this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2026
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Cats are masterful in concealing when they are in a bad shape. If you do not know the intricacies of your cats behavior, finding out that something is wrong means that things are already escalating.
Yeah, I noticed one of our cats using the litter box a bit more than usual, and sometimes he'd use it a second time pretty quickly after the first. Turned out he had a urinary problem.
We have another cat that is in stage 4 kidney disease. Other than how thin he is, you wouldn't know there was anything wrong.
Yeah, regular kidney screening is a must in my opinion, because it's an awful way to go for them. Got a rescue once, only about 3 months old which was kept in awful conditions before. Turned out that her kidneys were already badly damaged when we got her, but we noticed it only a month in and she didn't get older than 7 months, and it was awful seeing her suffer regardless of what we tried :-(
Awww I'm sorry. In our case he's an older cat - we've had him 12 years, but he was already at least a year old when we adopted him.
For now he's doing reasonably well - still grooming himself, still purring, still happy (though he spends practically all day nestled in a corner of my wife's office). We're giving him medicine and fluids via injection every day. The vet has warned us that it's likely his situation will take a nose dive at some point.
I had a CKD cat, if you start struggling with his food, weruva intentionally keeps phosphorus low in their foods, which make them very friendly to ckd cats.
Mine was given 6 mths left after his diagnosis and tests were done, and that’s with rx food and stuff. It was expensive and he wouldn’t eat it, so I did a deep dive into literature about ckd and it turns out unlike dogs and humans for whom limited protein is good, cats need protein or they will die much sooner, so the rx diets being low protein are actually not great. You really just need limited phosphorus.
The levels on the core lines and slide and serve lines are good, you can probably find full breakdowns on their website, and certainly by contacting them, though, if those specific ones don’t do so well.
I had him eating those and I got another 6 years out of him instead of 6 months. My vet asked my secret, cuz we got him back up from his skinny boy weight to a slightly chubby 8 lbs! (Very small cat, 6lbs when I got him)
I can’t guarantee it’ll help, but it might be worth trying.
Weruva also offers a specific line of low phosphorus foods and treats now. I've had no reason to try them out for my own cats yet, so I can't say if they're any good, but have seen them in supplies donated to the rescue I volunteer with.
https://www.weruva.com/collections/wx-phos-focused
Interesting, I'll look into that. He's not on a limited protein diet, or at least I don't think so. He's been on a renal support diet for years, and he still eats most of what we give him.
Dogs can be like that too. We have learned to pick up microchanges in our dogs walking pattern to find out when he hurt his paw. Like dude, just tell us so we can take care of the sharp rock between your toe pads that is causing you to bleed. Wouldn't find out he was sick unless it starts affecting his digestion.
I think everyone is just different. People are comparable to the cats/dogs, slam the shit out of a toe, toe nail falling off and bleeding and not give a shit, but if they get a headache they'll wine like a hell. Then someone else lives with headaches doesn't flinch about it then sees their own blood and faints.
When people have a pissing contest about who has a higher pain tolerance I question who has more insecurities.