I have watched two of my cats die of renal failure and it is appalling. Apparently fit, sprightly animals having the life sucked out of them by a disease that, in humans, is treatable by transplant. So why do I have concerns about offering the same opportunity to cats? The present sophistication of veterinary services is evident in the specialisms and technical provision at some of the major hospital and research centres. Vets have the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge that must be immensely satisfying when it results in the provision of health care to animals which is close to that available to their owners. Kidney transplantation is available in the US and Australia so why not here?

In human transplant surgery, there is a donor who has consented and either lives to tell the tale or has made an altruistic decision to donate after death. Those who offer ‘spare' organs such as kidneys are aware of the personal consequences which include the risk of irreversible trauma to the remaining kidney. No-one makes an organ donation knowing that the act itself will be fatal. Clearly animals can't make these judgments, unless you consider groups of research apes whose level of sign language skills places them on the edge of capacity to understand quite sophisticated concepts, thereby blurring the slick distinction we make between humans (competent) and animals (incompetent). Some of the severely learning disabled people I know through my work have less language skills than this and are no less human for it. Nor are they disregarded in terms of their right to consideration when it comes to treatment or care. This brings us to notions of consent, best interests and exploitation. Our cultural appreciation of animals encompasses a number of different categories for which we may make quite distinct emotional identification. Animals can be used for food or as work tools, entertainment, sport, or companionship which demonstrates an ambivalence about animals as animals - there is no key principle here as there is for humans so that the way animals are perceived is entirely dependant upon their utility. Cats are particularly susceptible to renal failure but I doubt this debate would have arisen with regard to a species less likely to be anthropomorphised and found on people's sofas. This is not the place to debate animal rights but the argument above sets the scene for consideration of the kinds of whims that might drive a public wish for transplantation. Attachment, attribution of wishes and hopes, and investment in a relationship are likely to be motivators in owners seeking to help their pets but are they able to take that anthropomorphic cluster a step further to consider the donor? If my cat can engage my caring concerns by looking at me and vocalising, could not the donor cat elicit a similar response and how could I then proceed to harvest its kidney with such cool self interest?

Neither cat is capable of giving consent because this species is unable to understand the language or concepts necessary to that decision. If an adult with a profound learning disability were in this situation, I would be unable to condone any thought about them becoming a donor even if this would save the life of a close family member. This is because it would reduce that person to the status of a resource, unable to appreciate the risks or even the impact of their action and that would constitute abuse. Expedience cannot be a reason for mutilation, however well-intended.

To view animals as a resource because there is no expectation of consent is too simplistic. Where any entity cannot give full and informed consent to a procedure that is not in its/their best interests, that procedure cannot be viewed as acceptable. These are tricky waters to navigate. Taking that line we immediately outlaw the research that produces safe drugs and procedures for our pets since it cannot be held to be in the research animal's best interests to take unnecessarily large doses of medication over a prolonged period in order to establish a safe and effective limit. Most of us are either ignorant of this process or choose to ignore it – what we don't see doesn't concern us, but if we are to make an ethical judgment about the use of animals as resources for other animals we need to consider that some forms of veterinary research may just be comparable to transplantation in its driving principle. A research cat is just as cute as a donor cat but its position is less visible and immediate. If it is unethical to use one cat as an organ resource on an essentially altruistic principle but

without the consent of the donor, it is difficult to see how other invasive medical and surgical procedures, also essentially altruistic and without consent, can be acceptable. While our social history includes many abuses of humans in the interests of medical research, we no longer condone these practices. Our use of animals is also diminishing in this regard with the advent of better tissue based models of disease processes and the understanding that cross-species generalisation is not always valid. Perhaps the availability of renal transplantation is timely in its capacity to highlight for all of us the balance of harms and benefits that go towards safer treatment for our pets at the expense of identical non-consenting animals.

My cats had no idea that some form of treatment might be available and so no sense of it being withheld. Painful as it was, I could not envisage the harvesting of a kidney from a healthy young cat to, possibly, prolong the well-lived life of my own, however dear they are to me. Interestingly there have been no enquires to the Disabled Animals' Club about transplants, and a poll that has been on the web site now for a month, drew only one vote and that rejected the idea on the grounds of donor consent. To the interested observer, it seems clear that the status of pet animals has been elevated in our culture to approximate that of humans. That being the case we might argue that the status of the donor should be similarly elevated such that invasive surgery without consent is viewed as unethical and surgery which does not allow for recovery abhorrent.

The challenge for the veterinary profession will still be to develop skills. There will be the consideration of ethics as medicine becomes more sophisticated and moral tuning changes our perceptions of the role of animals in our society. Communication of these difficult issues to owners whose main investment is in a cherished pet will be hugely challenging and demand time that at present vets rarely have available in their schedules. And finally, skilled surgeons, physiologists and biochemists will, one hopes, be developing the techniques necessary to underpin future ethically sound alternatives to non-consenting donor dependent transplantation and to the researching of pet health care provisions.

The Disabled Animals' Club can be found at www.disabledanimalsclub.co.uk