the kidney aspect. Of course I want him to be around for ever. But I don't want to enter into a course of expensive treatment if its not going to make a huge difference. Does that sound awful?
He is in good health about from that. Eats and drinks. Stays in apart from quick foray out to the garden.
It's unknown territory to me so any advice or thoughts is greatly appreciated. Is specialist meds and food the only way?
I did suspect there was something wrong but I'm still sad. He is my lovely friend.

Here he is. Excuse the daisy chain my dd made for him in the summer!

I can't offer any advice but I just wanted to say what a lovely cat he is

Thank you . He is so gentle with dd and ds. Always letting them put things on him!

Anyone??

I would not spend huge money for small gains, either.
Just how much money will it be, and what does vet think is prognosis?

We had an elderly cat who developed kidney disease around the age of 14. He had an injection to help something in his blood once a fortnight (I can't remember what it was, but was less than a tenner a go)
He lasted on this, with the special food, for around 2.5 years.
Talk to your vet, and see how you get on.

Dcat collapsed with kidney failure at 12. She'll be 15 in 2 months and has survived on daily pills and 6 weekly injections at the vets. The special renal food got rejected by her so she has what she likes and has a good quality of life. It is expensive as the pills cost about £16 for 15 ( half a pill a day) but we do have insurance which helps.

He is a lovely boy - he looks so gentle and calm. My cat is 16 - he's been on the food and meds for 6 years. For some of that time he was just on the food as i outdent get him to take pills. now he's on semintra, which is liquid and I can squirt into his food. It costs about £40 for three months. He's been that 18 months and is fatter and generally better. The food alone did actually help a lot apparently - when he had a crisis 18 months ago, the vet told me he wasn't really in bad shape considering I'd given up on the medication.

There's different stages of kidney disease. I don't pretend to be a vet but your vet should be able to tell you how advanced it is and that would help you decide how to proceed maybe? I'm being guided by the cat's general state and also by the vet on how long to continue.

My old boy...

Staging the kidney disease and obtain a urine protein:creatinine will help give a prognosis, but living several years after diagnosis is the norm with cats and kidney disease.
The tooth, chronic tooth ache is awful, in general owners massively under estimate how awful bad teeth make their pets feel. Typically clients tell after their elderly pet has a dental that they are better than they have been for months.
The combination of the two is really very common, intravenous fluids before, during and after the anaesthetic should provide sufficient support to the kidneys.
A 14 year old cat is no longer classed as geriatric and 20/21 year cats even with kidney problems ( particularly orientals) is really very common.

What a beautiful cat. Also your cat is lovely, isamonster. I would say at that age and with other health problems already, to treat symptoms as long as nothing too invasive is required. So tablets etc would be OK for me and possibly blood tests as a one-off but I wouldn't go for anything heroic. Also I did try special food for various ailments but the cats refused to eat it so we just gave them their normal food, they enjoyed eating it and I don't think it shortened their life that much.

However, despite what I just posted above about no heroics, I did have a 16 yr old cat who had surgery ( for thyroid probs), I was really worried about the op because of his ahe but the cat breezed through it. I wished I'd had stuff like his dental work done at around that age as well, as within a year he was too much of an anaesthetic risk to have any more procedures.

Thank you all. I've always had cats but this is a first for kidney disease.
We have a vet appt later so will see what they say then.
It's interesting what a PP said about tooth pain and lots of supporting fluids if we do go ahead. Something to think about.
Monster - what breed is your cat. They are beautiful!

Thanks! He's a birman. I know someone else whose cat had a tooth removed and was then on fluids for 48 hours due to his kidneys. He was fine and like you this was the first they knew of his kidney problems.

My old boy was 8 when I was first told he had problems though I'm guessing they weren't too serious at that time. Another good thing help is a water fountain so they are encouraged to drink more and get oxygenated water.

Seniorboy had to have a full dental at 16 due to a horrible mouth and vomiting issues - previous vets had mentioned his mouth but had demurred from acting in light of their facilities but his then new vet had a fair degree of confidence that she could get him through it with appropriate operative care. (I think she had an extra team member and he had extra fluid therapy etc.) I felt that he was at a stage where I had no choice, though - I've had bad toothache myself and it makes you so so miserable that not to allow the op would have sentenced him to continuing suffering and - in light of the considerable dangers of having rotten teeth - a probable very much shorter life.

He came through it fine and had no real problems afterwards. I'd get it done for him - if the vet has actually said that he needs an extraction, then his teeth are likely to be in bad shape.