Are these food ok for kidney issues?

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Cat Ma

Cat Ma

Member Since 2015
I have my cat on Fancy Feast Classics and canned Wellness Chicken for low carbs but am wondering if these are appropriate for enlarged kidney issues. One of my cat's kidney is enlarged again (previously both were). Should I be considering others canned food?

Since my cat has been OTJ and showing very good BG #'s, she hardly drinks water and urine input has been significantly less. It seems as if she has gone from one extreme to another. Is this normal?
 
Fancy Feast is pretty high in phosphorus, which is not that good for kidney issues. Wellness Chicken is not as bad, have less than half the phosphorus FF has. This is a food chart with phosphorus numbers on it. I try to stay under 250 though under 200 is better, its just hard to get there on the non-prescription foods.

Yes, cats that get regulated and are eating a wet food diet can seem like they hardly ever drink. They are getting most of their moisture in their food. Their urine output can return to normal and after the large output of an unregulated diabetic, it can see like it isn't much.
 
Unfortunately, that product has been discontinued. Buy what you can now if any is left in stock.
 
wellness is good. when Rudy started having kidney issues, we switched from fancy feast classics to friskies special diet turkey. Now that friskies is being discontinued and due to better food quality overall, we just swtiched to wellness chicken and wellness turkey- both ok for diabetes and kidneys. looking into evo as well. the numbers on the chart indicate that would be ok too. check out the short list chart I've attached :-)
 

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Thank you for all of your very helpful responses! Out goes the Fancy Feast but fortunately my cat still loves Wellness. I am going to add turkey.
Is Wellness Beef & Chicken and Beef & Salmon okay too?

Why is Friskies Special Diet being discontinued?

I do leave out Stella & Chewy's when I am not home. I add water to it. I didn't see it listed in the charts but maybe I overlooked it. Is this good for renal issues?

What is the maximum phosphorus number that I should look for?

Good point, Melanie & Smokey about urine output. I was so used to seeing boulders in the litter box.

Good chart, Karen Blasky. Thank you.
 
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are you sure it's being discontinued? I just stocked up at PetSmart and they told me they were getting more in...
 
They confirmed on their official Facebook page to a few people who asked that it has been discontinued. And I got an email back from them today after querying it on their website :-

Thank you for contacting the Nestlé Purina PetCare Company. We always welcome questions and comments from our consumers.

We are truly sorry for how much this decision has troubled you and your cats. We appreciate you contacting us, and expressing your feelings. Please know they are important to us. We would like to assure you that your comments will be noted, and reported to the appropriate individuals in our Company. We feel certain that careful consideration will be given to them and any others we might receive.

Again, thank you for contacting Nestlé Purina PetCare Company.

I'd imagine there will be some available for a while yet, especially with any of the companies like PetSmart who might have some stored in a central warehouse somewhere, but according to Purina it's definitely gone. :( They said it's because not enough people were buying it.
 
manxcat419 said:

I'd imagine there will be some available for a while yet, especially with any of the companies like PetSmart who might have some stored in a central warehouse somewhere, but according to Purina it's definitely gone. :( They said it's because not enough people were buying it.
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I have a suggestion for Purina, how about lowering the phosphorus levels in all of their can foods.
 
Lisa and Witn (GA) said:
I have a suggestion for Purina, how about lowering the phosphorus levels in all of their can foods.
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Wouldn't that be nice! Somehow I don't see it happening though - everything they've introduced recently has been in gravy or in sauce...exactly the kind of foods no-one should really be looking for! :rolleyes: When I commented on their Facebook page, they said they could recommend another low phosphorus food, but that it's higher in carbs (they didn't tell me what it was, they wanted me to PM them but I want the information out there publicly) but as I told them, higher carb is no good anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if they were about to recommend their NF which I'd already told them is no good!!
 
Melanie and Smokey said:
Fancy Feast is pretty high in phosphorus, which is not that good for kidney issues. Wellness Chicken is not as bad, have less than half the phosphorus FF has. This is a food chart with phosphorus numbers on it. I try to stay under 250 though under 200 is better, its just hard to get there on the non-prescription foods.
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What is the maximum phosphorus number that I should look for? Thanks
 
Can anyone tell me if Stella & Chewy's is low in phosphorus? I can't find it in the charts. Thanks
 
As low as possible is really the aim with phosphorus. As I understand it, you really need to look for under 250mg phos per 100 calories. Your other option, if none of these foods are acceptable to your cat is to use a phosphorus binder, but you can only do that if he's the only cat eating the food - I did look into using phosphorus binders with healthy cats as 5 of our 6 don't need the low phos food, but the information I can find says that although it won't hurt a healthy cat to eat a little of it, they really shouldn't be fed food with a phosphorus binder in any quantity.

