Kitties and Kidney Disease

Beautiful girl sitting with my therapy light

We are reaching the 3 year anniversary of my cat Peanut's renal failure and kidney disease diagnoses.  We are so blessed to still have her at our side.  Though I believe her extra time on earth here with us a blessing from God, there is no doubt that we have helped her longevity. I thought I'd write a post about how we treat her illness, what the costs are and how she has handled it.  This may be a pretty niche topic but most of us have pets and all of us can understand the love for an animal.

In this post I talk about the ways I dealt with Peanut's diagnoses and preparations for her death. A few days after finding out her diagnoses of kidney disease, she was exposed to Lily pollen and started renal failure.  We hospitalized her and through prayer and thousands of dollars, she pulled through. The kidney disease is something probably brought on by her years of hyperthyroidism, which we give her transdermal methimazole twice daily for.

Friends, please know that yearly blood tests and check ups are extremely important for catching things in their early stages of development. Beginning at 8 years old, a cat becomes a "senior" and most veterinarians suggest yearly blood panels starting at that point. This is how we caught her hyperthyroidism and started treating it inexpensively and added countless years and quality to her life. This is also how we caught her kidney values declining and knew exactly when to start treating her for it. If you want your pet to live longer, happier and healthier lives and don't want them to suffer as an elderly family member, then yearly or bi-annual exams are a MUST. Having a pet can be deceptively inexpensive during their younger years so please realize many diseases that come up can be treated easily as they age. Now that I've lectured you enough, let's move on.

Once she was in the clear and stable, we took Peanut home and switched out her food to Hills/Prescription-diet K/D for felines. Insider info: this stuff STINKS! but Peanut loves it!

The kidneys filter waste and toxins from the blood and maintain the normal balance of fluid and minerals within the body.  As pets age, damage to kidney tissues may occur.  This process is irreversible and leads to loss of kidney function.  Cats with decreased kidney function may experience loss of appetite and their food intake might decline, which may lead to loss of muscle mass.
Hill's nutritionists and veterinarians developed Prescription Diet® k/d® clinical nutrition to support your cat's kidney function and help sustain muscle mass.  In fact, the nutrition of k/d is clinically tested nutrition to improve & lengthen quality of life. -Hill's 

Another product that we use, and can put right into her food, is epakitin powder. This works by using the active ingredient, chitosan, which is a natural polysaccharide derived from shells of shrimp and crab. This ingredient naturally binds phosphorus, which limits the absorption of phosphorus from the intestines. This limitation helps pets with chronic kidney (renal) disease by slowing down damage caused by the disease.

The biggest adjustment was adding 100ml of fluids to her daily routine. We give these fluids subcutaneously. That's a big word meaning under the skin, not intravenously.  Basically, we grab the chonk of skin on the nape of Peanut's neck/back, where they have extra skin that momma cat's use when they are kittens. We grab that and place the needle into the skin towards the bottom. Once placed in, there might be some bleeding occasionally but that's only happened a hand-full of times. We turn the fluids on and the injection starts! She is super good with her fluids and we have been doing them daily for almost 3 years now. It's just a normal part of her life. Giving the fluids takes any where from 2-5 minutes. We are pretty fast when giving them as a team but also have mastered doing fluids by ourselves when need be. These fluids are basically saline, or salt water, that help keep her hydrated. Her urine clumps are enormous so that tells us that she is losing a lot of her hydration from regular food and water consumption. When she gets her fluids, they are absorbed under her skin slowly and help to alleviate dehydration.  We used to hang her fluid bags from a hook in the ceiling at our condo in San Francisco. While we were briefly renting once we moved to Michigan, we decided to get one of those fluid bags poles you see at the hospitals and it's honestly super handy!

Another thing we did when we found out she was sick was had a good friend of ours, who happens to be a Catholic Priest, come over and pray with us for little Peanut. He laid hands on her and spoke beautiful words and was also kind enough to bless a small St. Francis pendant for us. We now hang that pendant next to her fluids and we think it's helped a lot. St. Francis is said to be the patron saint of animals.

These things that we do for her cost a lot but are worth it. When it's all totaled up, her medication and prescription food costs about $500 a month. We save a little by having chewy.com deliver her supplies. 

Peanut getting fluids from Eddie

"This isn't so bad"