Is Your Pet at Risk of Kidney Disease? Breeds and Early Signs

If there is one dominant risk factor for kidney disease, it is age, and the effect is strong, particularly in cats. Chronic kidney disease affects only a small percentage of cats overall, in the region of one to three percent, but that figure climbs steeply in older animals: studies suggest as many as 30 to 50 percent of cats over the age of 15 have some degree of kidney disease, and it is common enough that roughly a third of genuinely senior cats are affected. In dogs, kidney disease also becomes commoner with age, though it is less tightly tied to age than in cats and the overall numbers are lower.

The practical conclusion from this is simple and worth acting on: senior pets benefit from regular health screening, including kidney checks, before there is any obvious problem. There is real value in having baseline blood and urine results taken while your pet is well, because it gives your vet something to compare against later, and because, as we will see, the earliest kidney changes are detectable long before your pet looks unwell. A kidney check in an older pet is not pessimism; it is exactly the kind of early vigilance that buys good years.

Alongside age, some breeds carry a higher inherited risk, and knowing whether your pet is one of them helps you and your vet decide how closely to watch. I want to frame this carefully, though: a predisposed breed is not a doomed one. It simply means earlier and more regular kidney checks are worthwhile, so that if anything does develop, it is caught at the most treatable stage. The precise breed associations are the kind of detail worth confirming with your own vet, but the commonly reported ones are as follows.

Among cats, the Persian and related breeds such as the Exotic Shorthair carry a risk of polycystic kidney disease, an inherited condition with a gene test available. Several other breeds have been reported as overrepresented for kidney disease more generally, including the Maine Coon, Abyssinian, Siamese, Burmese, and Russian Blue, with the Abyssinian and Siamese also noted for a familial form involving amyloid protein.

Among dogs, the reported predispositions include the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, the Bull Terrier, which carries a hereditary nephritis, the Boxer, the English Cocker Spaniel, which carries a familial nephropathy, the Shar Pei, prone to a kidney problem linked to amyloid, the Basenji, associated with a tubular disorder called Fanconi syndrome, the Samoyed, with an X-linked hereditary nephropathy, the Shih Tzu and Lhasa Apso, associated with renal dysplasia, and the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier, associated with protein-losing kidney disease. Our article on the causes of kidney disease goes into the mechanisms behind several of these. If your pet is on either list, the message is not alarm but attentiveness: a little earlier, a little more often, with the kidney checks.

Here is the heart of the matter, the quiet early signs that are so easy to dismiss. None of these alone proves kidney disease, and most have other, more innocent explanations too, which is exactly why they slip past. But noticed together, or noticed as a change from your pet's normal, they are worth a vet's attention.

The first and most useful sign is a subtle increase in drinking and urinating. Because failing kidneys lose the ability to concentrate urine, a pet starts to lose more water and drinks more to compensate, so you might find yourself refilling the water bowl more often, seeing larger clumps in the cat litter, or noticing a dog asking to go out more. It is gradual, and it is the single change most worth taking seriously. Alongside it, watch for gradual weight loss, often slow enough that it creeps past unnoticed until you feel the bones more than you used to; a duller, more unkempt or scurfy coat, especially in cats, who may groom less when they feel below par; and a slightly reduced or pickier appetite. In cats specifically, reduced grooming and a quiet withdrawal are easy to read as "just slowing down with age."

The reason these matter is that each is so dismissible. "She's always liked the tap." "He's just getting older." "It's been a hot few weeks." Any single sign may indeed be nothing. But a genuine, persistent change in these, particularly the drinking, is the body's early signal, and catching it is the whole point of this article.

If age or breed puts your pet in a higher-risk group, or if you have noticed any of those quiet signs, there is one simple thing worth asking your vet about, and it can genuinely change the timeline of the disease: a blood test called SDMA.

SDMA is a marker of kidney function that rises earlier than the traditional marker, creatinine. Creatinine, the long-standing test, does not climb above normal until a great deal of kidney function is already lost, roughly three-quarters of it, whereas SDMA can flag a problem when far less function is gone, on average around 40 percent. In practical terms, that head start can amount to many months, sometimes well over a year, of earlier warning, during which the disease can be managed from a much stronger position. SDMA also has the advantage of not being thrown off by a thin pet's low muscle mass, which can make the old creatinine test read falsely reassuring in exactly the elderly cats most at risk. Our guide to reading the kidney bloods explains how it fits with the other numbers. The point here is that SDMA is a simple, widely available blood test, and it is reasonable to ask for it as part of a senior wellness screen, for an at-risk breed, or if your pet is showing any of the quiet signs above.

Let me turn all of this into a short, practical plan, because the aim is useful vigilance, not anxiety.

First, it is worth having a rough sense of how much your pet drinks, so that a real increase would register with you rather than creeping past. You do not need to measure to the millilitre, just know roughly what is normal for them, so a change stands out. Second, for an older or at-risk pet, talk to your vet about senior health screening on a sensible schedule, blood tests including SDMA and a urine sample to check concentration, so that a baseline exists and changes can be caught early. Third, when you do raise a concern, be specific, because specifics get a better assessment: "he's drinking noticeably more and has lost half a kilo over a couple of months" is far more useful than "he seems a bit off." And fourth, hold onto the genuinely hopeful fact at the centre of all this: catching kidney disease at an early stage, stage 1 or 2, is exactly when the diet, the monitoring, and the rest of the management have the most to offer, and when they can do the most to give your pet a long stretch of good life.

So, could your pet be at risk? If they are older, or one of the breeds above, then yes, a little more than average, and that is worth knowing, not worrying about. The right response is not to scrutinise every sip of water with dread, but to keep a relaxed eye on the quiet signs, to know that a real, persistent change in drinking, weight, coat, or appetite earns a vet visit rather than a shrug, and to ask about a simple SDMA test when it makes sense. Do that, and if kidney disease ever does appear, you will very likely catch it early, which is the single best thing you can do for the years ahead. The next time your pet is due a check-up, that is the moment to mention any of this, and to ask whether a kidney screen is worthwhile for them.