This food is NOT a good diet Most anything you can find in a supermarket shelf is basically- a garbage diet. (Grains are terrible for cats as they are 100% carnivores) as are by products, colors,ect.

Legally pets have the same dietary/food safety rights as slaughter bound livestock in factory farms, and like livestock in factory farms some end up fed back to them, cow to cows, chickens to chickens,pigs to pigs cats to cats,dogs to dogs with everything in between. This is where (meat meal or Meat and bone meal comes from)

because its required by law to cook all pet food, it is VERY hard to tell DNA(which is ruined very easily by heat) from the meat they use, but people have seen and posted videos of pets going into pet food.

Try Innova EVO, Instincts, wellness grain free.Orijen,Ziwi peak. Or better yet a homemade or raw diet- raw meat/bones/organs.

Natures variety
Bravo
primal

are all good pre made raws

Runswalken - the OP is saying that she is trying to find anything that her cat will eat to try to keep weight on her. Now is not the time to recommend what you repeatedly, over and over and over say. If it means feeding Sheba, Fancy Feast, etc. to get her to eat something, anything, then that is what her cat needs. Do you really expect an ill kitty to eat a raw diet - meat, bones, and organs?

You really need a new mantra to preach - your current lecture is getting old. No matter what someone posts you respond with the same answer. "My cat hurt her leg" "what kind of food do you feed her? Raw is better"

i do not answer hurt leg issues with food

how dumb do you take me for?

anyway, how old is your cat catyleap? It may be too late to stop the total damage caused by feeding a poor quality food but animals are very tough so who knows

EVO IS rather rich so if cat is sensitive it may be better to try Orijen or Instincts, wellness grain free is good too.

Kitties in end stage renal disease need to be on special diets. You need to experiment with a few different kinds to find one your kitty likes.

Best wishes,
Junebug

true, but when (if ) they get better i would put hem on something natural and good like Instincts,wellness grain free,EVO.

I have to agree with sephia, here. I'm frankly getting frustrated at going into every single thread in this forum, and regardless of the issue being discussed, there's a post by runsnwalken regarding food issues. A significant majority of the time, it has no bearing to the discussion at hand. I get that you're trying to contribute to the conversation, and I understand that you have...issues, runsnwalken, but seriously -- you need to tone it down a bit. You're starting to sound like a broken record...or worse, a troll.

"how dumb do you take me for?"

I don't think you're dumb, just persistently, annoyingly ill informed

okay

I have to agree. runsnwalken, you post the same thing over and over. When you do so, people soon stop taking you seriously.

At this point it is important that kitty eats, what she eats is less important.

Many of us here have been through this phase of kidney failure. Best wishes and a scratch on the head to your dear kitty.

Maybe my food info for the next cat/kitten catyleep gets. An one of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I do hope it works well for you.

runsnwalken, please stop recommending commercial foods that are high in protein and phosphorous, and especially RAW diets for cats in chronic renal failure. If any of their owners should actually heed your advice, they could do serious damage to their cats by following your recommendations.

Cats in CHRONIC renal failure, by definition, do not get better. They can have periods of time when they feel better and their blood values may temporarily improve, but CHRONIC means that the disease is ALWAYS present and the kidneys are ALWAYS compromised. The high quality foods that you consistently recommend are great choices for healthy felines, but they are NOT advisable for cats with CRF or ARF (acute renal failure).

Cats with renal failure often have minimal appetites. While it is true that specialized renal diets are advisable for many renal patients (particularly those in mid-late stage), prescription renal diets tend to be unpalatable to many cats. If a CRF cat refuses to eat a renal diet, the cat MUST still eat. That means we feed the cat whatever the cat WILL eat, regardless of quality. My CRF and hyperT cat, Billy, is a junk food junkie. He will rarely eat any of the higher end foods. He prefers Friskies and Fancy Feast. Would I prefer that he eat a renal diet or any of the premium foods that you recommend? Of course I would. But most of the time he turns his nose up at them, and I will not stand by and watch him starve himself to death just to satisfy myself that I'm offering him the best possible food options.

