Category: feline renal failure

how you give medications to a cat during a power failure



how you give medications to a cat during a power failure

Originally uploaded by canuckshutterer.

yeah you can take pictures in the dark or near dark, the Nikon 5700 focused on the flashlight beam

the image was much brighter than the real scene and I bumped the brightness a tad in software….

for a week, morning and night, I stuck a needle in him to give him subcutaneous fluid therapy (saline bag hung over the door of the kitchen cupboard), but his kidney were gone and he would not eat, he was turning into a ghost. 17 year old kitten.

Sundance – 1989-2006 – rest in peace, little buddy


Took him to the vet this afternoon to be re-assessed. Despite our subcutaneous fluid therapy this past week, he was dehydrated, had not eaten on his own for five days, his right kidney was shrunken to next to nothing, his left kidney was “huge” even more enlarged than last week and it was greatly enlarged last week. He was exhausted. Last night I slept with him on my bed and heard him purr a few times as I patted him and gently combed his coat. So upon the advice of the vet we put him down today at 3:30 p.m. I was holding him at the end. My little buddy is gone and I will never forget him. Beautiful cat, a great member of the family.

ep. 4 sub q – food rubbing 101


mr cat who has chronic renal failure and is receiving sub cutaneous fluid therapy at home, I get to stick it to him, an 18 guage needle hooked up to a gravity feed lactated ringers solution bag…… is not eating enough. So food rubbing 101 has begun and has been running for a couple of days. I sneak up on him with a small dish of food and put some on a finger and rub it on the outside of his mouth….since he is a clean freak, he has to lick it down and then we repeat the operation. So he is getting some food but not quite enough. This morning while I was patting him, he was laying out on his catnip blanket on the rug in front of the TV. He was purring very loudly. He is pretty quiet most of the day but does some wandering around the house keeping track of people and his pack buddy, Shakespeare the wonder dog. He climbs up on beds when he needs maximum cuddling.

There are a number of information pages on the web about feline CRF and they offer some good advice. It is an emotional roller coaster. You keep trying to figure out whether you are doing a good thing or prolonging unnecessarily a very tough life. Sometime he seems like a ghost, other times quite a bit like his old self.

Today is the hottest day of the summer (so far – knock wood, it will be the one for the summer) and both the dog and the cat are resting quietly. I don’t have the world’s most powerful a/c unit but it does take off the edge. Also, ran a de-humidifier to remove the high humidity last night and I may give that a boost right now for a little while.

Probably going to take him into the vet on Thursday afternoon to assess him before we head into the long weekend. Wish the little devil would eat more.

ep. 3 – sub Q – mini lion takes a stroll


we have settled down in our sub Q fluid therapy – that time of day where I get to stick it to the cat, that is the needle attached to the fluid line attached to the fluids bag for the gravity feed…..he even lay down and relaxed for the session last night.

Afterwards, I let him out and followed along as he went out to bite at some tall grass, which helped him throw up some foamy phlegm (clear not brownish). My hope was that a little grass chewing might help his stomach if upset and clear the way for more eating. We spent a half an hour strolling around on the front lawn. I tossed him a twig and he tracked it with his eyes and went over and gave it a bash with his paw. A lot of the time he just sat on his haunches looking around and taking in the smells coming to him on the breeze. For many years he has been a mini lion with about a 85 yard range. A lot of his outdoor time was curled up in the sun sleeping.

I was happy to see him out getting a little extra stimulation. I just wish his appetite would resurface more strongly. I may go rent an antelope costume and bound around in the living room trying to get his lion king self to bite.

tremendous tangent – I watched Madagascar for the laughs and there were lots. My favourite scene was a toss up between the little old lady whacking the lion with her purse and the moment where the lion wakes up from the first darting and asks for some help and everyone screams and a shower of tranquilizer darts land all around him and he turns his paw around and sees a dart has stuck in his paw….lights go out and then his drug induced hallucogenic psychedelic dream sequence flashes for a few moments. Hi-larious.

ep. 2 – sub Q – it ain’t easy but he’s my pussycat


administering subcutaneous fluid therapy to my 17 year old cat who has chronic renal failure … well, it ain’t as easy as it seemed at first, my sister and I work as a team to help him with this treatment:

  1. very hard to read the scale markings on the fluid bag and we may have given him a little too much
  2. managed to stick myself with the needle, which means taking off old needle and using a fresh needle
  3. at which point I got confused and instead of just doing that I first opened the fluid wheel lock thinking I was closing it (not a smarter than average bear moment) and fluid streaming out
  4. on another occasion, while checking the bag scale, mr. cat turned and the needle pulled out
  5. he isnt eating and we are very worried
  6. on the plus side he looks sharper today, more alert and walking around more

also, I try to keep in mind that we have only been doing this for three days

also, on the plus side I have had a switch close in my head and have realized that Television is a complete soul-killing waster of time and have stopped watching everything but the weather channel

sub-cutaneous fluid therapy for cat with chronic renal failure – episode 1


Took mr. cat to the vet for a check after he had been back home about two days. Got the demo of how to do the subcutaneous fluid injection. Did my first sub q under the vet’s supervision and took him home. Tonight did the first sub q at home and all went well. It is not as difficult as I had thought it might be. It helps that he has always been a very laid back cat.

I must confess seeing the fluid bag back in the fridge is a little odd.

I suppose my concern is that we are prolonging his life and making sure that this  judgement is from seeing exactly how he is today and not from falsely seeing him today  with the added filters of 17 years of fun and love.
We are to bring him back to the vet in 10 – 14 days and assess how things are going at that point. Meanwhile more sub q treatments and charting his behaviour.

It also has brought about an interesting re-awareness of the banal nature of most of the avalanche of distractions and media that take all our time away “normally”, whatever “normal” is. Right now, hanging a fluid bag from a hook on the kitchen cupboard door, sticking a needle in the skin “tent” on his back, and gravity feeding fluids into him seems normal and present and direct and now.

I may take an ax to my TV before the end of the week. No, I mean really.

mr. cat is home


he is sitting on my computer desk as i type this with one finger…my left hand under his chin or resting on  his back…purring monster cat has one paw poised over the numeric keypad ready to add a few characters.

we go back to the vet tomorrow to assess whether sub cutaneous fluid therapy is going to help him.

sure is nice to have him home

some people can manage their cat’s condition for months or years with medications and sub Q therapy