I'm having a difficult time getting a clear cut answer out of my vet
as to what exactly is wrong with my cat, and what I should do.  Maybe
she's on her last leg, and the doctor and nurses are too nervous to
give me a clear cut answer.  So can you tell me bluntly what's up?

The cat is currently 20 years old.

I lived at college for 5 years, and so my parents took care of my cat.
While I was gone, I would frequently hear "She's getting old... blah
blah" which is usually a sign of, "Something is wrong, take her to the
damn vet!"  It was usually that a claw had grown into the pad of her
foot, which caused her not to want to move around too much.  I finally
set them on a regular pattern to go to the vet every three months to
get her claws trimmed.

Before I picked her up for her to move in with me, they neglected to
tell me that she was "getting old" again.  When I went to get her, I
could see instantly something was wrong.  She was light as a feather,
and had no energy.  She had no will to tell me what she wanted, like
if I hold her in an uncomfortable position, or to walk away from me if
she wasn't interested, etc.  She's normally very willful, and she'll
let you know exactly what she wants.

I then hear that she hasn't been eating for quite awhile, and they had
been feeding her chicken by hand, and when she was eating, she'd only
eat half a can a day (little cans, not the larger cans).

I thought it was her claws again, as I thought they had already
punctured her paws again.  We took her to the vet to get them trimmed,
and turned it into a "sick cat" visit when I asked them what could be
wrong.

They trimmed her nails, and they hadn't punctured, so it wasn't an
infection.  They couldn't figure out what was wrong, so they did a
full blood work.

In my moving, it took me a while to hear what the blood work was - her
kidney results were high.  I later saw them, and it was, like, 52, and
only a couple points high on the other two marks (if you have any idea
what I'm talking about).

I was told by my parents that it wasn't something to be worried about.
I later found out, they were lying about what the vet said.  The vet
said the cat was dying, and the only course of treatments, fluids,
would be too stressful for her.

The cat makes a total 180 while in my care, so I didn't give the test
results a second thought, in addition to being told not to worry about
it.  She instantly starts eating 2 cans a day for about a month, and
then after she gained back her weight (she had lost half a pound), she
went down to one can a day.  She's completely back to her old
kitten-like self, where she plays every day, etc.

She then starts showing symptoms of a UTI - here is where I'm curious
if it is a UTI.  Could it be something else?  She could always pee,
but she peed a lot, it seems.  And she would sit in various places
around the apartment, and where she sat would be a little pee mark,
which I first mistook for feces/diarriah because it was at first
always dark (blood?) and then it was clear/yellowish later.  It would
only occur during an "episode" not all the time.  At first the
episodes were every other week, then every week, then every couple
days (I thought it was because I wasn't cleaning the litter well
enough).

She gets another blood work done, and the results show that her kidney
results are exactly the same as they were before.  What does this
mean?  It's been three months between blood tests, so what does it
mean if her kidneys are the same?

What do I have to expect?  Whats her life expectancy?  Does what
happened before I got her relate to the kidney problems, or was it
depression from missing me?  Is the "UTI" really a UTI, or is it
related to her kidney problems?  From what I gather, they diagnosed
her without looking at her past records (dispite that I made sure they
had them days before the appointment).

I suppose I'm just confused and wondering whats going on.  Can you
give it to me bluntly?