Crystals, bad vets, eating litter??

Okay so back in AUGUST I noticed something was off with Lil'Guy

He's 4yrs old, I've had him his whole life (Rescued his preggo mom), and has been raw fed (prey model) for about 1.5yrs (a little over).

And it wasn't anything major I noticed, he just seemed off. I don't know how to explain it. Took him to our vet at the time, they checked him over, dismissed him.

So I thought okay I'm overreacting- he's fine.

A couple weeks later I notice he's peeing outside the box. I went to a new vet because the last one really screwed up with my dog. Bad. I was super cheese off. Anyway...

So this new vet comes in, looking tired. Seems 100% positive he has crystals. Which he does but I was trying to tell him about other tings i noticed about him and I was blown off.

I was a bit happier with them until they insisted I feed Hills dry food to him for his crystals. I know they're vets but my research says wet food, increase water consumption. So I have and I dind't bother feeding the hills.

He seems to be better on that.

Today I was feeding him ground beef mixed with water. He wasn't happy with that, eating it reluctantly. Then he decided to try to get food from one of the other cats. I stopped him and he runs to his litter box to start munching on litter!

!!!! What is up with this? I took him out, put him back by his food and again he runs to the box to start munching.

So I put him in a crate and changed the litter to non clumping. I have NEVER seen him do this! Kittens yes but he's not a kitten and I'm just at a loss!

I'm considering another vet appointment but I need to find a competent one...

Cats eating strange things are often loooking for nutrients that they are missing in their diets. Not sure what the deficiency is, or if there is one, but it could lead to all the side effects you've described, as it would also alter behavior (you said he was a bit off).

If that is it, I would be able to see it by getting blood work done correct?

Yes, you would need a full blood panel to check for deficiencies. Your vet should know exactly what to do, as long a you say you believe it's a nutrient deficiency of some sort.

Your vet is likely fine... You need to get a full blood panel ( possibly a senior as usually those are more in depth , make sure to test thyroid )

Hills ingredients may not appeal to you but it is Clinically proven for UTI issues to help clear them , thus giving you time to discuss other options ( hills also has homemade diets for all the issue s they have Rx dry food for)....

Did the vet get a urine sample? .. What type of crystals did the vet think kitty has?

Regular wet food will NOT clear crystals , rx can ...
Communication on your part to the vet is key in this type of issue

My cat, Beeba, had struvite crystals this time last year.

I was not thrilled with the Hills CD, but it works. No food is perfect, but there is a place for prescription diets.

He has been crystal free for 1 year.

I hope your boy clears up, but agree with all the other posters as to your plan of action.

As noted, eating strange items is often a sign of pica - that necessary nutrients are missing in the regular diet. Ground beef alone is not sufficient for cats - and many homemade diets can be missing key nutrients - cats are much harder to 'cook' for than dogs, for example. I'd say until you can get into the vet (hopefully in the next day or two), please feed your cat an AAFCO-approved food that has all the necessary nutrients. I'd also bring in complete documentation of what you've been feeding to the vet for review.

And, my boy had struvite crystals - he doesn't like wet food much, and never has (adopted him as an adult) - Hills CD is a prescription food...to a lay person the ingredients may look iffy, but the proof is in the pudding - the stuff works! My boy has been fine for 18 months eating Hills CD dry with a bit of CD wet (as much as he will go for) - with twice yearly senior panels to check his status. Your vet, IMO, was absolutely right to prescribe something that's clinically proven - and, btw, there's a wet version as well, if yours will eat wet. Prescription food really is a type of medicine - it's not something that can be blown off lightly, IMO.

I also agree it's critically important to find a vet that you can talk with - but I stress with - vets have years of training and experience, and I can only imagine how frustrating it can be for them when people pop in with 'data' from the internet and aren't open to listening to the vet as well. And I think we're all guilty of that to some extent - even with our own human doctors. And if you're not going to follow the vet's prescriptions for whatever reasons, I think it's vitally important to keep the vet in the loop so she has the entire health history to work with.

If it were me, I'd be calling the vet and asking for an urgent appointment. Good luck to you and your boy.

Your kitty needs a full blood panel. If you know he has a problem with crystals, the problem is with the diet (true for all cats). The Hill's c/d prescription diet is designed to create a neutral pH and proper mineral balance, so it creates neither struvite nor calcium oxalate crystals. Two of our boys had a problem with struvite, and one had a problem with calcium oxalate. After the switch to Hill's c/d, their issues went away. Prior to being on the Hill's for a while, they all had to be catheterized, two of them several times - so the posters that said that just any wet food and more water won't work are correct. It is the proper balance of ingredients and nutrition that works, not the "quality" of the ingredients.

In our Tuxedo, eating litter was an early sign of anemia. He has an autoimmune disease that didn't show up until he was over 2 years old.

Also, ground beef is not an appropriate raw food for a cat. It is for a transition diet TO raw. Here is a report by the Winn Feline Foundation on how you can kill your cat by feeding ground raw meat (though using ground meat to TRANSITION to a raw food diet is ok short term) : http://rawdiettruth.blogspot.com/200...und-diets.html

He doesn't only get ground beef. chicken, turkey, deer, pork, beef, and sometimes bison are all in his diet. I use ground to mix water in to get him to drink more water but it's not a staple or even a large part of his diet. Besides that the ground has only been a recent addition. I didn't fed it due to taurine loss among other nutrients that dissipate when you do that.

Anyway, I'm really thinking it's a thyroid issue. Which is what I was trying to tell the vets he has seen but none of them wanted to listen or even talk to me about what was going on. Like I said the first vet just looked at him and said he was fine. The 2nd one looked at him for maybe 10 minues, ran a urine test, and left. I had to talk to a tech about the results.

Besides that, he's no longer crying when he pees or going outside the box. So I don't think that's an issue anymore.

Here's the list of things I've been noticing wit him

If given the chance, he will eat up to 1lb of food a day
2x this year he has trembled. Seems like a purr but obviously not. (again vets knew this and didn't seem concerned)
the eating liter. Although he hasn't done that since yesterday. Fiancee is disabled and home most of the time and didn't notice it anyway.

There was more but some of it stopped occurring with the increase of water.

I'll call on monday to see about a full panel blood test and thyroid. Couldn't he be anemic? I'm not sure how common that is, we do have fleas (again!) at the moment

LDG I missed the part about anemia until I posted again and was reading the replies a 2nd time! That's another thing I wanted to check into. How do they find out if he's anemic? His gums are pale but from what I remember they've always been pale

A complete blood panel will tell you. We had the "senior" blood panel done on all our cats at age 3 just to get a baseline measurement for everything. (A senior panel - or geriatric panel - is the regular blood test plus extras that provide more information about liver and kidney function). Among the tests included in a regular blood panel (and senior/geriatric panel) is a PCV (packed cell volume) or hematocrit, which measure the amount of red blood cells (and other components) of his blood.

Sounds like a 2nd vet opinion may be in order here (to me). But I always caution this, because a local vet almost killed two of our cats, and if we hadn't gone the 2nd opinion route, they wouldn't be with us.