CRF is a disease of checks and balances and compromises. You will likely learn that some day if you continue to own cats. In the meantime, please understand that your posts take on a very blaming tone at a time when cat owners don't need the added stress of being blamed for an illness with which they are doing battle for their cats' lives. You may have the intent of helping, but that is not the result.

Laurie

Okay,

I said the "next cat" she get- assuming its healthy.

I understand the diet needs of her sick one now.

I'm with you OP. When my CRF/hyper-t cat was diagnosed 3 years back, the vet emphasized that it would be nice if she ate the renal diet, but really we just wanted her to eat. She is so finicky. For a while I tried to push specialty foods on her, and even made our own food for a while, but after a while I gave up and now feed her whatever she will eat. She can just be so sick or "off" some days and it's hard to get much of anything into her. We are even having trouble finding "junk food" that she will eat recently. So frustrating.

quasifish, have you tried Cyproheptadine on your girl? It's an antihistamine that has appetite stimulant effects in some cats. It works well for my Billy, though it apparently doesn't work for all cats. If you decide to try it, start with a low dose and increase slowly, if necessary. The "standard dose" (1-2 mg twice daily) can cause agitation or depression in many CRf cats, including howling, hyperactivity, and rapid heart rate (among other unpleasant symptoms). I give Billy .5 mg (1/8 pill) once a day. It's the only thing that keeps Billy eating enough to maintain his current too-lean weight.

It's worth a try, anyway.

Laurie

Laurie, we have not tried cyproheptadine with her as of yet. It is RX, right? She's gained or maintained her weight adequately over the 3 years, but she has short episodes where she doesn't eat well from time to time. She's having more problems since her brother passed away, but that was still less than a month ago. I've been using nutrical on her, which seems to work a bit like an appetite stimulant, or it settles her stomach enough to make her feel like eating.

One of the biggest problems we are having of late is that she often wants to eat her dry food and not the wet we put out. Since she had her teeth pulled last fall, she just swallows the kibble pieces whole (she doesn't like them moistened or broken up though). When the dry kibble expands in her stomach, it is apparently too much for her and she throws it up.

Almost worse than that, her new MO is to climb up on the bed at night when she is feeling sick and allbut throw up next to our heads. We wake up to her doing the nauseas, watery-mouth thing. She has thrown up a lot in her life with all her health problems, but never thrown up on the bed, and definitely not practically on one of us. We are getting to the point that we are going to have to lock her out of our bedroom at night. I feel terrible, but that's just too much.

She's due to go into the vet, hopefully this week, but I'm sick today so will make the appointment tomorrow or when I feel well enough, and I'll talk to the vet about these things.

I probably should have started a new thread for this, but gosh, she's really frustrating me lately. I feel bad and know that it's probably triggered by grief, but it gets to a point that she's driving me crazy too.

I hear ya! It does get frustrating trying to keep up with the symptoms. It's like a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces keep changing shape. Just when you think you have it all put together, something shifts, and all the pieces start misaligning again. Let's see if I can offer any helpful suggestions for you to try.

I definitely think Cypro is worth trying with your girl. Lots of folks use it only on the days when their cats' appetites wane. I have to give it to Billy every day, or he'll barely eat anything. Sounds like you might be able to use it intermittently only when your girl isn't eating well on her own.

Dry food throw-up? Hmm. Have you tried just giving her maybe half a dozen kibbles at a time, then half a dozen more every 15 mins until she's satisfied? That might prevent her stomach from overfilling when they expand.

Overnight nausea - yep, that's a pretty common problem with CRF cats. They overproduce stomach acid at night, and without any food in their stomachs for the acid to work on, the acid irritates the stomach lining and gets vomited up. Try feeding her right before bedtime and giving her a stomach acid reducer like Pepcid AC or Zantac 75. Billy was throwing up bile in the wee hours just about every night before I started giving him 1/8 tablet of Zantac 75 every night just before bedtime.

