Bruno's Blog – a complete animal at work

More news from our intrepid family in Kazakstan…

“As it turns out I have, armed with a a telephone and the Oxford Russian/English dictionary, found a small office that imports royal canin.  So I can buy some reassuringly expensive food, upping the dog food bill from 1,500 tenge to 8,500 a bag.

Every dog food from the supermarket gave Lettie colitis.  Diarrhoea and broken sleep.  I tried to call you when your orginal suggestion of the barf diet just wouldn’t work.  Raw kidneys, chicken wings, mince with raw grated carrots and apples all spurned with the greatest embarrassment by our dog.  Toulouse sausage and pur brebis go immediately you turn your back, but anything recommended by the barf diet was greeted with horror.  Her favourite foods are roast chicken – no bones – and shepherd’s pie with butternut and green beans.  Don’t know why she likes butternut so much when she loathes peas and carrots.

At this point I called you in despair.  Also seemed to be white discharge which might indicate some form of pyometra.  That seems to have slowed down now.  At the moment she is on tins of dog food called ‘darling’ by purina, supplemented with chicken stock and left-over sunday lunch.  This until the next shipment of RC sensible diet arrives next month.

Why won’t she eat raw food if it is meant to be so good for her?  Does it need to be heated up, like her master’s dinner?  Grilled with cheese on top?

I hope we are out of the crisis, except that the outside dog has just eaten all of Lettie’s hand-stitched leather collar, leaving only the buckle behind.  His Lordship will not be amused.”

So now you know – just remember, you heard it here first…

Our clever friend Professor Elliott has been scribbling away about kidney disease in cats again.

I know you thought kidney failure was just what made old cats skinny and drink a lot, but of course, when you start to look at it more closely, it’s WAY more complicated then that.

One of the problems is that by the time we start to see signs of kidney failure – weight loss, poor appetite, increased thirst – the poor dears have probably already lost about 70% of their functional kidney tissue, so it begins to look like a salvage job right from the start.

Feeding them a low protein-high carb diet so they don’t produce some much nitrogen waste (urea) is a good start. Dietary change is the single most important thing affecting life expectancy in these cases.

Feed them wet food to increase their water intake so they don’t get so dehydrated (they can’t concentrate their urine so well any more).

There are prescription medicines available – ACE inhibitors like Fortekor – that help to maintain maximum blood supply through these tired old kidneys. Your vet has to prescribe these.

Some vets are also very keen on using appetite enhancers like vitamin B12 to keep their interest up. Kaminox, if they’ll accept it in their food, helps balance the potassium levels and maintain levels of essential amino acids and B vitamins.

Now here’s the tough one. One of the complications of chronic kidney disease in older cats is that they become less able to get rid of excess phosphates from their bodies. Instead, they combine the phosphate with calcium leached out from the skeleton and, left to their own devices, allow it to settle in the remaining kidney tissue. This can further reduce the kidney’s blood supply and ability to function normally.

What can we do about this?

Reduce the dietary intake of phosphates and add a phosphate binder such as Ipakitine into the food.  This is important even if their blood phosphate levels are still apparently within the normal range.

So now you know.

Plenty of water.

Low protein, low phosphate food. Ask your vet about prescription diets.

Phosphate binders.