In March 2020, my 2 year old cat Tansy was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney disease. I was told her lifespan would be measured in weeks or months at the most. With the aid of my homeopath, I kept her going for 8 months but had to euthanize her in the October. I believed her condition was due to a congenital problem which I wrote about earlier this week.
Cat Has Involuntary Tremors/twitches When Relaxed
I felt the remaining kitty Willow was lonely (they were adopted together) so took on another rescue from a very bad background. She was called Phoenix because when they rescued her from a hoarding situation at about 7 months old with a litter of kittens, she weighed a mere1.2kg but survived despite the odds. When I adopted her from a foster situation in May 2021, she weighed 2.6kg and she rapidly put on another 800g under my care, but then gradually, the weight declined, imperceptibly until, to my shock, she was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney disease last week and I euthanized her 2 days later, not wanting to put her through any more than she had already suffered in her short life. I thought that her illness was due to the severe malnourishment she suffered as a kitten, but the vet insists not, since her blood and urine tests were supposedly normal last May. She believes there was some kind of acute injury to the kidneys in the last 6 months (infection for example) but I never saw any sign of such.
Today, feeling completely paranoid, I decided to take Willow (4 years) to be checked out just to put my mind at rest, only to be told she too has elevated GFR figures and appears to be in stage 1/2 kidney disease. The difficulty with her, although we have caught it a lot earlier is that she is already on a hypoallergenic diet, so putting her on a renal diet will quite likely upset her allergy. Managing her condition is not going to be easy at all. My vet cannot shed any light on the matter other than to say that we will never really know what is responsible and that I seem to have been very unlucky.
Of course, I am wracked with guilt. How could this happen? What am I doing to harm my cats? I do use pesticides in the garden, but try to make sure that the cats are well out of the way when I do so and that liquid products dry before the cats can be near them. My vet has also said that cats would generally avoid them. In any event, if my cats ingested even a small amount of pesticide, surely the effect would be pretty immediate and dramatic, as opposed to undetectable, long-term kidney damage? It has occurred to me that, for the first time in my 40 odd years of owning and loving cats, I am being rigorous about using tick and flea products containing selamectin and fipronil.
Does anyone know of instances where these ingredients have been known to damage kidneys over time? If I can't figure this out, I'm afraid that Willow will be my very last pet because I can't go on hurting the very creatures that I love so much and often are the only things that give my life purpose.
Cat Has Involuntary Tremors/twitches When Relaxed
I felt the remaining kitty Willow was lonely (they were adopted together) so took on another rescue from a very bad background. She was called Phoenix because when they rescued her from a hoarding situation at about 7 months old with a litter of kittens, she weighed a mere1.2kg but survived despite the odds. When I adopted her from a foster situation in May 2021, she weighed 2.6kg and she rapidly put on another 800g under my care, but then gradually, the weight declined, imperceptibly until, to my shock, she was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney disease last week and I euthanized her 2 days later, not wanting to put her through any more than she had already suffered in her short life. I thought that her illness was due to the severe malnourishment she suffered as a kitten, but the vet insists not, since her blood and urine tests were supposedly normal last May. She believes there was some kind of acute injury to the kidneys in the last 6 months (infection for example) but I never saw any sign of such.
Today, feeling completely paranoid, I decided to take Willow (4 years) to be checked out just to put my mind at rest, only to be told she too has elevated GFR figures and appears to be in stage 1/2 kidney disease. The difficulty with her, although we have caught it a lot earlier is that she is already on a hypoallergenic diet, so putting her on a renal diet will quite likely upset her allergy. Managing her condition is not going to be easy at all. My vet cannot shed any light on the matter other than to say that we will never really know what is responsible and that I seem to have been very unlucky.
Of course, I am wracked with guilt. How could this happen? What am I doing to harm my cats? I do use pesticides in the garden, but try to make sure that the cats are well out of the way when I do so and that liquid products dry before the cats can be near them. My vet has also said that cats would generally avoid them. In any event, if my cats ingested even a small amount of pesticide, surely the effect would be pretty immediate and dramatic, as opposed to undetectable, long-term kidney damage? It has occurred to me that, for the first time in my 40 odd years of owning and loving cats, I am being rigorous about using tick and flea products containing selamectin and fipronil.
Does anyone know of instances where these ingredients have been known to damage kidneys over time? If I can't figure this out, I'm afraid that Willow will be my very last pet because I can't go on hurting the very creatures that I love so much and often are the only things that give my life purpose.