Good luck,

Laurie

Thanks Laurie :^) She's not doing the bile vomit at night anymore so much as she's doing the dry food throw up- that's why we haven't tried limiting her dry food, because she only eats it at night. The vet recommended tagamet for her tummy when she first got sick, I will try giving that to her before bedtime and see if it helps. I'll let you know how it works out. I suspect if she loses too much weight, we will talk about a stimulant; she's done okay in the past, but I'm very worried about her since Gus passed away.

BTW, I was glad to hear that Billy seemed to do well with his dental surgery. It's such a tough decision to make. I can't get over how much better Muddy smells since she had all those teeth pulled.

I agree with what Laurie said. Our kitty took Cypro for quite some time. Even a small quarter tablet put her in the eating mode.

Smaller portions of the dry might help.

I sympathise with Cathyleep. When Max was in his late stages of CRF, the only thing he would eat was Tender Vittles (this was after 2 years of Science Diet KD). My vet agreed that anything was better than nothing. In addition to his other meds and fluids, The Tender Vittles kept him alive, alert and from wasting away for another 6 months.
LF

Tagamet might not be the best option for a CRF cat. It has more drug interactions than either Pepcid AC or Zantac 75, a more profound "rebound effect" than either of the others, and may cause the creatinine to rise in CRF cats. Either Pepcid AC or Zantac 75 are safer acid blocker choices for CRF cats.

Another option you may want to discuss with your vet is Reglan. When my last CRF cat, Bitsy, started throwing up undigested food about an hour after consumption, it was because his digestive tract had temporarily lost motility, so the food wasn't moving through it as quickly as it should have. Reglan regulates stomach motility and gets things moving again. It worked wonders for Bitsy and stopped all vomiting of undigested food.

You can read all about these different med options on Tanya's site.

Good luck!

Laurie

For a little added "nutrition" you could try Cat Sure (feline version of Ensure). My finicky 20-yr-old CRF LOVES it. It's all she wants, but I limit it to mornings (and cut almost half-and-half with water) so she won't get tired of it (because I use this to mix in the Miralax for her constipation).

Casey, too, still prefers her dry kibble (old habits die hard), and for most of her life, she'd throw it up like yours--almost whole. Then last year I decided to crunch it up with a hammer and lo-and-behold, no more of that type of throwing up! It took her a few days to accept it this way, but now there's no problem. She has all her teeth, she just never "chewed" her food :-)

My kitty thinks of can food as "treats" which she easily tires of. So far, I've kept to the more premium brands (non-grocery store), but she's boycotting them all. When I was talking to my vet about it, she said she'd rather see her eat the dry kibble (Sci. Diet senior) than go to the lower grade canned foods. She is getting hydrated, and she's drinking the Cat Sure, so maybe that helps balance her out, moisture-in-food wise.

Good luck.
Tracey

Wow, thanks for all the info, Laurie! I've read so much on the Tanya site, but apparently not much about acid reducers. We started the Tagamet at the beginning before anything else, and she didn't need it for long at that point, so we are just getting back into that. I will try one of the others instead, just to be on the safe side.

I did give her some before bed last night and it went so much better. She got really pesky early in the morning, but it was different... playful, not cranky, if that makes sense.

I will keep that in mind about the Reglan. I have heard that butter helps release an enzyme from the... pancreas?... that keeps their guts moving. Our first morning ritual every day is to give Muddy a little sliver of butter, which she loves. Maybe she loves it because it helps?

Tracey, thanks for all those suggestions, especially about Cat Sure, that sounds like a good product. How is your sub-q administration going? I've been wondering how you and your kitty have been.

Hi Quasifish:

Well, I'm still not doing it myself. She's gotten REALLY cranky about it, even at the vet's, and it's sure getting expensive!

My hubby comes back from his looooong trip abroad on Friday, and we're going to start trying again at home. I'm sure that with him helping, I'll be able to do it here. Maybe she'll get used to it so that by the next time he has a trip, I can even do it myself. Thanks for asking!

I have some questions of my own, but will start another thread...
Tracey