2 yr old Cat, Kidney Disease/Failure or Infection?

Ok, I have a 2 yr old cat who has always had sort of a chronic ear infection/sinus issue/allergies. When he has an outbreak we treat it & wait a few months till it happens again. Aside from this though, he's always been a normal, happy kitten.

This past Friday (72 hours ago), I called the vet and said he needed to be seen ASAP since for the first time he wasn't really eating or drinking & his ears & nose were worse than theyd ever been.

The vet looked in his mouth and said there was some swelling & irritation in his mouth so he thought it was painful for him to eat. (Makes sense) He gave him Covenia ( a time released 2 wk antibiotic) & Dexo something (a steroid) & tresaderm drops for his ears.

Within an hour of leaving the vet his sinuses & ears had all but cleared up, I don't think he sneezed one time.

Problem is since late thursday night, early friday morning he hasnt eaten or drank anything on his own. I spoke to my vet over the weekend and I was able to force feed him some water with electrolytes because he WANTS to drink. Poor thing was so lethargic he just kept falling asleep at the water bowl.

Needless to say I brought him in to the vet today (monday) and at first the vet thought he was 12 not 2 yrs old. He even made a point to confirm that I had an accurate ago on him. I said I was sure and it was so frightening how in 4 days he looked as though he had aged 10 years. He now has that "Old cat Look-" again, in just 96 hours!

My vet ran some bloodwork, checked for FlV/FLV, all negative. Problem is his kidney levels are through the roof. I forget the unit of measurements but its suppossed to be 16,000-17,000 and he is at 40,000. His WHITE Blood cell levels are also elevated.

My vet says that hes not sure what is the cause. Best case scenario is 2 days of antibiotics & fluids will help & we'll run more bloodwork to determine if its an infection or severe Kidney Disease/Failure. He put the odds on about 80% chance of it not being an infection, at which point come Wednesday morning I'll have a difficult decision to make. He said the only reason hes giving him 20% odds is his age and the elevated white blood cell count.

I know that doctors in general have a tendency to prepare you for the worst, does it sound like thats what hes doing? Are the white blood cells most likely elevated due his ability to try to fight off this infection or is it probably just because of the antibiotics and he really does have some fatal disease?

I know its something I won't know till I know, I just wanted to kind of gather some opinions about it since now Im playing a 48 hour waiting game. Oh, and he was not exposed to toxins of any sort, so my vet is completely dumbfounded as to why this happened to him 10 years to early. Thanks so much in Advance!!!

[mist1960]

Sounds like there's a lot going on with your cat. So sad. I found a really helpful website that give lots of information on chronic pet diseases. Hopefully, it will be helpful to you.

http://avidlifepet.com/cat-2/