Casper's bloodwork came back and I don't know what to think

[Joe_Danger]

As I said in the other topic I made a couple weeks back Casper has had fairly large urine clumps yet slightly drier stool ever since he was returned to us, I suspected kidney damage because I think he wasn't fed properly at his temporary home for the 3 months he spent there and was returned very skinny.

Casper's kidneys visually appear perfectly healthy, same goes for his bladder and everything.

When his blood work came back it all seemed perfect, except for his Urea I assume this is the BUN number in English speaking countries, even his creatinine levels are normal.
However Casper's urea is 14.something yet the maximum normal allowed level is 12.something, this in combination with the large amount of urine he produces get me worried quite a bit, could it be early signs of kidney failure?
He did eat protein rich food the past few days, mainly a lot of chicken breast and he ate a lot of it, he'd kind of been eating his mom's and sister's servings too and Milla being Milla she just lets him do whatever he wants.

We're still waiting on my vet to call and give her opinion on the results, but I wanted to consult with you as well

Casper eats mostly wet food, so it's not like he isn't ingesting enough liquids in his body

[Ruth B]

I don't know a lot about kidney damage, but when Blue was about 13 he had dental problems. Due to his age they did full bloods before putting under and the kidney result came back a bit high. Not serious, so they went ahead with the dental work but decided to look closer at the possible kidney problems.

I can't remember all the details but there were three tests that could be done, a mix of blood and urine tests (I remember that bit as we had to try and get a urine sample from him). Two tests came back normal, one came back high. The vet recommended a special diet and re testing. i can't remember why, but he had the second lot of tests before the special food arrived (I know they had to order it specially so maybe it took a bit of time). The vet we saw for the second set of tests said that as only one of the three was a little high he really didn't think the special diet was needed and to just keep an eye on things. We did and after 6 - 12 months and another dental work to remove the teeth on the other side, he improved and all readings were back to normal, the vet did mention that the infection and teeth problems could have given him the high reading.

The one part of the whole business I do remember, when we took him in because he had lost some weight, I also ended up telling the vet he 'smelt wrong' it wasn't bad breath it was his whole body scent that was wrong. I half expected them to laugh at me and think I was a bit of a nut case, but they took the comment seriously, and after he recovered his scent went back to normal. While this seems a little quirky I did mention it to my mother who used to be a nurse and she wasn't at all surprised, she did say that when a person's kidneys aren't working properly she could smell it around them.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a chance that something else, something simple could cause the high levels and that they could return to normal in their own time. If i remember correctly the special food was a low protein diet, so the food Casper has been on might be the reason the level are a bit high and when he is back on normal cat food for a bit he might fine again. As long as he is getting plenty of fluid, either from the cat food or just water and seems fine I wouldn't worry too much. Keep an eye on him and if you notice any changes in him, even if it is hard to pin down and explain get him rechecked. Some times we can pick things up almost subliminally and it is hard to say why we think there is something wrong, but it is always worth getting it checked out, even if you do feel an idiot when talking to the vets.

[booktigger]

If his Urea is high but not Creatnine, it can be down to an infection - did they test his white blood cells?

[bobbys girl]

he vet he 'smelt wrong' it wasn't bad breath it was his whole body scent that was wrong. I half expected them to laugh at me and think I was a bit of a nut case, but they took the comment seriously, and after he recovered his scent went back to normal. While this seems a little quirky I did mention it to my mother who used to be a nurse and she wasn't at all surprised, she did say that when a person's kidneys aren't working properly she could smell it around them.

That reminded me of something that happened YEARS ago. Our church had a day out at Chester zoo. There had been an unusual birth in the elephant house - an African/Indian X baby elephant (gorgeous) My mum, also a nurse, said something smelt wrong. We all laughed - 'mum it's the ELEPHANT house, and you're talking about a funny smell?' The poor baby died a few days later - kidney failure.

Joe - maybe it is just the high protein food that is to blame. That or a minor infection.

[Joe_Danger]

Oh, wow I forgot to mention in the OP that due to a minor cold all 3 are on antibootics, but my vet said that the antibiotics shouldn't affect the bloodwork in any meaningful way, so no infection could be detected because of the antibiotics. HOWEVER, Casper was given antibiotics as a preventive measure because his mom and sister had colds and since they're always in each other's faces and bowls the ver recommended all 3 get a dosage, he may have had a small cold too because his nose got stuffed up there for a bit as well.

Alright I just got the exact values

- Creatinine is actually much lower than the preferred values - 42.74 and preferred values are 80-194

- Urea on the other hand is 14.33 but the preferred values as it says here are 6.8-12.1

Everything else seems perfect

Do you guys want me to post pics of his kidneys too?

