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My CRF cat Tibbles came from a rescue group, City Kitties in Philadelphia. She'd been on their list of adoptable cats for a while, because she was a scrawny older cat with a litany of previous injuries and health problems, including stomatitis (all teeth, but 3 canines, were removed), a broken hip that hadn't set properly, and a BB pellet that had been lodged in her foreleg in her younger days. Furthermore, her voice sounds like a snarl-it's not that she's actually snarling, it just sounds like she is-and she was listed as "not too bright", though her fosters assured me that she had a great personality. They also said that she was up-to-date on all her shots, and was in good health. I had no reason not to believe that; the vet also gave her a clean bill of health with her physical examination, so all was good.

I feed raw-that's an entire article in itself-and once I got Tibbles onto it, I noticed that she was still drinking water.

Cats on canned food, or raw food, do not drink water, generally. They may, like my first moggy Shadow, enjoy splashing in the water coming out of the sink, or padding around the shower after you've finished in there, but they don't drink water. I was somewhat alarmed by the fact that Tibbles was still drinking, but not too alarmed, not yet. I hoped that perhaps she simply liked drinking water. I nevertheless made an appointment with the vet to get a blood panel.

A complete blood panel is one of the most useful diagnostic tools available. Not only is it relatively fast-a blood draw by a skilled vet takes no more than a minute or two-and relatively painless (though your cat may not forgive you for a few days afterwards), the information gleaned from it is invaluable in ascertaining the status of your cat. Blood Urea Nitrogen, or BUN, and creatinine levels are supposed to be below 30 and 2.0 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter), respectively, and blood phosphorous leves are supposed to be below 6.0 mg/dL. Values above those thresholds indicate either dehydration or chronic renal failure (or "insufficiency", as some prefer to call it).

The function of the kidney is to conserve water. It does this by removing salt from the urine-chemical equilibrium dictates that water will follow salt-and putting it back into the bloodstream. The BUN and creatinine levels are indicators as to how well the kidney is able to get rid of the nitrogenous compounds-or, in other words, how well the kidney is able to function. Cats with renal failure therefore have

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