Health & Wellbeing My 14 year old cat has been diagnosed ias having kidney disease, she won't eat the 'special' wet food but likes the special dried biscuits, however, she keeps getting UTI's she looks very healthy, but I can tell she's feeling off when she doesn't e
I know of 3 excellent kidney-specific diets for cats - Hill's k/d, Royal Canin's Renal LP, and Purina's NF. I'm sure as your vet explained, kidney diets are designed to be low in phosphorus and protein, and they produce less nitrogenous waste (less work for the kidneys).
Wet food is preferred when managing kidney disease, mainly because it adds additional moisture to the diet, and kidney failure tends to cause animals to "leech" fluids from the body, so the additional water is necessary. Having said that, cats can be very difficult when it comes to changing diets, so if she absolutely won't eat wet food, I would try the dry variety of any of the foods I recommended above.
Most veterinary internal medicine specialists feel that getting a kidney failure cat to eat is more important than specifically what it eats, so if you absolutely can't get her to eat a kidney diet, you may have to resort (at least temporarily, while you transition her) to feeding her what she will eat.
As for the
Updated on August 12th, 2025
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