[booktigger]

Hopefully it's just the antibiotics affecting results, shame the vet didn't wait to do bloods

[Joe_Danger]

She is going to give us some food that is supposed to clear up his kidneys in case there's anything there that didn't turn up when they checked him up, so we'll go from there.
It's kind of an odd situation but the vet said the antibiotics won't affect the urea readings at all, so we could just be looking at a minor infection similar to Kala and Milla's, tho considering how fragile persian cats can be and Casper's history I wouldn't be surprised if something bad is brewing in there. I dunno guys, I'd like to relax but I feel we're going to do another check up to be sure, maybe next month would be a good idea? What do you think?

[Ruth B]

My thought is that let him have the special food if he'll eat it, either from the vet or buy online (or just normal food but go for ones that have a lower protein content) and just keep an eye on him and have him checked every two to three months, assuming he isn't one that tries to tear you apart getting him to the vets. Hopefully it is just the infection giving the higher reading, but if not by regularly monitoring it you will pick up any further changes quickly. I guess he will have the problem Blue had, the fur on his leg or bib won't have time to grow back before he needs it shaved for the next lot of bloods to be taken.

[booktigger]

I think one month would be too soon - with CRD, cats are checked 6 monthly, so the earliest I would do would be 3

[Jan]

I don't know if this will help. But when the vet phoned me last week with Blackie's latest blood results, she told me that his urea was high at 13. However, as Blackie gets so stressed out when he goes to the vets, her view was that the result may be a false one as stress will affect the result - and there's no doubt Blackie gets VERY stressed during vet visits. Must admit, I put the phone down thinking she was just trying to stop me from worrying but having looked up on the internet (as you do ), stress can play a factor in urea results.

Prior to dental surgery in March 2015, his blood urea was at 15 but 6 months later it had come down to 9.7. Now that Blackie has more regular visits with at least bloods every 6 months and urine every 3, he gets so stressed that I dread taking him there. He knows where he's going and knows he won't like it!

[Joe_Danger]

Casper got extremely stressed when they had to shave his leg, I've never seen him so stressed in my life, he is such a calm cat normally. Heck I've never seen any of my cats behave the way he did, he started yowling something his dad does before attacking in my experience, 3 people myself included were holding him down but even though he is only 4.3 or 4.5kg he isn't small and is a very tough cat so keeping him pinned down wasn't easy for the vets so I had to step in too.
Eventually they had to sedate him but even then he was still fairly upset.

I wonder though, could the urea have skyrocketed so quickly? I doubt it
Seems to me like prolonged stress would affect the levels of urea in the blood more so than sudden stress and Casper has such a laid back, pampered life, he is never stressed or upset.

I could be lying to myself and trying to make myself feel better, I want to say that the combination of the high protein diet he was eating over the past 3 days or so with the chicken breast, his slight cold and maybe the stress at the vet caused this hopefully temporary increase in urea but who knows.

The creatinine being well below the so called preferred levels is a good thing I believe.
His kidneys also appeared perfectly fine

In other news, my vet hasn't called yet to give her opinion on the results and I honestly don't want to call her because I feel I'm being an annoyance at this point, I'm taking all 3 cats there on Saturday so she can see if their colds are done, tho Milla is still pretty stuffed up, so we'll discuss this then I suppose unless she calls later today.

[booktigger]

If Urea works like adrenaline, then it could skyrocket that quickly

[Joe_Danger]

good point, but we don't know if it works like that lol
Do we have vets on the forum to shed some light on this?

[Joe_Danger]

Took all 3 to the vet today to get an all clear on their minor colds and sure enough they're back to normal, lungs and all. So that's good.
She is also fairly positive on Casper's bloodwork, in her opinion this was mostly caused by high protein diet and a bit of stress at the vets' to a small degree, but mainly high protein diet.

She also said that she highly reccomends we switch from Royal Canin to some italian brand and use their food for fixed cats instead of Royal Canin Persian and such.
Now, my vet isn't a fan of wet food for cats so she insists we ween him off of that but I disagree, I feel that a balanced diet between wet and dry food is best so I'll stick to that.
The girls dropped wet food in favor of dry for the most part on their own anyways.

On the size of his pee clumps, my vet says Casper's dad and half brother have always had big pee clumps, she's done bloodwork on them and everything much like we did now to make sure they're fine and they are, she believes it's genetic. So that really put my mind at ease.

