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A checklist, week by week

The first thirty days

One week at a time. Everything on this sheet is on the website's first-thirty-days page, in the same order. Tick as you go, and don't try to do week three in week one.

Week 1

water, one medication, and the appointment

  • More water into her: wet food where she will take it, more bowls in more rooms, wide and shallow rather than deep.
  • Ask whether to start her medicines together or a few days apart. Never hold back an antibiotic or a blood pressure medicine.
  • Book the recheck, and ask for her interval specifically rather than the standard one.
  • Buy a cheap digital kitchen scale, a notebook, two or three extra water bowls, and something that hides a tablet.

Week 2

the food, slowly

  • Mix a spoonful of the new food into her usual food. Sit at that ratio for a few days before increasing it.
  • If she refuses, drop back to the last ratio she accepted and stay there longer. There is no prize for finishing early.
  • Never introduce the new food on a day she feels rough.
  • If she simply will not have it, say so at the recheck rather than quietly giving up.

Week 3

learn the home routine

  • If fluids were prescribed, get properly comfortable with them. Ask a technician to watch you do one if it is going badly.
  • Put a paper chart on the fridge with the times you actually give medications, and tick as you go.
  • Start writing four things down: weight weekly, ate normally, vomited, litter box normal.
  • Watch the small signals rather than the dramatic ones: lip licking, coming to the bowl and turning away, in and out of the box, sleeping somewhere cold and hard.

Week 4

the recheck, and what to ask for

  • Weight, against the weight on the day she was diagnosed.
  • Creatinine, phosphorus, potassium, written down with the date.
  • A UPC, if she has never had one. Ask for it by name.
  • Blood pressure, if the practice has the equipment. If not, ask what to watch for at home.
  • A urine culture collected by cystocentesis, if her numbers moved the wrong way without an explanation.

Day thirty

The medications happen without you thinking about them. The notebook has four weeks of weights in it. You know her normal well enough to notice when it changes. And the whole thing has become fairly boring. Boring is the goal.

Any week, any day

Cold ears or paws, pale gums, straining in the box, collapse, or hard or open-mouth breathing mean the emergency clinic now. Eating far less than normal for a day, repeated vomiting, weakness or hiding mean a call today, not Monday. The full list is the go-now-or-call-today sheet, kidneycats.org/b/calltoday.