struvite crystals & a totally new diet

Per my little behemoth Baby Cat's recent ordeal with surgery and removing a couple small struvite crystals, i have to figure out a new diet for ALL 3 of my cats (call me paranoid). 

ever since i was younger, my parents and i had always just gotten some random kind of purina or iams (i have never had a long haired cat until Baby Cat!), and the cat i grew up with ended up living until 19--on nothing but cheap-o dry food his entire life. now on my own and with entirely too-many cats, i finally gained my most vet-expensive cat ever. 

the vet sent me and baby cat home with (well, they charged me for, and almost didn't give me because nobody knows what the hell is going on there with all 2 million vet techs)  a small bag of Royal Canin SO & told me that i would need to keep her on the diet for life to prevent the crystals from forming again and potentially costing me another $1300 trip back to the vet-tech puppy mill..

however, they charge $49 for a 7lb bag, it constipates them, and only baby cat will eat it without hesitation. 

i've been trying to mix in wet and dry (sometimes together, sometimes separate) food to make that $49 bag of cat food last as long as possible, but i'm at my last few days of dry food. i've been trying to find proper wet food for them, something that won't irritate baby cat's bladder, but they're so damn picky, they won't eat any particular kind but for a few days. my roommate stockpiled a bunch of the Organix wet food because we thought the cats liked it, but now they just pick at the stuff, and i often end up throwing more than half of it away after their feeding time is up.

SO:

is Organix ok to feed them? i haven't really heard anything about it--i was really just looking for something grain-free with as many natural ingredients as possible.. and if not, what wet foods should i try?

and is Royal Canin SO really the way to go with dry food? i know i should just take them off the stuff entirely, but with baby cat's condition, i'm terrified that doing anything else will send me back to the vet & she'll wind up dying. 

AND..will feeding the other two cats the same diet have any negative effects seeing as neither of them have had the same problems?

also...i would love to do raw food, but after seeing a friend attempt to do it with his pit bulls, it just seems like a lot of work one could easily screw up and create a bad situation.

so many questions...sorry!!

Welcome to the forum!

Dry food is the about the last thing you want to feed a UTI kitty. And dry food is bad for even healthy kitties. Dry food dehydrates kitties and is probably what led to the UTI in the first place. Vets tend to know very little about nutrition and what they are taught comes from pet food companies who want to convince people that the products they have are just fine for kitties.

These websites talk about cat nutrition:

http://www.catinfo.org

http://www.fnae.org

In general, you want to feed all your kitties high protein/low carb wet food or raw food. Less than 10% carbs and grain-free.

Organix, IIRC, is about 20% carbs.

Some brands that are popular on the forum are Wellness/Wellness Core, Evo, Hound and Gatos, and Nature's Variety. Budget brands include Fancy Feast classic line, Friskies pates or Sheba.

Try arming yourself with some urine pH test strips. After you change their diet, test the urine. Ideally it should be around 6.5. It's not foolproof, but you do get some feedback on the diet changes and provides a way to home monitor, especially for the UTI kitty. (You still would have to take the kitties in for urine tests, but with the pH strips you might be able to make diet adjustments and steer clear of trouble instead of changing diet and having no idea what it's doing.)

Hello!
My three cats are on the Royal Canin Urinary S/O dry and love it. I think Petsmart is carrying it. My vet sells it for $60 for the 17lb bag.
I was told I could supplement with a high quality - grain free duck, rabbit, venison wet (they hate the urinary s/o wet). I prefer nature's instinct.
We never did raw because it isn't good for cancer cats as they have a suppressed immune system.
Good luck!

Some additional thoughts:

Prescription food is controversial. Many times it has a high carb load. However, a lot of times it does address the health issue and sometimes it is the only food that the cat can eat without having repeat episodes.

So if I were you my preferences would be to switch to a healthy, non-prescription wet food or raw food if possible. If that's not possible, at least get the prescription wet food and not dry.

If you want to try raw, you can start off with commercial raw. There's a wonderful raw forum here. The members there will gladly help you with raw if you want to make your own.

I do have to agree with Raintyger - if possible definitely go wet.
Unfortunately mine ended up starving themselves and getting aggressive as they really wanted that kibble. I try to balance out with plenty of wet but I couldn't take it away completely without anarchy on my hands.

Raintyger said:

 
Welcome to the forum!

Dry food is the about the last thing you want to feed a UTI kitty. And dry food is bad for even healthy kitties. Dry food dehydrates kitties and is probably what led to the UTI in the first place. Vets tend to know very little about nutrition and what they are taught comes from pet food companies who want to convince people that the products they have are just fine for kitties.

These websites talk about cat nutrition:

http://www.catinfo.org

http://www.fnae.org

In general, you want to feed all your kitties high protein/low carb wet food or raw food. Less than 10% carbs and grain-free.

Organix, IIRC, is about 20% carbs.

Some brands that are popular on the forum are Wellness/Wellness Core, Evo, Hound and Gatos, and Nature's Variety. Budget brands include Fancy Feast classic line, Friskies pates or Sheba.

