What's the best cat food for a kitty with kidney issues?

If you don’t trust your vet, find another one. The food that is sold through veterinarian offices is specially blended to be much healthier than any you can find in the store.

I would agree with @YARNLADY. I’m just astonished at how many people seem to entrust their own health and the health of their animals to people they don’t seem to trust or who they believe are prescribing expensive treatments because they are on the take or have ulterior motives. If you don’t believe your vet is acting in the best interest of your animal then find another vet.

Here’s a pretty good article on feeding cats with kidney disease. My biggest problem with the k/d was getting my cat to eat it. It’s apparently not very tasty. There are other brands you can try that your cat might find more palatable if the k/d doesn’t work and some of those are mentioned in the link I posted above. Good luck. Kidney disease is pretty serious so be careful and thoughtful.

Edit: And yes, vets do make money when the sell a bag of Hills Prescription Diet of whatever kind, because the prescription diets are only available from your vet, not from places like Petsmart. Vets are running businesses, not non-profits. Your pharmacist at the local drug store makes money when you buy a prescription too. It’s not a “kickback.” That’s just the way it works.

Every vet I’ve ever visited sells Hills, that’s part of my concern.
Perhaps part of my question should have been: “Do YOU trust feeding the Hills brand to your cats, even if it does give vets kickbacks?”.
I have been very careful and thoughtful, that’s why I asked for recommendations when I read about k/d.

Honestly, when our “Squirrel” suffered near-total kidney failure, we went with the Hills and it worked fine. Well, along with the saline injections. In fact, she seemed to like it better than the normal food.

@jerv, So it helped? That’s good to hear. Did you give supplements, too?

I would suggest getting a second opinion if you feel like your Vet is just pulling your leg, or trying to make a buck, but honestly, most brands that Vets carry( or RX Dr’s prescribe) compensate them for carrying or promoting their products, it happens. So you need to decide if you trust your doctor or not, if not I would go somewhere else and if so then give it a try and see if it helps. Good luck to you.

There are so many types of food out there, it is difficult for me to answer. My dog had to have one of his kidneys removed and has been on a renal diet for many years now (he currently has Medi-Cal kibble and c/d Hill’s Perscription soft food). I know both of those companies have the feline versions as well.
There are certain ingredients you should be avoiding ..and others you should be looking for. Your cat should be on some type of soft low protein food for sure.

This link has some information on food.
I also found this one ..there’s some very useful stuff here (the person that manages the website has had a lot of personal experience with kidney issues in cats).

This isn’t a vet issue, really….I know he’s a very competent vet.
Thanks for the info so far.

@SundayKittens No supplements required. She did great for many months with no “crashes”.

Unfortunately, one night she snuck out of the house and was never seen again :(

She was an indoor cat who loved the outdoors when we took her out on a leash. Given where we lived at the time, she likely became part of the food chain before the CRF could get her. The way I see it, she went the way she wanted to live; outdoors, wild, and free.

Awww, I’m sorry @jerv! And I agree. Maybe she knew it was “time”.

I feel like I’m on the attack here, @lilycoyote! :/
In what I’ve read, it made it sound as if it were comparable to when doctors push certain drugs because the companies offer them extra incentives. Obviously I know they’re not non-profit.
The ingredients of k/d are more of a concern than anything else.
Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive from worry…in any case, thank you all for your insight.

My cat had that problem and I used Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Feline Urinary SO, and Hill’s Prescription Diet. They were prescribed options. You might want to use the wet versions of what ever your doc prescribes. Regardless of whether or not they make money from you buying brands, they are still trying to help you; get a second opinion of you do not trust the doc’s you have.

Just to fix a mistake in what my dog eats, we have so much special pet food in my house that my brain gets overloaded sometimes lol. My dog is on Hill’s Perscription Diet J/d kibble and Medi-Cal Reduced Protein soft food. I can’t edit my above response :P

@PluckyDog I’m glad it’s helping your pup!

@SundayKittens I’m sorry if you felt on the attack. I really didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that every vet who has ever cared for my animals has been in the profession because they animals and were smart and focused and ambitious enough to want to get into the profession. I’m not saying I haven’t had issues with my vets over the years; that is part of being an intelligent consumer of services and part of caring for one’s animals. I just get kind of upset when people seem to be so suspicious of the motives that vets have for prescribing certain courses of treatment. You have to do your research and you have to look into everything because it is tremendous responsibility to care for animals. Many people don’t look at it that way; you are an advocate for them; they can’t speak for themselves. A person direct their own health care, an animal cannot. You have to do it for them and it can be a big weight on you. People who don’t love or feel a responsibility to animals like you and I and many others do don’t get that. But you have to work with your vet.

Do you research, ask questions, look at alternatives, in the end do what you think is best for your animals. I just think you can’t so that if you don’t trust your vet, and that’s what it sounded like to me. That you were concerned that your vet was prescribing the Hills kidney diet at some kind of “kickback” scheme, you said it yourself. Again, I didn’t mean for it to come across as an attack but I find it frustrating when people might not do what is best for their animals because they are, for some reason, suspicious that their vet has some kind of ulterior motive for ordering a certain course of treatment. Too much uniformed trusting and not enough trusting of the opinions of medical professionals can both do more harm than good.

