I built this for my own clients first.

Why a vet builds a website instead of just talking

A kidney disease consult runs about twenty minutes and contains more information than anyone can reasonably hold onto. Most of it doesn't survive the walk to the car, and that isn't a failure of listening. Frightened people don't take in new information well. That's just how brains work, and it's worth saying out loud because owners tend to blame themselves for it.

So I started writing things down for people. First a page. Then several. Then I realized the people who needed it most were not only my own clients. They were everyone typing "cat kidney disease how long" into a phone at eleven at night and getting back a forum argument, a pet food advertisement, and a search result that made them feel worse.

So I opened it up. That is the whole origin story.

What I have actually seen

26 years in general practice, seeing the same disease over and over in ordinary cats belonging to ordinary people with ordinary budgets. I am not a specialist and I do not claim to be. What I have instead is volume, continuity, and the specific knowledge of what goes wrong for people at home in week three, which is not usually what the textbook is worried about.

And my own cats

I have sat on my own kitchen floor at two in the morning with my own cat in kidney failure, more than once. Being a veterinarian did not make that easier. It made it worse in one specific way: I knew exactly what every number meant, and I could not stop reading them.

It did change what I tell people. I am much slower now to hand somebody a plan with nine components in it, because I know what it feels like to be the person trying to execute the plan while also grieving in advance.

How this site is paid for

It is not. There are no products, no sponsors, no affiliate links, no advertising and no paywall. There is one donation button in the footer, which covers hosting and the printed starter guides I mail to clinics that ask for them. Nothing on this site is behind a gate, and no page will ever ask for your email before it answers your question.

If that changes, I will say so on this page, in plain language, with a date on it.

Corrections

Veterinary medicine moves. If something here is wrong or out of date, I would genuinely rather know. Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, and I go through them quarterly.