CRF / CKD - ideas for brands of wet food

Hi all,

My beloved cat Poppy is in latter stage 3/stage 4 of chronic renal failure, and I want to ensure that her last days are as comfortable as I can make them with some good food.

My wife has poured hours into research and it seems that wet food and low protein has the most confidence, but I went into Pets at Home earlier and was bewildered by the lack of choice available. I ended up buying some tuna "applaws" pouch and a can of the same. I put it down and much to my delight it got wolfed down by Poppy!

Although looking at the Applaws website they state that it has got a high protein content but insist that it's "good" protein. Does anyone have any scientific knowledge of this, I can't work out if it's just marketing speak or whether I can continue with this stuff, as half of the battle with Poppy is getting her to eat something at all.

If anyone has any other tips for other brands of food suitable for CRF kittys I'd be very much obliged to hear them

love from poppy and ruby

You can get special diets for this problem but a lot of them appear very unpalatable to cats so we normally advice stick to the white meat/fish varieties in tinned food as it is better that they eat what they like & try to encourage good fluid intake alongside too.
Cuddles to you all.....xxx

I know absolutely nothing about CRF - however, I am assuming that anything as natural as possible would be good? in which case, we go with "Encore" whenever we want to treat Neevie - she loves the stuff and it's 70% real meat which is quite rare in cat food. They have fish or meat version... Sorry to hear poor Poppy is so poorly though...
Hope it helps, Lots of love!

I'm so sorry to hear this. We were there ourselves last year with our moggy Charlie.

We tried the Hills special kidney diet canned food but he simply would not eat it. It has the perfect ingredients to support poorly kidneys BUT it has a weird spongy texture and obviously tastes awful. After a few days of him not eating, we tried to syringe feed him with some. I have reams of experience of syringe-feeding other animals but I could not get any of it into our cat - he fought like a tiger. So, the vet suggested home cooking. Both recipes cost about £3 as written, so you can experiment without spending too much. (They are also both fine for babies/grannies etc as it is all technically human food.) Here are the two recipes that worked best:

Marmite Chicken in Jelly.
Buy a cheap rotisserie chicken at the end of the day.
Cut off the breast meat and finely chop.
Bung all the rest into a big pan, cover with water and add a couple of large spoons of marmite.
Boil for a couple of hours, topping up the water as needed. Allow to cool until you can handle the carcass.
Now dismember the chicken completely and add the meat to the breast meat.
Sieve the liquid to remove any sharp bits, return to the pan and boil until it is really thick.
Add the liquid to the meat, stir well and put into small bags/tubs. (Just like making baby food) The liquid will cool into set jelly.
Freeze the portions, defrost and warm to about 30 degrees before serving.

White fish with prawns.
Buy some white fish, prawns and any off-cuts that you can get from the fishmonger/supermarket.
Put the white fish and prawns in a pan, just cover with water and cook gently until the fish flakes.
Strain off the liquid, keep the fish and return the liquid to the pan.
Add any odds and ends (heads, etc) from the fish shop and boil up for half an hour.
Strain off the lumps and add the liquid to the fishy prawns.
Package up as for the chicken.

If your cat also has iffy teeth, you can blend it before portioning up - you might need to add a little more water at this stage.

Always to aim to serve slightly warm and keep the portions really small so that the cat is always wanting a little bit more. Increase the frequency of feeding to keep the amount of food stable - it's just like dealing with a human invalid, really.

On a separate note, the very best tuna in pouches (according to our resident expert, Sidney) is the Almo pouch range, available on Amazon and very high quality. He likes the Applaws, but he LUUURVES the Almo!

Good luck, and if I can give any more help, just ask!