Kitty had struvite crystals...diet help?!>

Male cat with crystals can be a very serious issue. Do keep him on the prescription food at least until he tests crystal free, then you can try a high quality canned diet, however, I would NOT recommend wellness for this.

I have a female cat with FLUTD, she forms struvite crystals. The only diet that keeps her crystal free is prescription food. In an effort to get her on a canned diet (she won't eat the canned prescription food) I tried her on Wellness grain free canned foods. It was a disaster. Her urine pH shot up to 7.5 and her urine was full of struvite and phosphorous.

Stay away from Wellness with a cat who has struvite problems. Get him back to good health and then maybe experiment a little with other canned foods.

By the way there are other prescription diets besides Purina, though it is probably one of the better ones as far as ingredients. $3 a can is very expensive! The canned Hills c/d is $1.59 a can.

Mazy eats Hills Prescription c/d kibble, I prefer canned diets for my cats, but she won't eat the canned c/d.

PS Mazy has been on Prescription c/d for 5 years. I have periodically tried to put her on non prescription canned diets but the crystals always come back.

When I start a trial I do it a couple months before she is due for her annual urine culture. Currently I am trying her on Merrick Before Grain. She gets 75% of her diet is still Hills Prescription c/d. I substitute one of her meals with 1/4 can of the Merrick Before Grain mixed with about 1/4 cup of water (split into two servings)

Next month when she has her urine culture I will know if this is working for her. If the Struvites are back, I will again have to stop with the non prescription canned food.

The reason it is so dangerous for males is because the male cat has a very narrow urethra and can block suddenly, which is fatal within 24 hours without emergency treatment, and extremely painful.

Welcome to the forum by the way, and good job recognizing your cat was having a problem and getting him to the vet.

That's really expensive. I don't have any experience with Wellness, but Jamie has been on a struvite diet for a couple of years now. As otto said, there are other prescription brands. In addition to the Hills c/d, you could price Royal Canin Urinary and Eukanuba Struvite. Jamie eats all three.

We have two cats prescribed the prescription diet.

The prescription is Royal Canin Urinary SO, and is good for both types of crystals.

Dry food is usually identified as the culprit in health issues, and I use it only as treats.

Crystals are nothing to play around with - we just had the one of the two in surgery for a crystal in her bladder - now, if you want to talk about expensive, not to even mention all the suffering she went through until she was diagnosed - the Surgery was almost $2000 US - that is expensive.

It was after she was diagnosed that she was put on the prescription diet, and I'll make sure that's all she gets until I learn otherwise.

I understand that the diet must be exclusively that prescription food, or else the prescription won't prevent the crystals.

I've found this website a great resource: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=urinarytracthealth
- and more to the point about prescription diets: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=urinary...cription_Diets

I found this paragraph(s) most interesting:

Both our cats had either an xray, or an ultrasound that showed the crystals. The female cat's surgery produced the actual crystal which tested out to be the Struvite crystal, so I know the cats both did/do have an issue with crystals.

I agree with GloriaJH. Crystals, especially for male cats is life-threatening.
I'm not too sure if your kitty needs to get them surgically removed but you may have to consider the option if diet itself is not effective.

Ku Ku had the problem 2 years ago and went through a series of procedures which lead to an open surgery to remove crystals from her bladder. There were several in her bladder but one of them was almost a size of a tip of human's pinky! Think of how small cats and their bladders are, you can imagine how "huge" it was for her.

My vet gave me 2 options - puts Ku KU on medication that "helps" dissolving crystals OR an open-surgery.

I chose the latter because 1)I was told that medication takes longer to effect, 2)Ku Ku was in pain & extreme discomfort, had already suffered enough she shouldn't be suffered more.
The cost of surgery was extremely OUCH... but saving her life was the #1 priority, also my responsibility as her owner/meowmy.

One good news for you is, though, unlike calcium-formed crystals, struvite is not keep coming back or formed again once it's completely removed AND only if maintaining on a diet that prevents re-forming.

Ku Ku has been on c/d for both dry & can, and once in a while can of Royal Canine urinary or IAMS urinary(also prescription). She's extremely picky, I have to switch back & forth, so she could be strictly staying on prescription diet, nothing else.

