Feline Chronic Renal Failure

Thank goodness for a wife who is learning to be a nurse. We've been suffering with a chronically sick cat, who apparently has kidney's that are failing him. It's a painful disease that usually come on older cats, but Rusty has contracted at age 8. Basically, his kidney's are failing to function properly and so he needs lots of water and care to keep him going. There is a whole slough of related issues as well, including constipation, frequent urination, weakness, et cetera, et cetara. It's not nice, and the worst thing is that it hurts him, he's not comfortable and not even his old self.

We know that it may only be a matter of time, maybe not even a long time, and we'll lose him. It's hard when we have nights like last night where he was really sick, and we don't know what to do. The crazy thing is we can't even take him to the vet and get them to do something, because there is very little they can do as well. There are kidney transplants, but that may not do much for him, including even whether he'll make it through the surgery let alone the recovery. That and he'd be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of his life, which is hard for a little cat. So we keep working with him.

Thankfully my wonderful wife is good at giving IV's and force feeding, because we've been doing alot of that lately. Rusty gets sub-cu fluids every day (may be more than that soon) and is right now being syringe fed vet food. He doesn't like it, but it usually makes a difference, and we thought he was picking up again, until last night he turned for the worse. It's so frustrating because there is so little you can do, even though you want to do a whole lot.

So it may mean we may lose our little guy in the near future. I hate the thought of that, because he's been so important to us, and we like to think to him. I guess I care too much, because I've known lots of people who have no problem getting rid of their cats when they move, or because they become inconvenient (ever tried finding a rental that allows pets!!). But I guess I'm not that kind of person, and I've never lost a pet before, so I don't even know how I'm going to deal with it, especially when we have to make the choice about whether to put him down because he's so sick.

Anyways, I know this is a kind of sad post, but I needed to get a bit of it off my chest. I try to be upbeat even when I don't feel that way (well, most of the time) but my Sis-in-law said it's ok sometimes to say what you are really feeling, and I think this is one of those times.

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