Therapy Pets ? Who has done Subcutaneous Fluid Therapy for their ...

My 13 year old cat was diagnosed with renal failure today??and now I have to make the difficult decsion on do we treat or not. Will have to give her liquids every day for hte rest of her life, and its unclear how long she would live. I hate the thougth of losing her, but what is the qulity of life like for cats who undergo this treatment?

I have given this to a few cats, 2 of which were my cats with CRF, both about 10 yrs ago. It may seem at first like it will be awful to stick that needle in your cat, but it is not hard to learn and the cats seem to figure out after not too long that they feel SO much better shortly after they get the fluids.
The sites

http://www.felinecrf.com

http://www.felinecrf.org

have a lot of info about the disease and its treatment including giving fluids. There are some videos you can find online that show how to do it, some from vets,
for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LSppGcrQ3Y&feature=PlayList&p=8AEDC4CE630E6A1A&playnext_from=PL&index=0
others just from regular people who have made videos of giving fluids to their own cats, for example http://weirdstuffwemake.com/weird/stuff/pets/cats/sophia/catjuice.html

Quality of life as well as quantity would depend how much kidney function your kitty has left and how well this as well as any needed meds, limitation of phosphorus in diet etc. will help to treat symptoms and slow or stop progression of the disease (yes sometimes it is arrested for quite a while)
In the case of my own cats they lived about a year after diagnosis. But one of them had been badly burned in a major fire before I adopted him and the vet thought that might have damaged his kidneys ? he got CRF at only age 7.
Since then there have been advancements in the treatment and it seems like more cats are living multiple years, in some cases 5+ years, before their quality of life deteriorates to the point that euthanasia is the best choice.

I really think moving away from the low protein diet (for example Hill?s k/d) that used to be the standard treatment has helped many cats, because that diet caused a lot of other problems that would then get ascribed to the disease itself. That might work better with dogs but cats need more protein, that is the main fuel they run on. ( Some vets still use that older treatment but the more up to date approach is to limit the phosphorus and focus on the quality of the protein.) Also there are new meds etc used now that have been found to help.

Quality of life will also depend on your cat?s personality and how well she tolerates the treatment. But I would not predict in advance that a cat will not tolerate it. One of the cats i gave it to had even been abused before and used to be very untrusting of people and was still a nervous cat, so I worried that he would hate it and it would destroy the trust we had slowly built up. But he turned out to really get along well ? he let not only me but other family members give him his fluids and would sit there purring and then just go on his way. he seemed to somehow understand we were trying to help him. maybe he came to associate it with how much better he felt very soon afterward.

Of course there?s no guarantee. but I would be inclined to give it a try for a while and see. you may be surprised how much better she feels and how well you are able to treat her. and you may find that you become even closer to your cat.

If you do decide not to treat it you need to have her euthanized now to stop her from suffering.
Good luck to you and your cat, whatever you decide.

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