I have a male cat who was diagnosed with struvite crystals 5 years ago, and had them flushed out via catheter. Had him on canned prescription for about a week, then read that grains in cat food cause high urinary pH. Also read that the prescription food (Hills s/d, I think) uses methionine as a urine acidifier, and that a similar effect could be gotten with small amounts (like 1/16th of a teaspoon / can) of ascorbic acid (vit C).

Note that there is more at play here than just pH, and in retrospect I have no idea what additional effects may have been produced by adding ascorbic acid to his non-prescription food. I added it for maybe a month or so after he was flushed. Also in retrospect, I should've been monitoring my cat's urinary pH throughout that experiment.

Bought some Innova Evo dry and canned (only one flavor, chicken; grain-free), and had him on that for several months.

Had him on Natural Balance green pea & venison dry (grain-free, though not advertised as such), until the pet food recall. Dodged that bullet purely by luck.

Tried Eagle Pack chicken dry, has brown rice but no other grains. I don't recall what possessed me to try this, other than that my cat had been struvite-free for over a year at that point, and I knew that being on Iam's canned chicken (15.5 oz cans) for a month prior to his struvite formation was probably the culprit - he had been on purina one for 2.5 years prior to that (his entire adult life). Ironically it was my desire to improve his diet by moving him to canned that caused the crystals.

For the past 2.5 years, he's been on Taste of the Wild kibble, salmon & venison flavor (has ~25% more protein than their other newer flavor, IIRC), grain-free.

On all of these foods, my cat did not re-develop struvite crystals.

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i find that odd that a vet would recommend a dry food to cure crystals. even though they do make dry UTI foods, it seems clear that canned food (with its increased water content) are safer for crystal-prone cats.

has anybody tried Methigel? a friend of mine is using that on her cat with good results. It's a gel that acidifies the urine, helping to keep crystals from forming. theoretically you could use this and forgo the expensive prescription diets.

You need to know what KIND of crystals the cat is forming before doing anything so dangerous as home treatment with urine acidifiers.

No one should start dosing their cat with anything before discussing it with the attending vet.

An all canned diet may work in some cases. But sometimes messing around with 'home treatments" can cost the cat her/his health, cost the human thousands in vet bills, and in the case of male cats, cost the cat his life.

Some cats are genetically prone to forming crystals, and the prescription diets are available to keep these cats healthy. My Mazy cat is one. I have tried her on all canned commercial diets many times, the crystals always come back.

The ONLY thing that keeps her urine crystal free is Prescription Diet. She won't eat the canned prescription food, so she is on a dry prescription diet. And it is the only diet that keeps her healthy.

Hi,
My little guy has been battling a high ph balance for a while now.

He first went on Hills S/D for 1.5 months, got a good ph balance and then tried a maintenance diet using Medical Urinary SO (all wet). Just checked again and he is high again and at risk for crystals.

Now it is back to the Hills S/D and then will try a different prescription wet food & hopefully keep him in check.

I have spoken to three vets about his PH levels and forming crystals and all of them recommended/insisted on wet food.

It took me four months to get my guy to finally eat wet food. There is no such thing as a cat that will not eat wet. It is just a lot of work getting them there!

This prescription food is just shy of $3.00 a can, that really hits the pocket book. So I will continue to look for healthy alternatives once he is back in good health.

Cheers & good luck.

You definitely want a prescription WET food over a dry one. Yes, they both have acidifiers, but the added moisture is a no-brainer for the wet for a cat suffering urinary issues.

Avoid feeding too much dry even when the urinary issue has passed, and ensure that the dry fed is furmulated with an appropriately low target urine PH. Blue Wilderness assures me their formula is targeted at 6.5 for example, which is what I feed as one of their meals, the other two are wet.

Regarding misdiagnosing crystals in the urine, that is very correct if a urine sample is brought. The proper way to do it that I know of is for the vet to induce urination or simply extract it w/ a needle inserted directly into the bladder just as one would take blood.

I also agree that you should avoid fish, as it is too high in heavy metals, mercury, magnesium, etc to risk for a cat predisposed to crystal formation. We only do fish flavors once a week as a precaution, and so far so good.

Its also important to have quality water fountains available at all times, preferably in two different locations and perhaps of two different types. Out of the four types of fountains I've tried, I like these two the best, the Pioneer Ceramic Big Max and the Drinkwell Platinum. If your furniture allows, its nice to put it under some kind of overhang, so dust isn't constantly falling into the reservoir IMO.