Renal cat food/care for a 7 yo

gettingready

Perhaps someone can advise?

My daughter's boyfriend landed with 2 cats that he did not plan for and can not really afford to keep but took them on as otherwise they would end up homeless/in a shelter.

He had them for a while trying to find a suitable home for them and someone was going to take both in December but last week one of the cats, a ginger boy got unwell and he took him to the vets - turned out to be some renal problem (cristals in urine?), poor cat was at the vets for few days (massive vet bill as cats are not insured), came home for a day and went back to vets again today for a check up. I am waiting for the news.

The person who wanted both cats, does not want the ginger boy now, will only take the other cat.

My daughter's boyfriend never planned to have cats/cat as he knows he can not afford pets but looks like he will now have to keep the ginger boy as what else can he do?

Vet of course recommended Hills Renal or Royal Canine Renal sachets - those work out very expensive.

Can anyone recommend decent renal food for a 7 yo cat that will not break the bank?

The cat is in Winderemere (Cumbria) but we can order from Zooplus of course.

Also, my daughter plans to move there in Jan with her 2 cats. How difficult will it be to feed her girls normal food and the boy renal/special diet?

Our girls are insured but I guess I can stretch for one extra cat.... if needed. Can not think of the poor thing suffering just because he ended up in this situation because of PEOPLE :mad: Glad my daughter's b/f took him on but feel for him too as he is on a low wage.. sighhh

Carer

Funnily enough one of our cats has this and he's a ginger male.

Feeding separately is an issue, we have to feed him in another room and cannot leave any food down for the other cats as he is really greedy and will eat all day. So all cats are fed twice a day and any excess removed after 10 mins so that ginger boy can roam around again.

We feed him on this: http://www.viovet.co.uk/Eukanuba_Veterinary_Diets_Urinary_Struvite_Cat_Food/c500/

There are several others on the market but this one works out cheapest for us. He gets 1/3 tin twice a day, looks very little amount but his weight is now stable (he was overweight) and he seems fine on it. Been on this for several years.

He's had this problem a lot of years now and been hospitalised several times as an emergency with a bladder blocked by crystals.

To cut a long story short, we have tried everything, even raw feeding, and every time we took him off the special food he ended up blocked within a few days, so now he gets only this (plus whatever he can steal - he's very sneaky )

gettingready

Thanks for that.

This cat is not fat, skinny rather...

I have not seen him "in person", only photos but was told he is tiney - his name is Tiny

Thanks again

EDIT - 3 years ago my 10 yo Ginger boy was PTS, kidney cancer
Perhaps there is something to ginger cats and urinary health problems?

rising_from_the_ashes

Hi GR - what a horrid situation and poor cat

Smudge had kidney problems from the age of 2 (I adopted him when he was around 18 months & luckily insured him straight away - who knows, maybe his previous people didn't have him insured & he'd had problems before that .....)

Anyway, he was on a variety of kidney diets from the vet (all quite expensive unfortunately) BUT I did want to offer some hope that, once everything is settled it may be possible to introduce some "normal" wet foots as a bit of variety & also to help with costs

Best of luck with him

rising_from_the_ashes

Just a thought ....


It might be worth emailing Burns customer services (who are great!)

I know most of their dog foods can be used as alternatives to vet prescription diets for Dogs BUT I'm not as "up" on their cat foods - hopefully it will be similar:)

rising_from_the_ashes

Might be worth a look / discuss with vet to see if it looks OK

http://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/dry_cat_food/happy_cat/happycat_needs/145112


Not sure how it compares prices wise to vet stuff now-a-days?

Falleniceangel

My cat suffers from stuvite crystals and so we have to give him special food. You need to find out just how bad the crystals are as sometimes they NEED the renal food to keep the crystals at bay. I know the royal canin food sounds expensive but I found that I spent less on cat food once I moved over to using this. I have two cats and the other one is perfectly fine eating the renal food too.
I know the food sounds expensive but when my cat had to go into the vet with the crystals it cost over £1000 to put right!