civvie kidney's not working so well

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Howdy all,

I've been lurking around but not much lately. Miss you all.

Our indoor/outdoor "barn" cat Samantha who is between 12 and 15 years old is starting to have kidney failure. The vet wanted me to start her on KD. I told him that I only feed wet to her since she had a broken jaw and only chicken and turkey flavors, no fish.

I really don't want to spend the money on KD since I don't believe in those vet foods so much. I know there are alternatives out there, but with my life right now my brain can't function well. Can someone help point me in the right direction.

Thank!

Julie
 
hi Julie, sorry to hear about Samantha!

lower protein cat food like the KD is the old thinking on kidney disease, now in general they give cats the highest quality protein cat food, and try to limit the phosphorus more than the protein, but you'd want to not feed fish, etc which is both high in protein and phosphorus, so you're doing great there already. ;-)
probably what you are feeding now is fine.

I gave my kidney cats the special diet Friskies and Natural balance green pea and duck or green pea and venison, etc. and um, damn I forget! two of them were also diabetic, the other was not but had IBD so she was hard to feed anyway.


when you look the diabetic food charts, look for lower phosphorus. I know there are other good foods, I think Chicken soup was a good one, and there's another one that was even better but the name escapes me now. Hi Tor has a kidney food, too but most cats don't care for the taste, it's extremely bland.

certainly do not feed KD- it's crap.

the only exception would be if the cat is very late stage kidney disease, I believe, at which point the cat is not going to be wanting to eat much and baby food meats is usually about all you can get them to take.

good luck!

ETA: Precise makes some lower phosphorus flavors and then there's this: Felidae Chicken & Rice,
also I think it was Sensible Choice that was very low phosphorus and great for kidney cats but I coudn't find it on the charts
 
Hi Julie.
There are some cool links I have in my signature that I put together when Spader was dx.

KD is not so great. Check out some of the low phos flavors.

I would write more but i just got home after working or 15 hours. :(
 
My cat Witn had both CRF and diabetes. I fed her Friskies Special Diet canned food. She was fed all of the flavors except the Chicken & Gravy because of the carbs.

During the several years she was on this diet, her kidney values and BG levels remained stable. The Friskies is much cheaper than the KD and most cats don't like the prescription food any way.
 
Thanks to all who responded.

Sorry I took so long to respond back. My hubby ended up having surgery on Friday and things have been a little crazy trying to take care of him and all the critters of the home.

Julie
 
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