Kidney Health Chews, Renal Essentials Supplement for Cats, Kidney Care and Support with Mushroom, Astragalus Root, Nettle Seed and Herbs, Chicken, 120 Count

These chews are more like meaty Gummis than "treats". I break them into little pieces and add to the meal. This is why I give them five stars - kidney cats pee like crazy, dehydrating themselves and depleting their potassium and B vitamins, which leads to weakness and other problems. Giving subcutaneous fluids as we do (it's not that hard, don't be scared), there's even more peeing. These chews replace the lost vitamins and minerals and I have seen a real difference in our girl, who is in her second year of lab-verified kidney failure. Use a high-quality canned food (if they won't eat a "prescription" food, what's the point?), a spoonful of Gerber pureed jarred meat stirred in, the crumbled chews, two a.m. and two p.m., and once a day 2.5 mg of a Pepcid tablet - quarter a 10mg tab. Kidney kitties also get sour stomachs because of their imbalances, and if they feel yucky, they won't eat. This combined plan is keeping her eating, perky, and not just wasting away. The Gerber meat probably doesn't have kitty-required taurine, so it's being used to tempt and is soft on her elderly mouth, not a complete food. Works great. The Pepcid can be crushed and stirred into the food, but better put in a clear gelcap and given with a piller followed by an eyedropper squirt of water to be sure it goes down. Sub-Q fluids are key to flushing out the stuff the kidneys can't handle anymore - there's lots of online info about the needs of cats in kidney failure. These chews won't replace adequate fluids, but I can see a real difference in her strength since we started these. Good luck and I hope this helps.

UPDATE: The company finally offered me a refund check, which they said in an email would arrive "soon." it has been a week and a half and no refund check is in sight. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I wish I'd seen the reviews of these "chews" being hard as a rock before purchasing them, and before contacting the company in a good-faith question of whether they had possibly expired because my cats are TOTALLY uninterested in them, no matter what I do. (There is no exp date on the package.) Below is the unbelievable response I got from them, copy/pasted. I would not touch any product from this company ever again. "Thank you for reaching out to us with your question. We often get owners of dogs and cats saying their pet will not eat the product so that does not surprise me in the least. The worry is the product is bad or something changed with the formulation. Dogs and cats lives are ruled by their noses. Because we are a company that focuses on the ingredients everything affects the product.. like weather, drought, humidity, soil conditions etc. Due to these constantly changing seasonal conditions we expect at some point customers may have issues with their pets not loving some or all of the product due to its difference in smell, texture, density or even color. We, as a society, have become used to mass production and lots of additives and preservatives to make the unlikeable.. likeable… We do our best to keep that to a minimum and focus on the ingredients and adding only the most natural preservatives that enhance our product. We learned from a cat owner that if you put our treats in a baggie with something your pet loves the smell and taste of and leave them there for some time.. and let the smells cross onto each other... 95% of the time it works like a charm. For cats a brand-new smelly catnip toy and for dogs a smelly treat even the end of a parmesan rind. You may have to let it sit together for a longer period of time if it doesn't work the first time. If you are part of the 5% this is what we will need to process a replacement or refund for you. A picture of your receipt: Where you purchased the product from: Picture of the front and back of the bag to include the lot # ( 8- or 9-digit number followed by a space and four digits) Picture of the remaining product: Full name and address: We recommend that you try the trick, if you submit for a replacement/refund check, we ask that you donate to a shelter or rescue that can use the product." All this for a crappy $15 product that clearly had gone bad. No other vendor in the world makes you give this much documentation for a bad or expired product. These treats went into my trash. Avoid this company. ADDENDUM: After much emailing back and forth, they are sending me a refund. They still refuse to admit there's anything wrong with this product, or with mislabelling them as "chews" when they are not chewable by cats. They still claim they hardened because of "the weather" or other defensive reasons. Clearly just trying to avoid a bad rep, they don't really care. Sorry, but that doesn't work. They have a problem with this product.

We have four cats in our household, one of which was recently diagnosed with Kidney Disease. She had been fighting a severe infection that her poor little body just could not flush out and had been on multiple rounds of antibiotics. Our new vet who has turned out to be absolutely amazing and vital to improving the health and life quality of our fur babies, recommended these treats. She said this will help support the renal function making it easier for our baby to fight any future infection and prolong her life. We started using this supplement along with another that was recommended and have seen a vast improvement in her health. She is infection free and thriving. I haven't seen her so happy or playful in months. There is no cure for Kidney Disease but there are things you can do to slow the progress, extend their lives and give them a better quality of life. After hours of research and many questions with our vet I have learned that Kidney Disease is common with domestic cats and most often starts between seven and ten years old. The earlier the detection, the longer and healthier life. Hydration is key, we feed exclusively wet food as cats, unlike dogs and other animals, don’t obtain the majority of their hydration by drinking but rather from their food. Kibble actually dehydrates them and causes the kidney disease to progress faster with increased symptoms and discomfort. In addition to hydration, supplements like these can help their kidneys to “deteriorate” slower. They also offer support, like in our case, working to acidify her urine and helping to clear the infection. With KD they are unable to process the hydration intake as well and their urine becomes dilute which can contribute to infection. Cats with KD are at risk for having more frequent infections that are harder to resolve due to this. So this supplement is vital to her long term care. I’m so thankful that this product is available. All of our cats are street rescues. One is of an unknown age but is at least seven years so we started giving him these supplements as well in the spirit of prevention. He LOVES these treats and often tries to steal them from the other cat.

We started using this when we had basically given up all hope for our 14 year old cat. The vet was recommending dialysis and thousands of dollars of intervention. We said no, thankfully. He is not perfect and we can hear him yowling in pain sometimes but this product and some other changes we made to his diet made a huge difference. At least try this before you spend serious money.

It was encouraging to see a kidney/renal friendly treat for cats with chronic kidney disease but customer service and product guarantee fall short of other reputable brands offering free returns if the pet does not like/eat the product. This is very short sighted from Vetriscience and cannot recommend for this significant reason particularly with the very high cost.

Giving these to me geriatric cat with stage 2 kidney disease. I just toss it in his dry food bowl and eats it no problem.

This is something that is incredibly hard to rate it's overall effectiveness on as I am not a vet. What I can say is that this product, in conjunction with bi-weekly subcutaneous fluids, plus a healthy diet focused on non-grain low-protein food has seemed to help the longevity of 2 of our feline friends with chronic kidney disease. It's sad that such a common disease in felines has not come up with a cure yet, but hopes are that it will soon. While my cat grew tired of the taste of these within a few months, slight flavour tweaking with other powders seems to keep her eating them. Not all kitties are the same, some will take to these others not so much, but things can be done to encourage kitties to eat them. Ultimately, I believe they help, I hope you get some extended life out of your family friend with these. It sucks to lose our companions, I do think that these help but there is more to extending a comfortable life for our friends than treats. So much for my usual humorous Amazon reviews...

My cat thinks these are actual treats - she loves them. I haven't had her retested so I don't know if they are making a difference with her kidneys. She doesn't seem to be drinking or urinating quite as much which is a good thing. UPDATE: I've been ordering these chews since May. I just opened the 5th package from this company. All the others were excellent. This package is obviously old or past their prime (I can't find an expiry date). I use them to encase my cat's pills. This package of chews are not very chewy. I really depend on this product since it's the only method I have found to use for pilling as well as to help with her kidney issues. I hope the company stands behind their product.