My Cat Has 3 (!) Chronic Illnesses

My best buddy has had CKD (well-controlled) for the last 5 years. He was recently diagnosed with IBD. He is also FIV positive.
Can cats with multiple chronic illnesses like his still live fairly long lives?

So sorry about your buddy. Have you asked the vet if they think the CKD and/or IBD are connected to his FIV+ status? The key is treating any diseases that arise so that they are well-controlled to keep your cat as healthy as possible. I would push your vet to do as much as possible to confirm (or rule out) the IBD, and then assist you in finding the best way to treat/control it.

The trick is going to be finding the right food for his sensitive digestive tract. artiemom , can you or @LTS3 help with this?

But to answer your question, yes. If you can find the right balance of the right foods and right medications, and if you keep stress levels down, your cat can enjoy many happy years with you.

wombat said:

My best buddy has had CKD (well-controlled) for the last 5 years. He was recently diagnosed with IBD. He is also FIV positive.
Can cats with multiple chronic illnesses like his still live fairly long lives?

Click to expand...

I don't believe that FIV has any effect on a cat's life span. I can't speak for the other 2, but since 1 has been well controlled for 5 years, I wouldn't worry too much about that. IBD I have no clue, although (I am not sure...)I don't believe that IBD could have an effect on life span. It doesn't affect human's life span, right?

This is coming from a cat parent who has a cat (almost 13 years old) who was diagnosed with HCM when he was 5, and he is still going strong. I know his cardiologist did not expect him to be alive today, 8 years later. But it's all different depending on the cat - and I think too on the closeness between cat and parent! He is and always will be my little sweetheart!

Mamanyt1953 said:

The trick is going to be finding the right food for his sensitive digestive tract. artiemom , can you or @LTS3 help with this?

Click to expand...

I do not know if I can be of much help.

My last guy had IBD, Megacolon, going on to other issues. CKD was not one of them.

IBD is a frustrating disease. Most of it is trial and error with food.

You need to find one food that your baby will eat, and is allowable for his ckd.

I think a prescription food will work best; but I am not sure. You want to look into novel protein foods: rabbit, duck, venison, lamb, etc.

Many people do raw feeding. I do not. I do not feel comfortable do so. My guy was free fed, his entire life; so it was impossible for me.

What I will suggest is finding an Internal Medicine doctor who can help guide you, with food.

Fancy Feast Pate used to be a really good food for IBD; however, they changed the recipe. Most all of of the foods have the addition of chicken, and/or fish which are a couple of irritants for IBD kitties.

You could look into Hound and Gatos, wet food, or Koha wet food. These are pretty good brands.

There is also a website:
IBDKitties – Helping Save Lives…One Paw at a Timehttps://www.ibdkitties.net/

They also have a facebook page, which is private. You have to ask to join..IBD kitties.

They provide so much information, are very knowledgable. I am sure someone there can help advise you.

One thing which did help was to get a calendar, or make up a worksheet: Plotting food and results of stool. That way you can find your baby's transit time and what each food does to her.. also charting vomiting, if any.....
This helped me a ton. I look back 2.5 days to see a reaction to food.

Wishing you all the luck in the world.

When our cat started throwing up after every meal the first vet we tried thought our cat had IBD. While I was thinking about that I decided to try elimination diet to see if it might be allergy. Once we got rid of the chicken in her diet (we were lucky and it was the first thing we tried) she quit throwing up. She can eat food with chicken broth and chicken fat but not chicken meat.

I'm not saying your doesn't have IBD, but you might want to consider consulting an allergist before you continue. If rather than IBD, he is allergic to an ingredient the IBD treatment won't help much.

Kflowers said:

I'm not saying your doesn't have IBD, but you might want to consider consulting an allergist before you continue. If rather than IBD, he is allergic to an ingredient the IBD treatment won't help much.

Click to expand...

I’m not saying your girl does or doesn’t have IBD. Tbh, the only way to know for sure is to rule everything else out. But...food allergies are a result of the leaky gut that’s part of the IBD syndrome. Gut is overrun with wrong bacteria promoted by inappropriate ingredients (such as starches and grains) which causes gut membrane permeability issues aka leaky gut. Immune system weaponizes against food proteins it never expects to see in the blood. Food allergy! Maybe you caught it quickly enough that a food switch was all that was needed to give her gut a chance to heal.

Food allergy or IBD, no drug treatment will work for very long without addressing the dietary cause.

I don’t know if this is recommended for Ckd cats. Feline-nutrition.org recommends an introductory diet rather than an elimination diet. Make a meat stock by boiling meaty bones until the meat drips off the bone. Drain the liquid including and especially the fatty drippings. Allow it to cool and feed only that to your cat until the vomiting/diarrhea symptoms clear up. They say this happens quickly. Maybe a week. Then slowly introduce the meaty bits of your stock. If she doesn’t react to that, you can try to introduce a single protein food in the same protein as your meat stock. Or you could try a novel protein Novel only has to be new to your cat, not all cats. If you fed chicken all the time, you can try turkey or duck before going all the way to rabbit (hard to get) or venison (many cats don’t like red meat.)

wombat said:

My best buddy has had CKD (well-controlled) for the last 5 years. He was recently diagnosed with IBD. He is also FIV positive.
Can cats with multiple chronic illnesses like his still live fairly long lives?

Click to expand...

You will need to work closely with your vet. There is a standard care for CKD, I have a cat that was diagnosed a little over a year ago and so far is well controlled with a prescription diet.

You will need to be very careful with dietary changes because diet and fluid intake is key to keeping CKD controlled at least as well as possible. There is no cure all for IBD because no two cases are alike. My IBD cat had his first flare when he was only 18 months old and it was major, several days at the vets on an IV. He would go as long as 9 months between flares then with absolutely no changes he would have another major flare. Never did find a trigger for his flares. I finally found a good vet, a feline only specialist with years of experience and she had never seen IBD present in the way it presented with Patches. That is probably why none of the other vets I had taken him to had diagnosed it.

If you are comfortable with your vet stick with him or her and work closely with him or her. If you aren't completely comfortable then look into a feline specialist.

My cat was diagnosed with both CKD and IBD. You'll need a good vet and blood work every 3 months, but I don't see a reason why you should worry too much about these conditions affecting his lifespan

One issue I ran into was the CKD causing high blood pressure, and the steroids for his IBD would raise it further, so it took a little while to find the right blood pressure med dosage. Another problem we ran into was low potassium, low potassium is caused by excessive water drinking in CKD, and the steroids also caused increased thirst.

Both illnesses can cause deficiencies, so you may have to mix supplements into your cat's food. I gave mine Pet-tinic, B-12, and vetoquinol renal K powdered potassium mixed into his wet food. The first two supplements are ok to give now if you want, the potassium you want to wait on lab work first. Pumpkin and probiotics would be ok to give now too, they'll help both issues.


Anyways, I hope your cat is feeling ok today. Just find a really good vet you trust and you can manage both conditions well, hopefully for many more years. My cat lived for 2 years with CKD and IBD for a year, but he was so old that I think his body was just slowing down and it was his time. Both conditions were managed very well, his kidneys did start to really fail in the end but he was 18.5. I have heard of younger cats with kidney disease living 10 years after diagnosis