Kidney transplantation is available for cats with end-stage renal disease but raises significant ethical questions about donor cat welfare that require careful consideration alongside recipient benefit.
The central welfare tension in feline kidney transplantation is between the clear benefit to the recipient and the surgical risk imposed on a healthy donor cat. Donor nephrectomy carries perioperative risks including anaesthetic complications, haemorrhage, and infection. Long-term donor welfare with a single kidney is generally good but requires monitoring. Recipients require lifelong immunosuppressive medication that carries its own risk of infection and other complications. The requirement that donor cats be adopted and cared for by the recipient family provides some welfare protection. Whether it is ethically justifiable to impose surgical risk on a healthy animal without its consent for another animal remains a genuine debate in veterinary ethics that reasonable people resolve differently.