Demelza's now 11 (so I now have a full blood panel done for her annual
exams) & it'll be interesting to hear what my vet(s) say(s) about this -
their take on how useful it is at this stage of the game.

Cathy

--
"Staccato signals of constant information..."
("The Boy in the Bubble")  Paul Simon

  Heska has a small sales force and they sell through several drug
distributors. I'm sure your vet will be getting information fairly
soon. Heska had a booth at the Central Veterinary Conference last week
and launched the product there. One of the speakers on renal failure
talked about the test, but didn't spend a lot of time on it as he had
only used it for a short time. Hill's felt it was important enough
when they came out with the canine version that Hill's gave away
several thousand kits across the country. Obviously the thinking was
that if more renal disease was discovered, more k/d would be sold.
That won't be happening with the feline version, so your vet will have
to buy the kit.
 I would expect there will be articles and studies published in
various vet journals as people have a chance to work with the kit over
the next year or two. I think the kit is a terrific plus. While it
does have the problem of false positives - infection etc, detecting
those problems is also beneficial. When the canine test hit the number
of undetected non-renal medical problems was very high - that benefits
the pet by alerting the vet to a hidden non renal failure medical
problem that might never have been discovered otherwise.