Feeding a FLUTD kitty,

My cat was just diagnosed as FLUTD and currently has a catheter in place(still in the early days). I was advised to put him on the Hills c/d food which I have no problem with. The recommended feeding is 75g per day (just over half a cup) but for my cat who has been free feeding this is nowhere near enough for him and begs for more food! How much of this can i feed him and can i feed him raw pet mince on top of the hills food to satisfy his needs?

Dry food is definitely not the way to go for a cat with urinary tract problems. Dry food, in fact, contributes toward UTIs by dehydrating the cat and making the urine more alkaline due to high carb content!

Prescription food is also controversial because even the wet food typically has high carb content or proteins from non-animal sources. Some cats, however, do need the prescription food to avoid repeated UTIs.

If I were you I would at least feed WET prescription food. If your kitty is not especially prone to UTIs, I would feed him non-prescription high protein/low carb wet food. You can add a little water (about 1 tablespoon) as extra insurance to help flush out the urinary tract. I also tested my kitty's urine to make sure the pH was within the proper range to avoid bladder stones and crystals. If it was too high/low, I adjusted diet. (should be around 6.5)

If you still want to feed the dry, I would compare the calorie count between the old and new foods and use that as a guideline. Adjust as necessary to avoid weight gain/loss. I suspect the high carb content from the Hill's C/D is probably what's making him hungry, though.

Combining raw with wet is no-no. The problem is that the dry has a higher bacterial load and takes longer to digest. So when you add raw, the raw food digestion gets slowed down because of the dry and chances of bacterial infection are increased.

Yeah, this is really confusing for my husband and I. The kitty always had a preference for dry food but we fed wet food as well and made sure water is available for him. Now that he has had a complete obstruction, the vet specifically said to only feed him the dry hills c/d and nothing else at all. Which sounds contradictory in some ways because from what I gather, the crystals get formed from a primarily dry food diet and not drinking enough water, which he would get if we could feed him canned food. Is there any harm in giving him canned food along with the hills dry to help increase fluid intake. He isn't a big drinker at all.

So it sounds like he has a medical history of UTIs? There are some kitties that are just prone to developing crystals and stones, they do have to have the prescription diets. There are kitties that have had a UTI and do very well on wet food, too, though. It is your choice whether or not to go with the prescription diet. If you don't want to go with the prescription diet then I would definitely test the urine with pH strips. It'll give feedback on whether or not whatever you're feeding is working. Although most of the time the prescription diet does address the issue, some kitties don't even do well on the prescription diet!

In general, there isn't any problem mixing wet and dry like there is with mixing raw and dry. Are you talking about mixing non-prescription wet with prescription dry, though? If you want to go with non-prescription wet food, some good ones for urinary tract disease are Weruva and Fussie Cat. These are low calorie foods, so you'll need to feed a lot more. I know Weruva is about double. These foods are lower in magnesium and phosphorus and I have heard of vets telling owners that as long as the magnesium and phosphorus content is below a certain amount (similar amounts to the prescription food), they could use the non-prescription food. Don't feed any of the fish flavors, though.

If you get a pate style food, you can add water to the food.

If you stick with prescription, Royal Canin is supposed to be nutritionally better than Hill's.

Lastly, have you tried any of the transitioning tips found at catinfo.org?

Yeah, i was thinking of feeding regular wet food with the prescription dry food. It's $50 per 4.5lb bag. No, there wasn't any history of UTI's in him. This is his first attack and we don't want it to happen again. When we first suspected something was wrong, we took him to the vet at 9am tuesday just gone, he wasn't blocked then and his pH was 6.5 and he was given corticosteroids and antibiotics and we went home. Less than 12 hours later he was in dire straits and was very ill and so we begged the vet to come back in after hours to look at him and sure enough he was completely blocked and would have died overnight if we had waited til morning. The cat has always had a preference for dry food, we just fed him regular dry food like whiskas or purina etc. He does eat wet food but only a very small amount of it.  So now I guess im wondering what the game plan is. Keep him on the prescription dry only like the vet said and hope he drinks enough water to supplement it or feed him the prescription food with canned food.  My biggest concern is for him to get a good enough water intake, particularly if we HAVE to keep him off wet food forever.

And the bag says to only give him half a cup of the dry food per day which to me, and to the cat, isn't enough food for him.

Was an urinalysis done? What was the cause of the blockage? FLUTD is a more general term that encompasses several different issues, but an urinakysis can help narrow that down. I am a little confused because the vet gave your cat antibiotics initially as if there was a bacterial infection in which a culture & sensitivity test should have been done BEFORE administering antibiotics, but now your cat is on a Rx food as if struvites were the cause. I guess I am uncertain as to what is truly the cause at this point.

Regardless of the cause, I do think that feeding a wet diet to ensure his system is well flushed out is crucial.
Have you seen this site yet?
http://catinfo.org/?link=urinarytracthealth

Also, here's a good article on increasing water intake.
http://www.thecatsite.com/a/tips-to-increase-your-cat-s-water-intake