My pet has the following symptoms:
Our cat Stripes had always been a healthy cat, but maybe 4-6 months before we had to put him down (aged 10), I had actually been watching an episode of 'My Cat From Hell' which featured a cat with kidney failure, and I thought, oh my god, that sounds just like Stripes. He had always been an outside cat, but had started basically living on top of a dresser in my mums room, he hadn't been eating much, compared to what he usually would, he had quite a bad breath, and he looked like he had been losing a bit of weight. He was quite a large cat, not overweight, just really long, weighing probably 7kgs. I took him to the vet, to get vaccinated, and asked the vet to check his kidneys. She had a little feel around, and said that he was completely fine. Always make sure you get a second opinion. We went home, trusting her advice. 6 or 7 weeks later, he still wasn't getting any better, he had lost a lot more weight, he was exhibiting strange behaviours, like sleeping in my room (he was my brothers cat, we had never really gotten along that well), hiding behind a bush out the front of our house during the day, and sometimes during the night, not coming when we called him, not eating his food. I made another vet appointment to get him reassessed with a different vet, and he had lost over 3kgs since the last time I had taken him to the vet. She was immediately concerned, and suggested that we do blood tests. The tests were going to cost between $100-$300, depending on the tests they did. We lived 3 minutes by car to the vet, and each of these times we took him, he had peed in the carrier on the way over. She took a sample of the pee, that I hadn't tipped out when I saw it, and we decided to bring him back the next day to get his blood tests done, as we had to wait to get the money. The vet called up the day after the blood tests to tell my mum the results, which was that he had stage 4, borderline stage 5 kidney failure. She gave us some powder to mix into his food, aswell as some special kidney food for him. We were devastated, I just wished that the first vet had given the right diagnosis, and then maybe we would have been able to do something about it. The vet said that if he doesn't eat the food, or take the medicine, it is probably time to put him down. It is about the quality of life, not just us wanting to keep him around. He didn't eat the food, and we couldnt get him to take the medicine, so we set a date, and waited. He spent more and more time outside, hiding behind his plant, and we were so worried that we were going to go out there one day, and find him dead. By the time the day came around, his face looked sunken in, you could see his bones, he looked terrible. We brought him inside, and gave him his favourite treats and he ate them. He hadn't been eating in days, and he ate so much, and he played around. Aside from the physical sign that he was sick, you would have thought he was fine. This really upset my brother and I. My brother had it in his mind that maybe he was getting better, but I had to keep telling him that that wasnt possible. My mum said that sometimes before something dies, they appear completely healthy. We took him to the vet to get put down. I will never get over the way that it felt like he was staring into my eyes as he drifted off, especially since he had just eaten that day. I felt like maybe he had longer left in him, I felt like I had betrayed him somehow. But I know it was for the better, he was not in a good way of life, and he was only going to get worse.