Struvite Crystals and food

My 4 yr old cat has developed crystals and was put on Hills s/d dry(she hated the canned). I have read all of the negativity of Science Diet food.....but it is working. I feel like the cats need canned food also. I added Friskies Special Diet canned food used with the s/d.

(She will only eat Friskies,I have tried about 15 other canned foods). I was wondering if anyone has had this problem and combined foods before. The vet said as long as 2/3 of her food is the s/d it should continue to work.

Hello and welcome to TCS, Sorry your having this problem with your kitty.

Have you tried ways to increase her water intake? It has been found that more water has the biggest benefit in reducing the formation of crystals.

Here is a good article to read. http://www.catinfo.org/?link=urinarytracthealth

It is written by a vet. She also has articles regarding diet. It has become my cat diet bible LOL.

Hope this helps.

I have had two cats with history of struvite crystals. They ate the Hills for many years. In fact one cat ate it 14 years and never had any more problems. He ate the dry only. My other cat is still living and is now 14 years old. He has done well, never any problems, after initially being totally blocked two times. Last year, he had liver cancer and he doctor wanted him to eat wet only, prescription food. We tried three before we found one he would eat and it is Purina UR, a prescription food. We also switched him to the Purina dry prescription. This was done after he had surgery last May. This week I have found out he had another abdominal mass. He is still eating this food, but is beginning to have appetite issues. But for now he is still eating at least some of it part of the time. I dont' have experience with mixing prescription and non prescription. If your vet says okay, can you trust his judgement. Sometimes it comes down to that and I am glad I have always had the same vet and I knew he really cared and I mostly followed his advice. One other thing I did when my cats were eating only the dry is, I just poured some water over it and they would get their water while they were eating the food. Now I didn't free feed them. They were fed a measured amount of the dry two times a day and that is all they got. Soe there were no leftovers. They ate it and were done. I don't think you could do it and expect them to eat what was left as it would be soggy.

I agree with Katluver4life that dietary water intake is most important. If you read the article she pointed out, there are good reasons that s/d should only be used temporarily. The long-term use of a urine acidifying diet can cause the formation of calcium oxalate stones which are more serious than struvite crystals in that they can only be removed by surgery.

I have actually corresponded (briefly ) with Dr Peirson who is catinfo.org. But my vet is here......so I will use the s/d and wait and see if her PH lowers.

I have water bowls all over the house and I mix water with their canned food. I have a small water fountain also.....they drink from there if it is on or not. It is real small and our GSD drinks from it too!!

MY REAL Question is: has you ever mixed the food.....I have a mixture of 2/3 s/d and 1/3 of her reg. Blue Buffalo. She seems to eat it better.

I just want it to work.....because I prefer to feed them canned and 1/4 dry during the day.

Has anyone tried Friskies Special Diet canned food?

She has only been on the s/d for 6 weeks. I am waiting for a urinalysis culture results......she has an elevated white count and a PH of 7.5.

We had switched her to maintenance Hills c/d, but when we saw the elevated PH she went back on the s/d a week ago.

Friskies Special Diet is supposed to have less magnesium, which is one of the minerals that UTI prescription foods limit. The other is phosphorus. Since it is canned, the higher water content is another plus. Dr. Pierson's website states that cats feed a 100% canned diet will likely not have UTI problems, even if it is a low quality food.

Dr. Pierson also doesn't think that the presence of crystals is necessarily abnormal, and the important point is that you wash them out by feeding the cat a 100% wet food diet.

If someone were to respond who had tried a mixture of food like you are doing, I don't know if their answer would be necessarily valid for your cat specifically. Many people have put their cats on a prescription diet. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My cat had a UTI last year. I don't feed her a prescription diet and her urine tests have pretty much come back fine.

If you have access to the cat's urine, you could get pH strips and monitor the pH. That way you can have a little faster feedback as to what the diet is doing. (I would still verify results with a vet trip.) Most people do this by holding the strip in the cat's urine stream, midstream. Whether or not the cat will tolerate that, though, is another question. A pack of urine testing strips is not a whole lot of money, though. You can get them in drug stores, the aquarium section of the pet store, or order online through Amazon.
 

I have gotten her urine sample .....mid stream. So doing strips would be easy. I think I might try that.

I just wanted to update Peppers condition. Her PH is 6.2 -6.5  An ultrasound showed a perfect looking bladder. She is having a sterile urinalysis done now at the MSU vet school. We will know the results soon. If there isnt a problem, I want to get rid of this Hill's prescription food and go to a healthier diet like Nature's Variety Instinct or Young Again.

This is such an ongoing problem for the cats that get crystals.......I want her to have a healthy life.