? Civie Dancer - next steps - feedback please

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Deb & Wink

Member Since 2013
My civie Dancer, 6 1/2 years old, has been drinking a lot of water (1 cup average) and peeing 6, 8, 10, 12 times a day in the litter box for several months now. She only eats low carb canned food for the past 4 years, since I got my diabetic Wink, with an occasional freeze dried treat or a bite of pure meat like cooked chicken.

I have increased her food intake a little bit (about 1/2 oz more food per day) to help her maintain her weight. She's always wanted to steal the other cats food, but I attribute that to her feral colony early life and not that she is necessarily hungry, but more of the mentality that she needs to "eat as much whenever possible since she doesn't know where her next meal is coming from". She gets 4 meals a day, but she still will snatch and grab Wink's food whenever he walks away. ;) This morning she stole a small chunk of beef from my breakfast plate that I left unattended for a few minutes. :rolleyes:

I knew she wasn't diabetic as I used Wink's BG test kit to test her and Dancer's BG values have always been <90 mg/dl using the human glucometer, usually in the 50-80 range. Bloodwork at the vet simply confirmed what I already knew.

I was thinking it might be kidney issues or thyroid so I took her to the vet a few weeks ago.

Dancer has been a bit more aggressive towards Wink, but that might also be because of the outdoor stray cats which she hates seeing. The aggressive behavior was making me think hyper-t, but the T4 value (1.6) doesn't support that.

Bloodwork values show as normal for everything, nothing showing as high or low, including kidney, glucose, thyroid. Cystocentesis showed urine specific gravity as low(1.009), PH as high (7.5) and the vet said these values were in the "gray zone". C&S (culture and sensitivity) results came back today, showing no bacteria present so no UTI.

Blood work results attached, but here are a few of the key values.
Creatinine was 1.6 with ref range of 0.6-2.4
BUN/Creatinine ratio 11 with ref range 4-33
Glucose 91 (fasting) with ref range 64-170
Total T4 1.6 with ref range 0.8-4.0

Vet is suggesting that early kidney disease could be possible and recommends abdominal ultrasound as the next step, if I want to do that.

I'm thinking of doing a full thyroid panel to see if other thyroid values are out of whack. I know that only a total T4 doesn't always give the full picture and does not rule out the possibility of hyper-t. The vet did say Dancer had a palpable thyroid slip.

Opinions please as to if the ultrasound is worth doing at this point. More thyroid tests? Or other ideas please?

Thanks for any second thoughts from folks here. Deb
 

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Something that comes to mind is diabetes insipidus, which is totally different than regular diabetes and quite uncommon.

http://www.vetstreet.com/care/diabetes-insipidus-in-cats

A very common clinical sign associated with diabetes insipidus is increased production of abnormally dilute urine. The pet responds to this water loss (dehydration) by drinking more water. Affected cats will drink in excess, urinate frequently, and may even urinate outside their litter boxes or use much more litter than normal.

Since the rest of the bloodwork and urinalysis do not show anything out of line it might be worth asking about this.
 
What are Dancer's poops like (colour, consistency, frequency)? Were B12/folate levels checked? If not, then worth getting them checked in case any nutrient malabsorption issues might be in play.

Also perhaps ask your vet to run an SDMA test; it's supposed to be much more sensitive diagnostic test for early signs of kidney deficiency.

IDEXX SDMA Test - info


Mogs
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Good thought on the SDMA test! Thanks Mogs.

B12/folate levels were not checked. Something else to ask my vet about.

Dancer's poops are once a day, medium to dark brown in color, consistency is medium. She is very prone to constipation, so regularly gets rounded 1/8 teaspoon of Miralax and rounded 1/8 teaspoon of psyllium husk fiber in her food in the AM and then another rounded 1/8 teaspoon of psyllium husk fiber in her food in the PM. Discovered early on when she joined my home that she would strain to poop and her poops were rock hard. The amounts of laxative and fiber have been consistent for about the last 5 years.
 
Something that comes to mind is diabetes insipidus, which is totally different than regular diabetes and quite uncommon.

http://www.vetstreet.com/care/diabetes-insipidus-in-cats

A very common clinical sign associated with diabetes insipidus is increased production of abnormally dilute urine. The pet responds to this water loss (dehydration) by drinking more water. Affected cats will drink in excess, urinate frequently, and may even urinate outside their litter boxes or use much more litter than normal.

Since the rest of the bloodwork and urinalysis do not show anything out of line it might be worth asking about this.
No issues with Dancer urinating outside the litter box. Definitely urinates much more and uses a lot more litter than Wink does.
 
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