Try arming yourself with some urine pH test strips. After you change their diet, test the urine. Ideally it should be around 6.5. It's not foolproof, but you do get some feedback on the diet changes and provides a way to home monitor, especially for the UTI kitty. (You still would have to take the kitties in for urine tests, but with the pH strips you might be able to make diet adjustments and steer clear of trouble instead of changing diet and having no idea what it's doing.)

Click to expand...

YES! i was thinking about using Wellness wet foods, and think i will now. i can find it at the petsmart here pretty easily, and i've heard that using any non-seafood flavored, pate consistency would be the least-irritating..but i could be wrong and all of it could be good lol. i'm not sure what i'm going to do with all the Organix we have leftover (we also have 1/4 a bag of Purina One Sensitive system & a whole bag of Purina One UT health that are sitting), but i suppose losing $100 is better than another $1000 surgery and poor baby cat crying and bleeding while she pees.

she's also gonna be due to go in and get checked out here pretty soon. it's been about a month since her surgery, and i've been absolutely maxed out with her last vet bill.. another checkup, urinalysis and x-ray will run me $200 i don't have. 

HOWEVER..she has been eating, drinking and peeing normally since. i'll go ahead and pick up pH strips..but how am i supposed to go about collecting her pee? lol!

DragulescuGirl said:

I do have to agree with Raintyger - if possible definitely go wet.
Unfortunately mine ended up starving themselves and getting aggressive as they really wanted that kibble. I try to balance out with plenty of wet but I couldn't take it away completely without anarchy on my hands.

Click to expand...

that's also a problem i'm currently facing.. baby cat is a walking disposal and will eat absolutely anything in front of her, but the other two are so used to their kibble, they turn their noses up at anything else.. and whenever i feed JUST the kibble, they would get growly and snarly at each other and hork down the food. 

maybe it's just me and i really need to buckle down with the transition from wet to dry? i'm not sure..

kiwischan said:

 
YES! i was thinking about using Wellness wet foods, and think i will now. i can find it at the petsmart here pretty easily, and i've heard that using any non-seafood flavored, pate consistency would be the least-irritating..but i could be wrong and all of it could be good lol. i'm not sure what i'm going to do with all the Organix we have leftover (we also have 1/4 a bag of Purina One Sensitive system & a whole bag of Purina One UT health that are sitting), but i suppose losing $100 is better than another $1000 surgery and poor baby cat crying and bleeding while she pees.

she's also gonna be due to go in and get checked out here pretty soon. it's been about a month since her surgery, and i've been absolutely maxed out with her last vet bill.. another checkup, urinalysis and x-ray will run me $200 i don't have. 

HOWEVER..she has been eating, drinking and peeing normally since. i'll go ahead and pick up pH strips..but how am i supposed to go about collecting her pee? lol!

that's also a problem i'm currently facing.. baby cat is a walking disposal and will eat absolutely anything in front of her, but the other two are so used to their kibble, they turn their noses up at anything else.. and whenever i feed JUST the kibble, they would get growly and snarly at each other and hork down the food. 

maybe it's just me and i really need to buckle down with the transition from wet to dry? i'm not sure..

Click to expand...

Where did you get the Organix? Petco? Their return policy is cash back within a certain time window. After that time window has passed, you get store credit. If you don't have a receipt, they still give store credit. Petsmart has an even longer time window and the same policy for after the window closes/no receipt.

If you are "stuck" with the food, you can use it for snacks or mix it with the Wellness or whatever food you wind up with. If that doesn't pan out, then get a tax deduction and donate.

I recommend you buy the 3 oz. cans to start with or whatever the smallest size is you're comfortable experimenting with. In other words, don't buy a whole case until you know the kitties are happy with it. If you do end up with Wellness, Amazon sells it by the case for much less than Petco. If you set up Subscribe and Save, they'll take off even more.

The catinfo.org website also has tips for dry to wet food transition. I was really lucky and after 20 minutes my kitty decided she was hungry and just ate wet food. Many, many more are not so lucky and have to spend months transitioning their stubborn, picky eaters.

http://www.catinfo.org/docs/TipsForTransitioning1-14-11.pdf

I got lucky with urine collection, too. My kitty would stand up while peeing, which meant we had to put her litter box inside a Rubbermaid container because some of the pee would land outside the box. With this setup some of it would land inside the Rubbermaid and outside the box. There were also drops on the edge of the litter box, that's how I got my pee samples. One other person on the forum said that they would notice when their kitty was going for the box and very surreptitiously and quickly put the stick under the urine stream. Kitty apparently never even knew what went on!

Here's another thread that's going on right now basically on the very same subject.  Maybe you'll find it helpful, although you must understand that no matter WHAT you feed your little one, there are NO GUARANTEES that she won't  block again.  You can only do the best you can do.  Here's that thread:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/273544/...at-who-has-had-struvite-crystals#post_3507782