One of my kitties, Tribble, was diagnosed about 2 weeks ago with CRF.
She had lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time, which is what
precipitated a vet visit.  Blood tests showed her BUN to be 64 and her
creatinine 5.3.  For now, we're trying to manage this through diet.  I
have 4 other cats and we tried for a week to stop the freefeeding and
have everyone on a schedule with Tribble being set aside in a room with
her special diet.  That didn't work.  We're back to freefeeding but
everyone is now eating Eukanuba Multi-Stage Renal diet and twice a day
they get Hi-Tor Neo diet, a Canadian canned food and the only one that
Tribble so far will deign to touch.  Trib is hypokalemic so twice a day
she also gets Tumil-K.  She's anemic, too, but the vet and I have
decided that before trying something for that, we're going to see what
her values are a month from the last time they were checked.

Tribble has never been a big eater and now she's even less so.  We had a
vet visit this morning to check her weight, which is stable.  When I
initially brought her in, she was 6.5 pounds (down from 10 at her last
weight check which was in 2003).  The next week, after the set feeding
time debacle, she was 6.3 and she's still there today.  She's also
started to swallow and gulp a lot - the vet says she is most likely
nauseous, which is a common CRF trait and he also says there's nothing
to be done about this.

Despite all this, Tribble's activity levels haven't changed and she's
still her same old punky self except she's a lot more lovey and clingy
lately.

My vet and I talked about kidney transplants.  He did one in the mid 90s
but hasn't had any experience since then with them.  He did say that if
we were going to go with that option, that we needed to make the
decision soon.

I was hoping that someone here could give my any insight, advice, tips,
etc.  I know no one has a crystal ball but, generally speaking, how long
do transplants extend a CRF kitty's life?  How do you determine if it's
worth it?  Like I said, Trib is punky and she has the kind of attitude
where I think she'd do fine.  I have another cat with slightly
dysfunctional kidneys, Shadow, and I'd never do a transplant with her.
She would be appalled and horrified and, really, I think the shock and
stress would finish her off.  Trib is the complete opposite.

And, if anyone has any idea of the expense involved, that would be nice
to know, too.  The vet said when he went through it, it was about $5K.

Thanks for any help,
Tiffany