A vet visit for Kate-cat

[selenay]

I don't have a Kate icon. I should fix that.

For the last couple/few weeks, Kate has been off her food and loosing weight. It took a while for me to realise that it was a consistent thing (which I'm feeling guilty about right now), because Annie was cheerfully hoovering up whatever Kate didn't eat and Kate has always been a bit here and there with eating when the weather is fluctuating a lot.

But at the weekend, I had Mum over for lunch and she confirmed that Kate is definitely looking thin so yesterday we went off to the vet.

I was hoping it would be a bad tooth that could be extracted. Not that a bad tooth has stopped her eating before - she was still eating happily right up to the incident where she required three teeth out and a week of antibiotics! But her teeth are fine.

Her tummy doesn't seem to be hurting and she isn't in any discomfort. She's drinking and using the litter box and her heart sounds okay.

The vet weighed her and she's lost a lot of weight, a scary amount as far as I'm concerned. My round cat is a thin cat!

(And unfortunately my thin cat is currently a round cat 😂)

The vet thinks it's either hyperthyroidism or chronic kidney disease, but with the appetite issue, it's more likely the latter. She's dehydrated and losing weight, but not showing signs of lethargy and she's still got the agility of a kitten.

Next week, the vet is going to do some blood tests and hopefully confirm what is going on. I regret googling the CKD, so I'm going to try not to think about it.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to get her to eat more.

I'd already noticed she was happier eating wet food than dry food and changed her usual feeding plan a few days ago. Now I'm experimenting with giving her three small wet meals a day, to see if I can encourage her to eat a bit more that way. I'm going to try her on a higher calorie food, too. And there's some food that's largely gravy/broth that I'm going to try adding to her food, because she's much more interested in the gravy on her food than the actual chunks. So that will at least get something into her and it will help with the dehydration.

I'm also now having to give Annie her own meals separately and defend Kate's food from Annie, because Annie does not need to put on any more weight. Also, Kate is letting Annie eat her food without protest, which isn't a good sign for my cat who usually steals half her sister's food.

So this household is now a worried one and kitty mealtimes have become a slightly fraught experience for me. I'm trying not to panic and just wait until we have the test results before I totally freak out about the long-term implications of this.

I know they're twelve and they won't live forever, but I'm not ready to concede that they're old yet. I'm not sure they are, either, judging by their behaviour!

Comments

[sweet_exile]

Poor Kate. I'll cross everything that the vet can help.

[selenay]

Thank you, hopefully whatever it is has been caught early enough to be manageable for a long time.

[katlinel]

Everything crossed for Kate that she manages to gain back some weight, and the vet can sort out what's wrong with her.

I keep hearing of cats living twenty years or more these days, so your two are middle-aged, not old, surely?

[selenay]

Thank you, hopefully we can figure this out.

Indoor cats live to twenty quite often. My vet has definitely been treating them as middle-aged rather than old - she doesn't even consider them to be senior cats yet! Which is why Kate hadn't had the usual round of senior cat blood tests to pick up something like CKD before it's symptomatic *sigh*

I certainly don't think of them as old. They're still so much like kittens! But Kate may be starting to show signs of being a senior cat, even if none of us think of her that way.

[brokenmnemonic]

Hopefully, it's something that's been caught early and can be treated easily through something like adjustments to diet. Although I say "easily" as if the word means what it usually means when it comes to getting cats to eat things because you want them to...

[selenay]

Heh, yes, trying to persuade cats to do things is not easy. They have a very Pingu attitude to life.

[kore]

Aww poor Kate. My beloved calico had CKD for years, and if you catch it early enough, it's totally manageable for a while, even years. Kate is awfully young for it, though. It sounds like you're already doing most of the right things just in case, like upping her wet food and food with more gravy. One thing my vet also suggested, just in general for cats, is to set shallow dishes of water out around the house, like little oases, and we got a small pet water fountain too. It is so easy for even healthy cats to become dehydrated. Fingers and toes and paws crossed for you and your kitten.

[kore]

(Also, sorry, didn't mean to offer unsolicited advice, it was just that I've been there.)

[selenay]

No, thank you, that was really great and helpful! Thank you! And it's good to hear from people who have had cats with CKD that was managed for more than just a few months.

Kate does feel awfully young for this, but according to Doctor Google, she is in the right age range. I'll add some extra water bowls around the house to see whether I can get her drinking more.

[kore]

When I found out Tania had that condition it felt like my heart was broken and there was a lot of what one shrink calls "pre-emptive mourning," but there really is a lot of information and help out there, and I think vets have become a lot more into helping manage the condition.

There was one hardcore woman who for years had the only comprehensive CKD (this was back when they called it CRF, chronic renal failure!) website and she was like this feline wizard who got her sick cats to live for a LONG time, but that also involved stuff like multiple meds and home hydration. I heard from some people whose cats really got into sub-q fluid therapy (probably b/c it made them feel better) -- they'd sit on a towel or even the person's lap and purr! The calico screamed bloody murder and foamed like a St Bernard when we tried to give her one (1) pill so it was not for her, but her health got a lot better and we managed it for quite a while with simple stuff like switching her to wet food, making sure extra water was everywhere, and giving her treats like tuna water and chicken broth and even chicken baby food.

Since the advice is OK, I will tell you ONE thing that made a big difference for us: all the vets will give you advice about putting the CKD cat on "kidney food", i.e. a vet prescription renal diet (low-protein, low-phosphorous, usually). Lots of cats hate it and don't like eating it. Tania was really skinny to begin with and a super picky eater anyway, and she just wouldn't touch it. But a good vet told us, what is important is keeping the chronically ill cat eating. Quantity matters way more than quality in that regard. We tested a ton of wet foods before we finally found a brand that she liked and would eat, the other cats liked and would eat, AND that had good numbers for a CKD kitty. (It took a little bit.) We were pretty vigilant + lucky and due to catching it early, keeping her nutrition up and hydrating her as well as we could, Tania never had a terrible health crash or emergency vet visit. It took a bunch of work, but it is possible in my experience to manage it for a while.

Anyway I actually hope all this is totally irrelevant for you and your girl.

[selenay]

I definitely have my lines so far as what I'm willing to put Kate through if she's not happy with a treatment.

Keeping Annie away from the food I'm doing for Kate is turning out to be tricky (she really doesn't need to eat Kate's food as well as her own!) but I'm working on it. Kate seems to be responding well to the idea of three small meals instead of two larger ones - I'm cautiously optimistic that she's eating a little more from each one. And adding some extra gravy to her food is going down well, so I'll see how things go like this until I've got all the results and know for sure what to do.

Hopefully it will be irrelevant, but I'm feeling calmer about it if this is what I'm dealing with.

[lilacsigil]

I've had two cats with CKD and it really is a management thing.

ETA: though my cat without CKD did become awfully round on the kidney diet!

[selenay]

If this is CKD, I can tell that my main challenge will be managing the other cat's diet so she doesn't get rounder!

[kore]

Yeah, we were able to manage the CKD cat mostly with diet, but it's a pain trying to do that with multiple cats. We would up putting them all on the (non-kidney) food, since they all ate out of each other's bowls anyway.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, I'm sorry. I hope the test results turn out better than you fear! ♥

[selenay]

Thank you. I'm really hoping for that!

[umadoshi]

Oh, beastie. I hope you can get her weight up. *hugs*

[selenay]

She's not a huge cat anyway, so this weight loss is pretty scary. I want to go back to the days of her being a bit round and the vet trying to work out how to put her on a diet!

She's eaten a little more today, I think, but it's so hard to tell when her sister sneaks in and scoffs left overs the moment by back is turned.