Kidney Disease in a 2yo Cat? advice/help

[Onyx]

Hey all,

so a few months ago my cat started with the odd shiver/tremble in his paws. I read a few things online and he didnt seem to fit with any of the other symptoms of major diseases etc and more into anxiety which can cause this as he in an anxious cat.

However we have now decided to take him to the vets.

He's now had multiple blood tests:
1st was way out with large spike in cretanine levels and high calcium
2nd was much more normal this was after he was admited overnight and put on a drip with suspected kidney disease however this time the calcium was low.
3rd was normal with a slight raise in calcium and cretanine again, so again suspected kidney disease stage 2 based on his results.

we are now doing further bloods, and urine sample to help determine this.

other than the odd tremble in his legs he seems fine however always sempt a little depressed.

The vets are also a little baffled with his results etc,

has anybody else come across Chronic Kidney disease in a cat this young? hes just over 2 years old.

Baffled to why this is, or what could cause this in a cat this young with so little information/reports online.
any advice or info appreciated,

thanks

[Mollycat]

It would be extremely unusual to see CKD at this age, the word chronic implies over a long time and cats don't usually show up until 60-70% of kidney function has been lost. In advanced kidney failure, imbalances of calcium, potassium and other minerals and electrolytes can start to cause some strange symptoms, but a cat would normally be diagnosed long before it reached this kind of level without any other symptoms.

Calcium and potassium problems can certainly cause neurological issues like paw tremors, but tremors and calcium highs and lows do not point straight to chronic kidney issues. Calcium issues can cause kidney stones, as far as I'm aware that doesn't cause tremors either.

Did your cat have any other symptoms, increased thirst and urination, going off his food, lethargic, anything like that?

This sounds a lot more like vitamin D overdose, to me - has the vet ruled out that possibility? Many rodent poisons contain huge doses of vitamin D, is it possible he could have had access to them or poisoned rodents? D toxicity can cause both the calcium issues and kidney failure though. That's just one possibility, there are lots the vet might have ruled out before going to kidney failure as a cause.

[Onyx]

Hey thank you for your reply.

Our cat is an indoor cat only so no access to any rat poison etc however we have tried taking him out on a leash twice before but he was too scared to properly roam around.

The vet did mention toxin's however i read if this was related to a toxin he would show more acute symptoms etc and the vet agreed with this. This also doesnt add up as his leg tremors have gone on for a few months intermittently and that's the only sign of concern he has really shown. They last literally a second like a shiver then stop, this can happen in various limbs.

He meows when we prepare his food and eats fine, no increased thirst etc. He's always being a little depressed so never being the most energetic cat and that's why we got a new kitten a while back to encourage him to play more etc.

They said his first blood results showed signs of kidney disease stage 2, then his 2nd bloods following the drip didnt show this. however the cretanine and calcium are abnormal on his latest results so again pointing more towards this.

I have just got back from the vets again for repeat bloods, this time its getting sent to a lab for further investigation/comparision to his other results. Ive also got a urine sample kit to sort once hes been. He also passed some black stools last night which was concerning, however they feel that this could be down to dehydration altho each time hes been they said hes not showing signs of dehydration so this advice is slightly confusing to me, however they did say it could have been from a steroid injection they gave a few days ago. Under examination today they didnt feel any more hard stools ready to pass so fingers crossed his next ones are normal.

They said these results will hopefully indicate if kidney disease is the main cause or not. But they do admit this is very abnormal which a specialised service that they contacted due to the his odd blood results agreed with.

All very odd and concerning especially given his age.

[Mollycat]

Ok just to clarify vitamin D toxicity isn't necessarily a single high dose like in rodent poison, it can be a diet slightly too high in it over a period of time, but anyway it sounds like your vet has that possibility covered. It just seems strange to leap straight for the renal failure idea, as you say given his age, rather than lots of other possibilities. Presumably there must be other pointers in his blood results.

Hoping you get to the bottom of it soon with minimum stress and expense and the solution is simple for him.

[booktigger]

While CKD is unusual in such a young cat, there is such a thing as Acute Kidney Disease, which is normally very sudden and severe, but does respond well to fluids. If it is just his creatnine and calcium levels that are out, that isn't necessarily kidney related, raised creatnine without urea can be symptoms of other things, and there is a condition called hypercalcaemia, which is raised calcium levels. Unfortunately, there are multiple causes for this, which require various tests and you can go through them all to find it is idiopathic (i.e. they can't find the reason for it), and it can cause issues with muscles. From memory (and ironically it flagged up yesterday it was 4 years since Lucy's diagnosis), they need bloods to rule out a parathyroid issue, CT scan to rule out tumours, she had x-rays too, urinalysis - it wasn't cheap. One thing that helps a lot is fluid therapy, so could explain why his bloods initially improved to decline again, Lucy ended up going weekly for sub-q fluids

[Onyx]

Thank you both for your extensive replies they are both very informative.

Im due to go back to the vets today to take the urine sample so i shall query those conditions and see what they think.

Todays a little odd as now our kitten has passed a black stool, so im now wondering if this is due to the diet change as we have taken them both off dry food and onto wet. Before they was on mainly dry with one meal of wet a day, so im not sure if black stools could now be related to the dietary changes.

Hopefully we get some positive results once the bloods are back next week.