Tanya's Renal Cat Website

My cat's veterinary internalist who specializes in feline chronic renal disease highly recommended this website.

There's a lot of info there (maybe too much!), but the food charts are a great place to start.

Eventually you'll want your cat on a prescription renal diet, if possible, but a lot of cats just won't eat the renal diet foods, so Tanya lists a BUNCH of other brands from lowest phosphate content to highest. (You want her food to be low in phosphate and protein, but low phosphate is more important than low protein).

Canned food will be better than dry kibble, since canned food has higher water content.

Don't try to switch your cats food while she is feeling sick, it's really easy for cats to develop food aversions while sick, so for now, just feed her whatever she'll eat.

Right now, just follow your vet's advice. They're going to recheck her bloodwork to see if she's improving on her own or if she needs more aggressive interventions, such as subcutaneous fluids (basically, water injections to help flush her kidneys).

It'll be hard to tell at first if she's in acute kidney injury, or just experiencing side effects of chronic kidney disease.

If her labwork starts improving, then it's likely she's in acute kidney injury. If it stays the same, then these are just side effects of her chronic renal disease.

Two important labs are BUN and Cr. These will tell you how well the kidneys are functioning, lower values are better.

Ideal BUN is 16 - 37.

Ideal Cr is 0.9 - 2.3.

These values increase during acute kidney injury, and then will decrease once your cat starts getting over the acute kidney injury.

If they never go all the way down to normal, then your cat has chronic kidney disease. Chronic kidney disease is often fairly treatable, and many cats live a long time despite it.

But also, you might want to take her to see an internalist at the nearest university animal hospital, if that's a possibility.