Kidney transplantation in cats raises significant welfare and ethical questions about the donor cat, the recipient, and the long-term immunosuppressive management required after surgery.
Feline kidney transplantation raises profound welfare ethics that centre primarily on the donor cat. Unlike human living donor kidney donation, the donor cat cannot give informed consent and undergoes significant surgery — general anaesthesia, abdominal incision, and nephrectomy — for the benefit of another animal. The donor cat's welfare after donation is generally acceptable — cats can live normally with one kidney — but the surgery itself imposes genuine risk and welfare cost on a healthy animal that has not benefited from the procedure. The recipient's welfare trajectory involves major surgery, recovery, lifelong immunosuppressive medication, and variable long-term outcomes — many cats survive for less than two years post-transplant. The ethical weight of performing major elective surgery on a healthy donor cat, for outcomes that are often limited in duration, requires honest assessment. Veterinary professional guidance varies on the ethics of the procedure. The requirement that owners adopt the donor cat represents a welfare protection for the donor but does not resolve the question of whether donor surgery is ethically justified given the cat's inability to consent.