But I would still stand by my answer. If you have any reason at all to believe or suspect that your vet is not acting in your cat’s best interest then you have an obligation to that animal to find another vet. Do your research, ask questions, but unless you want to completely circumvent the medical expertise a vet can offer you, then you kind of have to be able to figure out whether they are honest professionals or not.

I took my dog to an all night animal hospital. That vet told me she was dying. To fix her, he wanted $1000 to start, lots of blood tests and x-rays, and even then he couldn’t offer much hope. So I took her down the road to this alternative medicine vet. The new vet gave us a special kind of vitamin (and yes, there was a special vitamin preparation for renal problems too).

We had 18 blessed more months with our little sweetie. Do consider alternative medicine. Even with the expensive new vitamins and fairly frequent visits to this expensive alternative vet, it was cheaper than the $1000-plus other vet. We also used the special vet food, but had no problems with it. I think that was because of the special vitamins. They filled in the blank spots left by the prescription food.

@snowberry, or anyone else… I’m not at all against alternative medicine, it just depends what is wrong with the animal. Some things cannot be fixed with alternative medicine. I also took my cat to a vet, he had a fibrosarcoma and the vet told me it would be about $1200 dollars for the surgery and treatment and also that there wasn’t much hope. That particular cancer kills between 50 and 80 percent of the cats that get it. The only option was surgery and I went for it. No biopsy, against the advice of my vet, just get it out, as soon as possible. I questioned whether or not my vet was capable of doing the surgery, how many she had done, if she really knew what she was doing; she got kind of bent out of shape about that but in the end admitted that maybe it was beyond her abilities so I found a oncological veterinary surgeon who came highly recommended and had him do it.

This was my sweet boy Casper

Casper again

More Casper

Casper again

Casper

Casper

You think I didn’t love that guy? I sure as hell did.

Don’t even get me on the subject of Bugsy, he was my baby.

He had the surgery at 8 and died, at the age of 21, curled up in the crook of my elbow, while I slept one night. He lived that long because I stood up to one vet and trusted another. It is a matter of doing both, not letting one’s preconceptions and ideologies interfere with what is best for the animal. Not letting one’s attachment to standard treatment or alternative treatement, one way or the other, get in the way of what is best for your animal. Alternative treatments are a good idea in some circumstances and a very bad idea in other circumstances.

I don’t mean to attack anyone or anybody’s beliefs in what kind of medicine in good or bad but you are responsible for your animal.

Again, this is a subject I can tend to get little worked up about and I don’t mean for it to be personal in any way. I am just arguing my position with a little more enthusiasm than may be warranted. Please forgive.

@lillycoyote I understand! Thank you for your input. That Casper was quite a looker!

@lillycoyote Yep. You sure are responsible for your animal, (and for your own health for that matter)! Had I stayed with the first vet it’s unlikely my dog would have made it, and/or I would have been out big bucks. Remember, he told me then she was dying?

Buyer beware works both ways.

In my experience, give the body what it needs, and it will heal itself. I believe that’s what we did for our dog, and she lived considerably longer as a result.

@snowberry I think we will have to agree to disagree on the “give the body what it needs, and it will heal itself” thing. That may work with certain diseases and disorders but in many types of illnesses in both people and animals it’s not sufficient, but enough of that. I’m just really happy that your dog lived and you both had many more good years together. :-) That’s what really matters.

@lillycoyote It’s nice of you to agree to disagree. That’s more generous than most medically minded folks on this site. Lurve to you.

@snowberry :-) Thanks. This is just another area where I sometimes end up feeling like the ball in the tennis match between opposing modalities; opposing ideologies. Some of my more “medically minded” friends and acquaintances think me quite the irrational flake for using alternative therapies on myself and my animals. I guess I need to be more dogmatic and doctrinaire, one way or the other, on certain issues so I fit in better, fit on comfortably on one side or the other but I’m not going to do that. I’m a believer in what works; in being open to whatever gets the job done, that’s all; I have no axe to grind either way. Casper would have been dead at 8 if it hadn’t been for his surgery; instead he lived to be 21, many more good years for him, for me and for my family. I have no problem at all with the decision that I made. I also have no problem having used Bach Flower Remedies among other crazy things with both my cats to treat certain problems that they had.

@lillycoyote Actually, I’m with you on that. I have no problem in using medicine when I think it’s appropriate. But I could point you to a few here (including a moderator) who will blast anyone who has the audacity to promote any sort of alternative medicine. For them there is no way but their way.

I have one daughter in nursing school, so we have this sort of conversation fairly often. Blessings to you friend.

To clarify, my dog’s life was extended by 18 months. The vitamins the vet gave her DID NOT heal her, but it did give her a quality of life I could not have imagined possible. And interestingly, at the end her kidneys were failing, but we missed it. Had we started her on the renal formula a year earlier, it might have made a difference, but we’ll never know.