Royal Canin Prescription SO diet

Last week my almost 3 year old female had to go to the vet. She was having UTI like symptoms & having had a UTI earlier in the year I wanted to make sure I caught this one early. Her urinalysis showed she did not have a UTI but did have cystitis. The vet recommended switching her food to Royal Canin prescription SO dry & wet food. I picked up a bag on 9/13. My cat loves the food. I’ve noticed however that she is eating a lot of it. Typically my cat is given half of a Max or Natural Choice 3oz can in the morning & the other half at night and has dry Natural Balance food 24/7. The prescription diet is obviously expensive. I was thinking of continuing with the prescription diet but mixing in some of the Natural Balance to make it last longer. Also, she does not like the SO wet food. I'm thinking if she's at least getting the SO dry I'll probably be ok feeding her normal wet food. If this was your cat what would you do?

If the diagnosis is cystitis (inflammation of the bladder) without a known cause, then I don't understand how the RC SO food helps at all. SO is formulated to break up and prevent struvite crystals/stones. The urinalysis showed no infection or crystals/stones of any kind?

It did show crystals but she said that can be common. At this point we don't know what has been causing the bladder to be inflamed. The days prior to putting her on the diet she was only producing 2-3 small pees a day which is not common at all for her. After the food (& some burprenex) she's back to using her box like she normally would.

Struvite crystals are sharp and painful. They can definitely be the cause of the bladder inflammation.

I would definitely stick to the prescription food for now. In about a month or so you can get another urinalysis done. If there are no crystals then, you can talk to your vet about switching to an all wet meaty diet. http://www.catinfo.org/?link=urinarytracthealth for why a wet meaty diet is recommended for cats with urinary problems.

Not sure where you are located but the RC Urinary SO has two types of wet food - pate (larger can) and chunks with gravy (smaller can). You can also try different prescription wet foods - Hill's CD comes in chicken or seafood and Purina makes UR wet food. All would be fine to feed while you're going through this. 

I'm not a huge fan of the foods but sometimes you have to. I have a male cat that has chronic crystals (nothing will break those suckers up), he blocked 6 times in 3-4 months and just had PU surgery a few weeks ago. I'm not going to play around with his diet - if he blocks again, that's it for him and there's nothing else that can be done. 

Yikes that's not good! She likes the dry food (which I'm very happy about because she is sooo picky) and I do plan on trying the SO morsels but my vet was out. They started her on Tramadol because I thought trying to get the Buprenex into her was too stressful. However, trying to trick her into eating it is harder than I thought it would be. I tried hiding it in treats, food, pilling her...nothing really works. It's frustrating because the only time she produces her normal amounts of pee is on the Buprenex. My vet suggested an ultrasound to see if there are any stones. She can't think of why she'd be inflammed.

The nice thing about buprenex is that it doesn't have to actually be swallowed and the dose is usually very small. It will absorb through the mucous membranes.

My cats had good results with urinary issues while being on the prescription RC SO dry.

I feel like there is something bigger going on with her that the vet is missing. She has been off all pain medications since Friday to see how she would do over the weekend. She did do ok but her litter box habits have not gone back to normal. She’s been friendlier than usual & more vocal which makes me think we are missing something. She threw up her whole dinner Saturday night & Sunday morning sounded like she was throwing something up but there was nothing. Just under a year ago she had to have surgery for eating my hair elastics/elastic headbands (long story but we had no idea she had been eating them) and before she got really sick from them she used to make the throwing up sound all the time. I’ve been SO careful with my hair stuff since but it’s always in the back of my mind that she could do it again but it wouldn’t explain the inflamed bladder. I just want her to get better & stay healthy for once

I agree with you that there's something still wrong. I think she's still in pain. I would do the ultrasound if you can afford it to get a better diagnosis, maybe not just of her bladder but also her entire digestive tract.