Kidney disease in cats

I have had 2 cats with kidney failure in their old age. They refused the kidney diet (this tastes healthy! I'm not eating this) so their only treatment was subq fluids. The hardest part of that was getting my husband to help me, the cats didn't mind it at all. Good luck to you and your baby girl.

It is not "normal" for cats to get kidney disease in their older ages but it sadly has become common in this day and age. Why? Because of the kibble we feed our cats. Cats aren't designed by nature to exist on a dry diet day after day. Nature designed them to get a portion of their daily liquid needs met by their food. They simply cannot drink enough water to satisfy this need. But here we are with vets advising us that dry kibble is a fine diet to feed them day after day. I didn't discover this until my 15 year old cat Biru came down with kidney disease 5 years ago and I did a lot of research online while looking for a better quality food for him instead of the prescription diet we bought at our vet's office. 

First of all he refused to eat it. He lost more and more weight and was looking positively skeletal. We tried the canned and the dry. I tried other foods finding lists online of foods with low ash and potassium (these foods were better for cats with kidney disease) but for me (the perfectionist) this still wasn't good enough. We were also doing the sub-Q fluids. 2 weeks later I came across this website http://www.felineinstincts.com   They are a company that believe in a raw food diet so much so that they had developed a powder based organic formula that when mixed with your own ground meat at home with water and salmon oil would make a very healthy raw food that cats would thrive on. They even had a kidney diseased based version that you added canned pumpkin to also. So we decided to try it. I made up a batch (it only took 10 minutes or less) and started feeding it to both cats-his brother cat James was 16, Biru was 15-I read that it wouldn't hurt James. James took to it right away. Biru was a bit stubborn so I put pieces of tuna fish on top of his-that only took a few feedings and then I stopped doing that. They loved the food and it was only a couple of weeks later that we saw a change in both cats. They started acting like kittens again. Running up and down the stairs, chasing each other, and their coats were looking so much better. James our obese cat lost weight and became much healthier. Bur the biggest change was in Biru. He looked and felt so much better. 

We took him back to his vet after the first month and the vet was shocked at his blood work numbers. We were able to stop his sub-Q treatments and never had to do them again which was a great relief to Biru and us. Biru lived another 2 years and passed away from a blood clot (a completely unrelated cause). James lived another 2 years too and died from stomach cancer. I learned a lot from this experience and when we got Jesse 18 months later this food (we now get the healthy cat version) is all Jesse eats. Cost wise-I haven't added it up but I believe it is less than the prescription food. I know I looked up Royal Canin on  dogfoodadvisor.com  (wish they had an equal cat site) and it came up very low in quality). It doesn't matter to me. I now believe healthy food in equals less costs and suffering later. 

Our 18 year old cat is beginning to show the first stages of kidney failure. We tried the special diets (two different brands) and he would eat them for a few days and then wouldn't. The receptionist at the vet suggested some drops in his mouth to improve his appetite but it would have to be given every few days and I'm not going to put him through that. We just switched back to his regular food, increased the amount of canned, and let him be happy in his last days.