The site provides information on an international basis, aiming to help you wherever you happen to live, although in practice much of the information relates to the USA and Europe since these are the areas where the most information and treatments are available.

cover the emotional aspects of living with CKD and help you to cope with it, including at the end of your CKD journey.

discuss treatments that can often help, many of which are not very expensive (the most commonly used treatments can usually be obtained for around US$5-10 a week in total);

describe the symptoms that you may be seeing now or which you may see in the future;

I try to share the information I have using layman's language. My goals are to:

If you are a vet visiting this site because your client has mentioned it to you, I can imagine your heart is sinking about now. It may reassure you to know that I do try to cite veterinary sources to support what I say. Many vets do recommend the site, including a number of vet schools and veterinary specialists (see the reviews below ).

This site shares all the information and tips I know, in great detail, in order to help your cat feel better and hopefully extend his/her life. I am not a vet myself, just an ordinary person who has educated herself about CKD in cats.

This website is extremely comprehensive, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it will answer 99% of your questions about kidney disease in cats, but on the other hand it may seem a bit overwhelming to start with. Try not to worry, just read the Key Issues section and dip into the other sections that interest you. it will eventually start to make sense. And above all, get food into your cat.

Whatever your situation, please take a deep breath and don't give up hope, because it may well be possible to help your cat.

Or maybe you've caught things early, but are anxious to find out all you can about this disease so you can do all you can to keep your cat stable. Alternatively, perhaps your cat has had CKD for a while, but you are now realising that you need to become more proactive if you want him or her to remain well.

People arriving here usually fall into one of two camps. If your cat has just been diagnosed with CKD, you are probably feeling shell-shocked and frightened. Your cat may be in the midst of a crisis, perhaps on intravenous fluids (IV, or a drip, or a flush) at the vet's. If your cat has high bloodwork values, you may not even have been offered any treatment, but instead told that there is no hope and you should just put your cat to sleep.

My name is Helen, and I have had three cats with CKD, Tanya, Thomas and Ollie (their photos are above). I created this website because I know first hand the shock and fear of the diagnosis, and how helpless it can make you feel, and I wanted to give people the detailed, practical information which would have helped me the first time I received the CKD diagnosis.

Hello, and welcome to my website, though I am sorry you need to be here.

What is Kidney Disease? There are two main kinds of kidney disease: Chronic Kidney Disease , abbreviated as CKD; and

Acute Kidney Injury, abbreviated as AKI. Kidney disease used to be known as kidney failure, and you may therefore see references in some of my links to Chronic Renal Failure (CRF), or Acute Renal Failure (ARF). I used to use these expressions myself, but these days the academic literature prefers the less scary and more accurate expression, kidney disease, so that is what I use throughout the site. AKI is a serious condition which usually comes on suddenly and which is often triggered by a particular event or "insult", such as your cat eating something poisonous. Lilies and antifreeze are both extremely toxic to cats and may cause AKI. Cats with AKI are normally hospitalized for treatment, which usually includes intravenous fluids (IV fluids, also known as a drip); depending on the cause of the AKI, other treatments may also be offered. AKI is hard to treat, but if the cat survives the initial crisis, he/she can often regain much or sometimes all of his or her normal kidney function. CKD may also manifest itself very suddenly and require IV treatment at the vet's, but in contrast to AKI it is an ongoing disease in which it is not possible to regain lost kidney function; so the goal is to keep the remaining function for as long as possible. This site is primarily designed for people with a cat with the chronic form of the disease (CKD), but may be of some use to those with a cat with AKI. Please visit the Acute Kidney Injury page for more information. Where to Start

This site is extremely comprehensive, as you can see from the number of links in the sidebar on the left. But don't panic, you won't need to learn about every single aspect.

Most people who arrive here for the first time have three overwhelming concerns:

they want to know how severe their cat's case is

they want to know how best to help their cat, and quickly

in particular they want to know how to get their cat to eat

These pages will get you started quickly so you can hit the ground running. Then, later on, you can gradually get up to speed on CKD in more detail. The Site Overview - Finding What You Need page provides a brief summary of the contents of each page, so if you're not sure where to find something, check here, or just check the sidebar on the left.

If Your Vet Has Recommended Immediate Euthanasia Please read the Just Diagnosed? What You Need to Know First page urgently. Unfortunately, some vets are not overly familiar with the latest treatments for CKD, and may recommend euthanasia prematurely. You need to educate yourself and work out how severe your cat's case is before you make this irrevocable decision.

Oh, and do not panic if your vet says your cat has lost 70% of kidney function — it's actually normal for CKD not to be diagnosed until this much function has been lost. What matters is how well your cat can manage with the function that is left, and a lot of cats do well.

My Three CKD Cats

This website is named in honour of Tanya, who was my first CKD cat. Unfortunately Tanya did not receive as much proactive care as Thomas and Ollie, because at the time that she was diagnosed (1998), I did not know about the treatment options described on this website (and of course many of them were not available back then). I tried desperately to find information to help her but I was not online, so my options were limited. Once I got online, I vowed that nobody else should have to go through that, so I created this website.

Thomas, in contrast, had much more severe CKD yet survived longer than Tanya because he received more proactive treatment.

Ollie was a somewhat different case: he came to me a week before his sixteenth birthday with relatively mild CKD but with a host of other health problems which ultimately took him from me.

You can read more about all of them here. You can also read some Success Stories here, some of whom survived for years with CKD. I can't promise the same success for your cat, but in most cases it's certainly worth a try.

Other Urinary Tract Problems

I sometimes hear from people whose cats have lower urinary tract problems rather than kidney problems. Lower urinary tract problems are relatively common in cats, but do not automatically lead to kidney problems. So please be sure your cat has kidney issues before deciding this is the website to help your cat, because treating for the wrong condition is at best pointless and at worst dangerous.