We talked to one of the vets at the hospital today and got a little more info about Alice’s status. She’s doing quite well. They seemed very happy with the second blood test results. Apparently she’s been happily eating the K/D kidney diet dry food which is a bit of a relief since last we heard she was only eating a little bit. They’d rather she ate wet food since it helps with hydration, but eating is eating. It looks like they’ll do another test Tuesday morning and if she’s continuing to show improvement then she’ll be able to come home! In light of her improvement they’re predicting that we’ll only have to do subcutaneous fluids a couple times a week rather than the daily they’d warned us of when we first took her in.
So the accepted treatment for kidney failure in cats is to put them on a low-protein diet since it’s the protein byproducts that the kidneys aren’t able to filter out of the bloodstream and result in a toxic condition. Plus the fluid therapy to fight dehydration since the kidneys can’t concentrate the urine so they have to put a huge volume of fluids through their system to flush the toxins out.
We’ve talked to one of our alternative medicine friends who pointed out there is some controversy about this approach. The alternate view is that the real problem is with the highly processed proteins in prepared cat food and that what they really need is something closer to their historical diet, i.e., raw meat. This is talked about in a sidebar on felinecrf.com and also by Russell Swift and on this site and this site. We’ll be doing more research and talking to a local holistic vet about this. In the mean time, though, it’s a relief to hear that Alice likes the traditional food well enough and that the fluid therapy isn’t going to be as frequent as we thought it might be.