Diet options for kidney disease

[Whatsnmynameagain9]

I’m looking to switch my boy to food friendly for kidney disease. He’s drinking and weeing a lot, coat not as beautiful as it used to be, odd smell and he is nearly 19 yo.

Took him for a blood test today but unfortunately they couldn’t get the sample.

I thought I’d make a start anyway on the food options.

hills do a kidney friendly one. Any others? He also like biscuits

thank you

You need the diet pages of Tanya's renal cat website. I found invaluable in getting my cat to eat.

The key is to find a food they will eat. A cat that is not eating is poorlier than a cat eating the wrong diet.

Unfortunately renal cats tend to be picky and renal cat food isn't tasty.

My cat made it clear she would choose death rather than eat any renal cat food on the UK market. So she lived her last year on Sheba Cat Soup and was happy.

Luckily our other cat is like a dustbin in cat form and ate anything.

At 19, id give him what ever he likes. It'd qualify if life. Not quantity.

After much trial and error with renal foods and a very miserable cat, this is where I ended up.

Definitely give the renal diet a go but personally I think it's ethical to keep them on a normal diet if they don't like the renal stuff, which neither of my kidney cats did. They tend to get skinny anyway and then you want calories in.

I would cut out the dry food though and get a fountain to encourage him to drink water.

Thanks for your insights. I couldn’t find any renal option at the pet shop and picked up some applaws in broth. I’m all up for quality of life too so don’t think I’ll bother with the renal diet stuff. I’ll aim to reduce the biscuits and up the water offerings around the house too.

Royal Canin, as well as Hills, do renal foods. They do the kibble as well as the wet, and I was told better than nothing if he wouldn't eat the renal wet. TBF he wasn't even eating much of his usual wet or dry food towards the end

But to be blunt I'm afraid that apart from the weeing and drinking etc, the fact his coat has gone to pants and he smells odd were the signs for me that my beloved Boycat was very near the end. I just spoiled him rotten; I will always have the memories of him sitting on me with me feeding him a packed of sliced cooked beef in little strips.

Sadly with some cats CKD can come on very quickly. In Boycat's case he had his annual MoT in the April showing perfect health, first signs of anything wrong in the September, and PTS the following February. He was only just coming up for 8 at that time.

Our vet recommended Hill's, royal canine or Purina kidney diet. Our cat really liked the Hill's and Purina food (we didn't try the royal canine). He also had Ipakatine powder to sprinkle over the food - again he happily ate that too. The food and powder made a big difference and he had a good quality of life for almost a further year after diagnosis, before passing away aged 17.

Yes, absolutely this. There is no way I'd be faffing about with "specialist" diets at that age - give him whatever he wants and let him go when needed.

I would definitely give the renal diet a try, if that's what the vet has recommended. It made a real difference to our cat's health and quality of life and he liked it more than his previous food. His brother kept trying to steal it too! We got them microchip activated feeders so it was easy to manage. Maybe they've improved the appeal of these foods lately.

We bought the food and powder online, from Viovet.

Maybe they've improved the appeal of these foods lately.

Mine was only just over 2 years ago, so pretty recent.

It very much depends on the individual cat what they do or don't like to eat. My DSis got her latest cats quite recently, and I've been trying different foods due to stomach issues with one of mine. If one of us tries a food that it turns out our cats don't like, we hand it to the other to see if their cats like it & often they do. DSis gave me a couple of pouches she'd tried hers on recently which they barely touched, I tried it for mine this morning & the entire feed was gone (usually they eat half then come back later).