Quote Originally Posted by Becky View Post
Indy: thanks for your kind words and for the link. I stumbled across that website in my searching, and I'm glad to hear that my initial favoraable impression of it was reasonably accurate. According to the food chart there, Prowl is low-ish in phosphorus (<1%), but not as low as something like KD (<0.5%).

It sounds like I need to get copies of his labwork and talk more with my vet to determine what the driving factor is right now. Fortunately, he will eat anything that's not nailed down so, for the time being, changing foods and keeping weight on are not issues.
Has your vet checked Auric's phosphorous levels? That would be super helpful information. How is he feeling these days? Is he vomiting a lot or suffer from any of the symptoms of excessive phosphorous?

This discussion had made me start thinking again about feeing our geriatric. I know that a lot of damage has likely already been done in that he had a dry food diet for much of his life--before his mother wised up. We really push hydration in our house. There are water dishes everywhere and he drinks more now than he used to. But as I mentioned, he turns his nose up at anything that isn't smelly, cheap canned food. I'd buy some Prowl, but honestly, I don't think he'd touch it. I have bloodwork done every year, and so far so good. But, goodness, I the thought of him with kidney disease. I really feel for anybody going through it with their kitties.

I do want to comment on something gnat said. No, kidney disease isn't necessarily an immediate death sentence, but one should not lose sight of the fact that it is chronic and incurable. I think it's important to keep that in mind when deciding how to treat it with any given cat. Quality of life issues and the stress that change, frequent visits to the vet, and the like can cause a cat should ideally be considered when trying to treat a chronic disease such as CKF. Some cats might handle it better than others, both emotionally and physically. I felt tremendous guilt when it came to my cat's death, but I had to keep in mind that there was only so much that could be done, even under the best of circumstances (which we didn't have).

I'm not trying to be a downer or suggest that Auric isn't long for this world; I'm just trying to encourage you to look at the big picture if and when quality of life issues start to become evident.