On a much more basic level, our vet told us that we could feed our CKD girl anything that had less than 1% phosphorus listed on the nutritional analysis (but preferably to look for 0.9% or lower). I think the 1% is at the very upper range of what's OK to feed and might only be good enough for early/mid stage kidney problems (although Shadow has been CKD for a while, it doesn't seem to be progressing quickly with her as she still only gets fluids every 3 days although she's been on fluids and potassium for about 3 years now).

The Stella & Chewy's site doesn't list the phosphorus content in their cat food (or not that I can find anyway) so I'm not sure that it would be OK to feed. You could always try contacting them to see if they can give you more on the nutritional analysis than is shown on their site as the information seems to be fairly limited.
 
manxcat419 said:
Your other option, if none of these foods are acceptable to your cat is to use a phosphorus binder, but you can only do that if he's the only cat eating the food - I did look into using phosphorus binders with healthy cats as 5 of our 6 don't need the low phos food, but the information I can find says that although it won't hurt a healthy cat to eat a little of it, they really shouldn't be fed food with a phosphorus binder in any quantity.
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We do not put our binder in the food. Taz's is a compounded liquid and we just give it to her 2X a day. We have been able to bring her down to good numbers and maintain them giving it like that.

manxcat419 said:
(they didn't tell me what it was, they wanted me to PM them but I want the information out there publicly)
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If you see my post there you will see someone outed them. They are pushing their prescription UR food in the PMs. That doesn't do CKD cats a dang bit of good nor does it do people who can't afford $45/case food a dang bit of good. I don't believe their story that sales were too low, I think sales of the Special Diet were hurting their prescription food sales and that's why they ditched it. They only need to get about 20% of the people who were buying Special Diet to buy their prescription UR and they break even.

Cat Ma said:
What is the maximum phosphorus number that I should look for? Thanks
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I don't think there is "a max" phosphorus number. You want it as low as you can get. As I said, my upper range I aim for is 200-250. (The 1%manxcat mentions usually translates to around 200mg/100cals) Sometimes Taz eats Fancy Feast, 'cause that is all Taz wants to eat that day. But we also use a phosphorus binder. We give her a binder whether she eats a food that is 200 or one that is 700.

I've never seen any numbers for Stella & Chewy's. I kind of don't want to. It is the secret weapon in our house against fussy eaters, I don't want anyone to burst my bubble.
 
Melanie and Smokey said:
They are pushing their prescription UR food in the PMs.
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I had a sneaky feeling they might start pushing that one at some point. Never mind that I'd already told them in email that it's no use whatsoever for either diabetics or kidney kitties - it increases urine volume of all things...exactly what neither condition needs! :P

Melanie and Smokey said:
The 1%manxcat mentions usually translates to around 200mg/100cals
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That is good to know - thank you. I hadn't tried calculating it out that way, just used it as an "alternative" measurement when I was looking at food. Though all of ours were getting a mixture of Friskies regular pate and the Special Diet...and Shadow's blood work came back better than it ever did on the prescription diet!
 
Purina just e-mailed me back, gave me the "nobody's buying it" story. One thing I had noticed; you could only buy it at places like PetSmart--and they put it up on the upper shelves, where it was hard to see, let alone get to. I'm pretty disgusted.
 
Our local Walmart did stock it - but it was all the way in the corner of a shelf. Right next to the regular pate foods with no obvious label so you had to read the cans to see whether you were buying Classic or Special Diet (or Senior Diet). And right in that one spot at the edge of the shelf that's often covered by advertising for whatever their current offer is. If they'd only done some consumer research before deciding to discontinue the food, we could all have told them that and maybe they could have got stores to put it somewhere more obvious. And if it's purely profit-margin driven (not that I think Nestle Purina really needs more profit, but then I'm not a shareholder either), then I for one would have been happy to pay a few extra cents per can to get a food that works for our cats instead of ones that are less than ideal.
 
Melanie and Smokey said:
We do not put our binder in the food. Taz's is a compounded liquid and we just give it to her 2X a day. We have been able to bring her down to good numbers and maintain them giving it like that.

What kind of compounded liquid do you use instead of a binder?
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Does a cat have to be tested high in phosphorus to need a binder? My cat doesn't have renal issues on blood work.
 
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