my cat needs to gain weight!!!

I live in South Africa and have a cross breed between an house cat and a African wild cat. He was healthy and had was at normal weight for his size, but he had kidney stones and was treated by the vet complete with catheter and all now he is not allowed to eat his normal cat food (whiskers the best and most expensive cat food in our stores) only urinary tract food provided by the vet. But he does not what to eat it. And he has lost a significant amount of weight. It's at a point where I start to worry. I have never seen him like this. I try to give him meat, chicken and even fish but he just doesn't what to eat it all he is interested in is "Whiskers" and he is not allowed to eat it... I really love my kitty and I need some advice if anyone can help me.

Wow - house cat and African Wild; Beautiful! The poor guy had bladder stones right? That came out by surgery? Or was it that he couldn't pee (he might have showed up some things looking like stones on his kidney on his xray, but they didn't do anything about those as they wont hurt him). The new food is so he wont grow new crystals / stones. 

Regardless of what it was, here's the thing. Cat's dont often lose losing weight because they prefer one food to another. They rarely do it on purpose. So even if you see a bit of weight loss, go get him checked out. Sure, It's possible that it's because he doesn't like his food at first. That can happen. Sometimes. But these things can snowball if big boy is shrinking his waste size and it's noticeable to you.

If push comes to shove, and he absolutely refuses to eat anything else but whiskaz, then learn everything you can about increasing the amount of water he drinks.

k

Hi there. Sounds like you have a very lovely cat.

The time spent on the catheter must have been a very painful, and stressful time for your kitty. Sometimes when cats go through things like this, they will drop some weight in the process. I would want to be sure that this is the case, and that the weight loss is not due to some other underlying condition.

Is the urinary tract food that your vet has recommended, a dry kibble, or wet food? If dry, you should be able to get a wet food equivalent, or if wet, there will be a dry equivalent.

As the previous poster suggested, water intake is very important at this point, as water works to keep urine dilute so that the bladder gets flushed out which in turn will keep crystals from accumulating in the kidneys or urinary tract.

Diet is also important. Dry food does not provide enough moisture, whereas wet food is typically 75% moisture or higher. If your kitty is used to eating the dry Whiskas, he may have a hard time getting used to wet food at first, but through patience and persistence, even the most stubborn kitties can be transitioned to wet food.

Here is a link to information and tips for transitioning cats from dry food to wet : http://www.catinfo.org/docs/TipsForTransitioning1-14-11.pdf

Typical urinary tract vet foods are Royal Canin, Hills and there is one by Purina. If you can get what is called Urinary S/O Wet Diet made by Royal Canin, this formula is one of the better foods. This is what you are looking for : http://www.royalcanin.ca/index.php/...terinary-Therapeutic-Formulas/Urinary-S-O-Wet. Urinary S/O has an elevated sodium level which promotes drinking of water, and water retention to help flush out the kidneys and bladder.

The following are two links to pages with information about Kidney Stones. The first link will take you to a page which provides an overview about kidney stones. The second link is to a page that discusses management and prevention and in particular, the importance of water and diet and some of the things you can do to monitor this situation going forward. 

http://www.2ndchance.info/oxalatecat.htm

http://www.2ndchance.info/oxalatecat.htm#number13

Hope this helps and that your kitty can make a full recovery.

Thank you for all your help!!!

I have put water throughout the house and ordered a water fountain. I started him on a raw food diet he seems to love it. He is still a bit fragile but he is getting better