Feline Kidney Infection (Pyelonephritis)

Your felines kidneys play an important role and at approximately 20 percent of function is required for survival. I can tell you from firsthand experience that a feline kidney infection (especially in old and/or sick cats) if unrecognized, or recognized and left untreated, can strike quickly and become life threatening in a matter of days.

What to look for?

Every cat seems to react slightly different to a feline kidney infection but there are some common threads that are almost always present. First your pet will tend to have a change in energy and behavior. They will tend to want to be alone, and may not meet you at the door when you come home from work. You may also notice panting or labored breathing. Another common sign is a change in urinary odor (becoming pungent) and voiding in inappropriate places, finding a pool of urine on the floor or in their sleeping area is not uncommon.

In a few instances a feline kidney infection may even cause your pet to become incontinent. Other common symptoms are tenderness around the kidneys and bladder, fever, loss of appetite, excess water consumption, bad breath, and blood in the urine. As mentioned above symptoms vary greatly from cat to cat and much will depend on how badly infected the bladder and kidneys are, as well as your cats personality. But for our cat Holly a noticeable change in behavior and litter box habits told us that something was wrong. What we didn't know was that Holley was very, very sick, falling victim to a serious feline kidney infection.

Diagnosis

When we did get over to vet he ran all the standard tests including a manual hand palpitation, a urine analysis, a blood workup, and insisted she stay a night or two to give him a chance to figure out what was wrong. He also put her on intravenous fluids and with vitamin B12 to try to restore her strength. After all she was 16 years old and very weak.

The first set of tests came back negative but our vet decided to run another bacterial culture and sure enough the escherichia coli bacteria (the bacteria responsible for urinary tract infections) showed up. He explained that sometimes the bacteria can be so deeply embedded in the bladder lining that it may not be detected initially. He went on to say that this was not common, but in our particular case additional testing was called for.

Treatment

Once identified a feline kidney infection is treated with antibiotics such as amoxicillin or baytril. In very sick or old cats the antibiotic likely will be administered intravenously until the felines condition starts to improve. Once better your pet will be sent home and may need to stay on antibiotics for 6 weeks or longer to completely eradicate the infection.

What else? Along with antibiotics many pet owners have found homeopathic urinary tract supplements containing berberis and cantharis to speed recovery and help prevent future infections. Additionally, all stress should be eliminated from your felines life until they recover completely.