Kidney disease in my poor cat - what renal food?

[Tatianacatiana]

My beloved 16 year old cat has been diagnosed with kidney disease, to add to her hyperactive thyroid.

The vet suggested renal food to help her but I feel a bit overwhelmed by the choice and also want to cry at the price. Does anyone have any recommendations of what to buy and from where? She has dry food and wet food and loves a gravy tuna Sheba pouch so preferably a wet tuna food so I can continue to put her meds in it.

Years ago, I put my kidney failure cat on a special diet (can't remember what, it's over 20 years ago!) and he just wouldn't eat it.

I came to the conclusion there was no point in trying to force him to eat something he didn't want, and I didn't think it was going to prolong his life anyway. Sorry about your baby x

You can buy the renal food online (brands like Royal Canin and Hills) from Pet Supermarket etc, much cheaper than buying from the vet. My darling cat passed away 10 days ago but lived for over 10 years after being diagnosed with kidney issues

Our lad gets the Hills one and he is alive and well after being at death's door. It is an eye-watering price but, as PP said, much cheaper if you buy online.

My cat has royal canin fish flavour which was recommended at the referral hospital. It's generally important to avoid fish as it's too high in potassium and something else I forgot, could be phosphorus, but if it comes in a packet labelled renal food it's fine, as there's hardly any fish in it. You need to avoid things like tuna, sardines, tuna water etc.
the vet referral hospital that did work on my cat (she has only one diseased kidney, the other is removed) recommended providing a water fountain away from food to increase water consumption. We got a cat-it from Amazon for much less than her surgery cost. He also advised wet food is significantly better than dry food.
We were told to be really strict with my cat's diet, so she has never touched tuna since. She doesn't get chicken or anything other than renal food and the odd mouse. You just have to show your love in other ways than treats.
We found it tricky to get our cat on the renal food at first as kidney disease affects their appetite and makes them feel sick. Our vet suggested temporarily feeding cheap cat food as it's lower in protein so less bad than high quality food or meat. Whiskas is very low in protein from what I remember.

My cat passed away last week after suffering kidney failure for a number of years. He had only one functioning kidney and one at 20%. We got renal pet food at the best cost and most options from zooplus. Unfortunately after a while he decided that he wasn’t going to eat them. We discussed with the vet and came to the conclusion it was better that he ate something so went back to normal cat food or plain boiled chicken with his medications. He drank best out of a cup.

The Virbac one is quite good.

The best renal food is one your cat will eat.

A lot of cats really hate it so don't buy too much of any type to start with. My renal cat decided death was preferable to eating any flavour or brand of renal food.

So as it was better that she ate and didn't lose weight she got to eat whatever she liked.

I would go for Royal Canin if it were me as I have used their special diet food for another condition with great improvement.

My lovely Ellie had stage 3 kidney disease.I tried every renal food on the planet, but she wouldn't eat it.Eventually the vet said give her what she will eat.
She had 2.5 years before we had to have her put to sleep.
Tanya's CKD website is very good, honest but reassuring.
It's so upsetting, sorry about your lovely girl.

Ask your vet if they have individual pouches of wet or dry to try. We did that to find one our boy liked. Was a great money saver.
He is a troublesome ratbag 😁 so wouldn’t eat them. Until we discovered that his beloved Purina did one. He only eats Purina chicken and they did one! It was amazing.
So the point of my post - check if his exact food brand he likes does a renal version as it makes it a lot easier to switch.

When ours had KD the vet recommended Gocat senior she also had senior wet food which she would just nibble on.

How do you know if your cat has something wrong with their kidneys? We’ve adopted a cat and she’s 13 now. She goes to the loo outside so we don’t see her weeing etc. Would it show in her behaviour? She seems perfectly happy but I know they hide illness. Thanks very much.

I know my cat slowed down a bit and just seemed off and her eating changed.

Thank you for the help everyone, much appreciated

@Cardiganwearer tatty had hyperthyroid which can mask kidney disease symptoms so it was only picked up through weight loss and subsequent urine and blood tests. Her thyroid symptoms were excessive drinking and weeing, being weirdly obsessed with me, trying to trip me up going down the stairs, meowing at weird times. Just a huge chance in her general personality

Oh and poor quality coat can be a sign of kidney disease, she suddenly has got very tatty!

We bought it from Bitiba on recommendation from our vet. Far cheaper than the alternatives!

https://www.bitiba.co.uk/shop/veterinary/cat_vet_food_supplements/renal

However, she refused a lot of it and in the end we carried on with Whiskas, as the renal condition wasn't stable and we were into palliative care. Getting anything at all into her was the lesser of the two evils. She had a lot of tuna in her last six months as well, because she refused so much else.

I also gave her salmon oil to try to keep some weight on her but nothing really worked.

We lost my puss aged 16, after 18mths or so of battling with her blood pressure - which was so high it left her blind before we had any idea she was unwell - then the renal disease and finally renal failure.

I miss her so much. Here's a cat tax photo - this was in her latter days. Very ill, blind as a bat and full of mischief still.

Oh oh I know this one! Elton my CKD cat isn't wild about his renal food, but the best tolerated one for him is the Royal Canin loaf wet and Concept for Life dry. As other posters have noted though the best one is the one they will eat and a lot of them do look and smell absolutely disgusting. I am also experimenting at the moment with adding Ipakatine powder ( donated very kindly by another MNer) to some higher protein wet food to help reduce the phosphates as all the renal foods are very low in protein and Elton was starving all the time.

Thank you @Mrsjayy and @Tatianacatiana She’s not showing any of those signs at the moment thank goodness but good to know and I’ll keep an eye on her. Bless all the pussycats. I’m new to cat ownership and don’t they steal your heart 🩷

Here's tatty, 16 year old beautiful girl in her retirement home with me

Oh Tatty is beautiful. I loved having a cat mine lived until she was 19 she was as hard as nails but teeny tiny fought all the other cats and a few dogs 😀

@Mrsjayy she says meowwwww meow which either means thank you, or can I have tuna.

They're such funny things aren't they. Tatty once killed a hare and dragged it up on a 6ft high wall. I wouldn't want to mess with her

Oh she sounds well hard 😀

I've come across a thread where people are mentioning that after eating Sheba their cats got kidney failure. My cat started to drink water while eating Sheba in gravy cat food. Last night I found this post and I'm so worried. You could buy phosphorus binder to mix in her food this way you can give her any food and phosphorus will not be the problem. Zooplus has different renal foods avilable.

Don't overthink this. My puss was a lifelong Whiskas addict and absolutely refused any other brand of wet food or kibble. She had renal failure too. It's extremely common in modern cats and isn't linked to a specific food brand.

Our vet recommended Purina, Hills or Royal Canine renal food. We also had a powder, Ipakatine, to sprinkle over the food. Our cat liked all the renal food we tried - preferred it to his previous food!