I took Lucky to the vets on Friday to have her claws clipped and for her yearly injections. She'd had a nasty 'icky botty' attack that morning, before I went to work. I mentioned this to the vet and also the fact that for the past 2 - 3 weeks or so she had been drinking more water than she normally did. I thought that it might have been due to the warm weather. The vet stated that she wanted me to bring Lucky back in for a blood / urine test and to take her blood pressure.
I took Lucky back to the vet yesterday. It was quite a performance, chasing her round my flat to try and get her into the cat carrier! Especially as the vet said she wasn't to have any breakfast before coming in!
Like I said, I took her to the vets and she said that she wanted to keep Lucky in until the early afternoon. This is because Lucky gets really stressed at the vets (not to mention her Meowmy!), and her blood pressure, therefore, would be unnaturally high if they took it there and then. It made more sense to let her stay there, as they could also then do her blood and urine test.
The vet rang me at about 2pm to tell me the results of the blood test; she said that it indicated the onset of kidney disease, but that they were still awaiting a urine sample from her. This would, obviously, back up this prognosis.
At about 5pm the vet rang me again to let me know the results of the urine sample they eventually got. This confirmed that she has Stage 2 Kidney Disease; the vet said that they had collected enough urine to send it off to a lab to check if she has an infection and to check her protein / creatine levels. She said that if these come back positive, they can be treated with medication, but that the kidney disease cannot and that I should feed Lucky renal food. I bought some of this from the vet, and if she takes to it, I will look online to see if it's a bit cheaper; I would never, ever put money above Lucky, but I may in future need to take her to have more vet's tests and I will need the extra money for that. This bill alone cost £186.83 but that includes sending the urine to a laboratory and I think even more regular vet's visits will be a priority from now on.
I've had a quick look on a couple of websites about Feline Kidney Disease and they say that one of the symptoms is vomiting foam. I'd noticed over the last 6 months or so that maybe once or twice a month (to my knowledge - she may have done it more when I've been at work) that she had done this. I've been kicking myself over this; all the other cats that I've had have never had anything like this. Tiger and Gypsy just died of old age and never really had any medical issues. Maybe if I had known, I could have caught it earlier and started the treatment for it.
Anyway, I'm going to make sure that I'm even more observant of Lucky - I'm going to watch her like a hawk! I'll make sure that she has even more loving and affection for however long she has left; hopefully this might be a fair amount of time. The vet said that she knew quite a few cats that toddled along for quite a while with this.
Sorry for the long post, but you know what it's like when it's your furbaby; you love them so much that you worry about them.
