Catoeeaddi has been at the vet’s office all weekend with fluid running into him. He stopped eating last week and blood tests confirm kidney failure. He’s a stray we’ve had for about two years – we thought he was a young cat, but this vet thinks not.
So, in anticipation of ambiguous news from the second blood test, has anyone had a cat rebound after kidney failure? Our vet says it isn’t uncommon for them to do so, but friends and co-workers say it’s more likely that even if he does come through this crisis and recover briefly, his condition will probably deteriorate in a few months.
I just visited him in the kitty-ward and he looks like hell. I don’t want him to suffer so I’m thinking of having him put to sleep. Any thoughts?
A woman I work with brought her cat through it, but she is a nurse and was able to administer treatments at home herself. I don’t know how far gone her cat was, but she was ready to put him down, if necessary.
No, I’m sorry to say. My beloved childhood kitty, who was an outdoor cat, got into antifreeze, and holed up in our storage house for a couple of days before we found her. When I found her, she was already in severe distress from kidney failure, and was in agonizing pain with no hope of recovery. I had to have her put to sleep then and there, out of mercy.
It wasn’t pretty, but maybe your kitty is not that far gone. I hope not.
If it is any comfort, it is possible for a cat to recover from kidney failure. We had a scrappy little orange stray named Garfield who was near death from kidney failure. He gradually got better, and he lived another seven years. Here is a photo of the little guy after his recovery.
Obviously it depends on how far gone pusskins is. Do you know if his ailment is due to something he ingested or is it congenital? One of my kitty’s kidneys is unusually small and so she has chronic kidney failure. Natually I got hysterical when the vet told me that, but basically keeping her on a special diet is all I’ve had to do to keep her in good shape. She too had to be on an iv(though not as long as your guy)and once she was hydrated and given food designed for her condition she bounced right back. Of course I have to have her checked every six months, and if her values get too high, I’ll need to start doing the home hydration thing, but I’m told that kitties can have normal lifespans with compromised kidneys. In the mean time I and the Wookincats send many healing thoughts to your baby.
My guess is that if the vet is thinkign the cat is older than you thought, the problem is chronic renal failure, which is a very common problem for old cats and dogs. In that case,
if you haven’t already done so, you might wanna check out this site for info: http://www.felinecrf.com/
One of my friends had a cat with chronic kidney failure. He had no veterinary/medical training, but he was able to do subcutaneous fluids for the cat at home (I think it was once a week, although I don’t remember for sure). By doing that, he was able to keep the cat going in fairly good health for about 2 years after diagnosis (as I recall, the cat was about 18 years old by the time he died).
With chronic renal failure, the animal will never get back the lost kidney function unless you’re talking about something as drastic as a kidney transplant (which is done for animals, but extremely expensive). Generally, with chronic renal failure, the kidneys are going to continue to gradually deteriorate as time goes on. However, there are definitely many cases where treatments can stave things off and give the animal a good quality of life for quite a while. I’m sure when your vet does the blood tests again, he’ll be able to tell you more about the prognosis. Best wishes to you and your cat.
Catoeeaddi is an indoor cat. We can’t imagine what he could have gotten into that would have been toxic. No poisionous plants. No anti-freeze. He hasn’t even vandalized the garbage.
He’s adorable, pinkfreud. It is comforting, but also perplexing. You said your kitty was near death – I believe my cat is also near death. In fact, I’ve never had an animal look so bad. He is lying in a cage on his side with an IV running into his leg. He can’t lift his head or acknowledge my presence. He doesn’t react at all to being petted or talked to. He has a little saucer of liquefied food that looks untouched. I could be completely wrong, but this doesn’t look like something that can be turned around. They did a blood test this morning and we’ll have the results this evening. Then I guess we’ll decide.
I’m curious, pinkfreud, was your kitty was in this kind of condition? I can’t imagine taking him home in the shape he’s in now.
Yes, Garfield was in precisely the condition you’ve described. We sure thought he was a goner. Every morning we feared that we’d get a phone call from the vet telling us that he’d died during the night. But he took a slow turn for the better after about four days. We were able to bring him home after ten days of hospitalization. He was skinny and feeble, but he grew stronger and more lively, day by day. We had to keep taking him to the vet every month for blood tests for a year. As I mentioned, Gar lived for another seven years thereafter, and he was 16 years old when he passed away from a heart condition that was unrelated to the kidney failure.
I can’t promise that your experience will be similar, of course, but I pray that it will be.
It depends on the cause. Acute Renal Failure (ARF) has a better prognosis but animals with Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) can recover from the initial crisis and survive a few more years or more. They can survive with almost 75% loss of kidney function, once it goes past that they are in kidney failure. Wait for the test results and see if there is any improvement. If there is some improvement give him more time, I have seen some bounce back after a couple days of IV fluids. I can’t tell you the long term because we are only emergency but we also see a lot of people who had cats that went through renal failure several years before so it is possible for them to survive long term.
You were one of the sweetest cats we’ve ever had. You also had the distinction of being the only cat to successfully decimate every single breakable object on the mantelpiece in one crazed dash. And you had stupid little white feet.
I’m not sure on specifics, because I was very young when this happened, but I’ve also had a cat who made a recovery from kidney failure.
According to mum, Gizmo got incredibly sick sometime around when I was four or five. To the point where they did have to hospitalise him. The vet told mum then that it was kidney failure, but put him on medication which did seem to clear it up. We had him for another seven or eight years, when a combination of senility and another kidney breakdown meant we had to take him to be put down.
Losing a little furry bastard sucks. I lost one this year to some sort of blood problem. Silver fought really hard, but in the end we had to help her go. It helps if you’re actually there when they do it.
With prayers for cats, you’ve really got to go to Bast.
Yeah. He was a l’il bastard, but he was a pretty l’il bastard. I hope he’s chasing hallucinations and knocking stuff over in the great kitty hereafter.
