Finn's Parlour

Lady Smoke, my beloved kit, has been ill lately, which has been the cause of much concern.  She's an elderly cat now, and one of the first things to go in older cats is their kidney function.

For the last few months she's been on a specially medicated diet designed to take some pressure off her kidneys, but she hasn't seemed to be eating much, and I was sure she was losing weight.  Not a good sign.  So I booked her in at the vets and took her first thing this morning.  Well.. astonishingly she seems to be improving.  And I learned something I didn't know about diagnosing the condition.

Cats are desert creatures originally (well I knew that bit) so their kidneys work really efficiently to produce highly concentrated urine.  Basically they get as many impurities out of their system as possible in the smallest amount of water.  Efficiency in water usage is kind of vital in desert critters.

So one of the ways they check for kidney function is to simply extract a little urine (they use a long thin needle rather than rely on the kitty being cooperative) and measure the specific gravity.  The less concentrated the result, the worse the kidneys are doing.  And Smoke's in defiance of all probability seem to be improving.

Sorry for the urine related post, I promise this will not be a regular thing, but it's such good news I wanted to share it.

The news, that is, not the cat piss.