Too Much Protein?

[florine]

Hello, my cat Florine has a UTI and I am concerned about something the vet said. My cat has protein in her urine, apparently, and my vet said it could be caused by the UTI she currently has, or it could be caused by her diet, or a problem with her kidneys.

Obviously I'm hoping it's related to the UTI, but I have a question regarding her diet in order to see if its possible to rule it out as a reason!!

I use the calculator for raw food diets provided by feline nutrition. I mix up the type of protein used tho, she always gets five pounds of ground chicken along with five pounds of something else like rabbit or turkey. I'm concerned that maybe I've added too much of the chicken livers and hearts to her diet, because those are the only thing I don't measure exactly and have given her extra of in her food because I know she likes them! I cut them up and in each meal she gets maybe two to three little chunks of liver or heart, is that too much? Could that be causing her to take in an excess of protein?

She's two years old and very healthy otherwise!

 

[Azazel]

Your vet should do further testing, including blood work, to determine the cause.

In general I would stick to the recipe. Too much liver is not recommended, but don’t think it would cause protein in urine.

 

[LTS3]

The kidneys filter out excess protein and wastes. A raw diet is high in protein so it's common for protein levels in the urine to be high. Standard urine and blood work values are based on commercial dry and canned food since that's what was fed to cats for a long time. Raw diets have only been popular within the past decade.

There is a condition called renal amyloidosis which can cause excessive protein to show up in the urine. The condition is rare and only affects Abyssinians and a few other similar breeds.

This has some info: Looking for the links with info about elevated BUN/crea in raw fed cats

I had the same conversation with my vet about Leroy's last blood work. BUN levels were higher than the normal range. He was leaning towards possible early kidney disease and I had to remind him that I feed a raw diet that is high in protein so extra protein will be excreted.

 

[florine]

The kidneys filter out excess protein and wastes. A raw diet is high in protein so it's common for protein levels in the urine to be high. Standard urine and blood work values are based on commercial dry and canned food since that's what was fed to cats for a long time. Raw diets have only been popular within the past decade.

There is a condition called renal amyloidosis which can cause excessive protein to show up in the urine. The condition is rare and only affects Abyssinians and a few other similar breeds.

This has some info: Looking for the links with info about elevated BUN/crea in raw fed cats

I had the same conversation with my vet about Leroy's last blood work. BUN levels were higher than the normal range. He was leaning towards possible early kidney disease and I had to remind him that I feed a raw diet that is high in protein so extra protein will be excreted.

Thanks for that info! I'm feeling a little out of my depth reading that thread, I'm not entirely knowledgable on all that stuff but I'll have to give it another read when my brain isn't fried!

I've been worrying over the health of my cats kidneys ever since my vet told me last week that there was protein in her urine, but maybe I'll be lucky and it will have been caused by her UTI and will go away!!

 

[kittyluv387]

The kidneys filter out excess protein and wastes. A raw diet is high in protein so it's common for protein levels in the urine to be high. Standard urine and blood work values are based on commercial dry and canned food since that's what was fed to cats for a long time. Raw diets have only been popular within the past decade.

There is a condition called renal amyloidosis which can cause excessive protein to show up in the urine. The condition is rare and only affects Abyssinians and a few other similar breeds.

This has some info: Looking for the links with info about elevated BUN/crea in raw fed cats

I had the same conversation with my vet about Leroy's last blood work. BUN levels were higher than the normal range. He was leaning towards possible early kidney disease and I had to remind him that I feed a raw diet that is high in protein so extra protein will be excreted.

This!!! I told my vet this about my raw fed cat and it did not even compute for her, sigh. So i actually consulted w/THE Dr. Pierson from catinfo.org and she said not to worry about slightly elevated levels of creatinine for cats that eat a species appropriate high protein diet.