She said she is going to book him at the blood drawing vets again for Jaunary or February

Overall a positive experience, my vet is happy with their development overall, she feels Casper is a tad overweight at 4.3Kg but I disagree there, didn't tell her I disagree lol she knows better.

So yeah, we'll see how it all progresses form here on out, but my vet definitely put my mind at ease for now.

[Lilith]

That's good to hear - I hope Casper goes from strength to strength now

[Jan]

When I see our vet this coming week, I will ask her more about Blackie's urea level and how much stress can affect the result, as I have read on a reputable site that it does. Though it has to be said our cat seems to live on his nerves - and a vet visit must send his blood pressure through the roof and that's before we even get there.

Glad to hear that you're reassured about Casper. My only query is did your vet give a reason as to why she's not keen on wet food for cats?

[bobbys girl]

Pleased to hear things are settling down and everyone is OK.

I think you are right to stick with a mix of wet and dry foods. Not sure where your vet is coming from about the wet food. Especially since she thinks Casper's problems might be down to high protein. It is usually the dry food that is higher in protein.

[Joe_Danger]

She is mostly coming from a budget perspective, we're a low income country and while supermarket wet foods are cheap, the good stuff isn't, dry food even high quality dry food is far more affordable.
Problem with my cats is they dislike most wet foods high or low quality but like these sort of I'd say mid qualty food, tho my vet says that's bad too even tho the ingridients on the food itself seem alrightish

Good luck trying to get my cats to eat anything they don't want to tho lol
I've never been able to convince a cat to eat food they dislike, no amount of mixing and convincing works, heck they'd rather starve themselves than eating food they dislike.

So far Casper loves the special food my vet prescribed for his kidneys to clear up, but that's not the type of food you should have your cat permanently on plus it's insanely expensive for our standard if you were to buy it every day.

So we'll see how this goes
If we can get them to eat the dry food for fixed cats that'd be great, but who knows, only time will tell.

mixing wet and dry food never woked for my cats btw, they just pick whatever they can from the mess and then refuse to eat the whole thing becuse they don't so much as want to touch dry food that's been out for a while

[Crewella]

I agree with Sue, and think you're right to stick with a mix of wet and dry. Glad he seems OK. xx

[Ruth B]

I am surprised at the vet insistence that dry is better than wet food, it seems like the general opinion is that feeding all dry can be detrimental to the cat these days. I have always fed a mix of wet and dry, wet at certain times, the dry is left down so almost always available. Fortunately Saturn much prefers the wet stuff so he isn't turning into a furry football constantly eating the dry.

The other one that might be worth investigating is a raw diet. It isn't something I do, but I know a lot of people have opted to feed raw meat to their cats either as part of the diet or fully (I'm not convinced about cats just being on raw, I worry they may be missing out on some nutrients). If you have a local butchers you might want to have a word with them, there might be off cuts you could get relatively cheap, you do need a mix of meat, skin and bone for the full benefit for the cats. I have heard that chicken wings are a popular choice but others stuff can always be ground down for the cats. I am sure there are others on here that do feed a raw diet and could give better advice about it.

[Marla]

Did your vet prescribe a kidney diet based only on a slightly high BUN value?

We fed a raw diet for years and now feed a store-bought high protein wet cat food. Our cats have always had BUN/urea values slightly higher than the normal range. Our previous vet and our current one said this was probably due to their high protein diet and nothing to worry about since their creatinine values were normal.

[Joe_Danger]

She just prescribed it temporary, the food is extremely expensive, like way out of our meager Macedonian budget and Casper loves it lol
None of them like the dry food for spayed cats tho, my vet refuses to believe that cats starve themselves but won't eat what they don't want to eat, at least in my experience mine have always been like that. Mixing the dry food with food they do like helps...them eat from the bowls but they ignore the food they dislike and cherry pick only the stuff they like so yeah lol

Well, there's plenty of dry foods so if Royal Canin really is as high protein as my vet suggests I'm sure we'll find something else they like as far as dry goes.

[catslave16]

Joe Danger, my Rufus is exactly the same - he'll rather starve himself than eat something he dislikes. And it's always the cheaper food he dislikes, which then ends up in the bin. I'm on benefits and therefore on a very tight budget but it's a false economy to buy cheap cat food. At least with the more expensive stuff nothing gets wasted.

[Joe_Danger]

These expensive wet foods are way out of our budget, people in my country make around 300-400 euros a month on average. But the cheaper foods like Purina and such they eat just fine, it's just that these particular dry food for fixed cats they didn't seem to take a liking to, but we'll see if they're going to like the one from Purina next.

I was just talking in general that when a cat doesn't want to eat something they won't eat it no matter what in my experience that's all.