Renal Issues & Diet Advice

[CrazyCrazyCatLady]

Hi there… I'm new around here. We have two cats (litter mates) that are 10y/o and have been eating a raw diet for a while. They have been eating rad cat (turkey, chicken, pork) for years, and before that they ate primal which we reconstituted with water. One has had crystals in his urine before (maybe 7 years ago?), which was when we got water fountains around the house.

He just had lab work done and the vet is worried about his creatinine levels and another measurement to determine kidney function, but I can’t recall what it was. She didn’t say that he has kidney disease, but recommended a kidney diet. Gave parameters or percentages I should look for in his food. Which in the midst of things I deleted off my phone (maybe under 18%protein, under 24% fat, and 40% carbs?) and recommended dry food. Which…I was surprised by. I love our vet- love her. It doesn’t make sense to me to take any moisture away, and our cats aren’t picky about food.

I did look at Tanya’s (I think?) recommendations, and bought purina kidney diet in cans. He liked it and gobbled it up. But as someone who has been feeding them high quality protein I feel weird giving them junk now, and the rad cat has ~14% protein,~76% moisture, and I know uses egg not bone so the phosphorus would be a bit lower.

Of course I also ordered all kinds of cranberry supplements and other renal supplements to see if he’d eat any of those and if they might help b/c I want to do whatever is best to try and stave off any major problems for him.

Would trying to continue rad cat and finding a supplement he might take be a bad idea? He goes back in three months to recheck levels.

Just hoping maybe someone has advice on what they think we should do in this situation? I'd appreciate it so much!

 

[stephanietx]

I would continue feeding what you're currently feeding and re-check his levels in about 3 months or so. You could always feed him a smaller serving of the Rx food or mix into his other food and see if it makes any difference. You're correct that you don't want to feed any dry food.

 

[LTS3]

He just had lab work done and the vet is worried about his creatinine levels and another measurement to determine kidney function, but I can’t recall what it was. She didn’t say that he has kidney disease, but recommended a kidney diet.

Raw fed cats often have high kidney values. The parameters for kidney values are based on dry food since that's what was fed by pet owners for years. Raw diets have only become popular within the past decade. Raw diets are high in protein. What the body doesn't need is filtered out through the kidneys. Here's a thread about BUN and creatine levels in raw fed cats: Looking for the links with info about elevated BUN/crea in raw fed cats

Was this the first blood work your cat had done? If it is, I wouldn't necessarily worry about the kidney levels if they are higher than the range. You can have the vet recheck the values in a couple of months. My vet was also concerned about my Aby's slightly high kidney levels and I had to remind him that I feed a high protein raw diet so the blood work values may be "abnormal". A retest done a few months later showed kidney values in the normal range. I still feed raw.