Advice for diet & urinary crystals?

Hello!

I was feeding Kirby, now 8 years old,  (our only kitty at the time) Wellness Core for years and he did very well. He vomited frequently on multiple other foods that we tried. I was advised to try grain free and it worked well for him!

Out of the blue he developed bloody urine (no UTI, crystals only) and started on Royal Canin Urinary SO for the first time. We fed that until about a month after his symptoms cleared then went back to the Wellness Core. He had a second episode of urinary issues and since then has been on the Urinary SO combined with the Wellness Core. Our second cat Kellen, after 4 years of life with no issues suddenly developed crystals after we had run out of the Urinary SO for a few weeks. This was just this last fall and since then they all (3 cats total) have been eating the SO exclusively.

The problem is, I'm not very happy with the SO. It's very pricy and the ingredients are not that good! Also, my Kellen eats it like it's crack and has gotten really overweight on it.  We just took in a stray a few months ago (he's been vetted and vaccinated) and of course he loves the taste of this food as well.

I'd really rather not feed them this junky prescription food so my question is do you have any recommendations of the best combination of foods for cats with a history of urinary issues?? It makes me nervous to switch them because of the large vet bills urinary issues seems to bring!

Do not feed dry. It causes crystals. Feed grain free canned food.

Hi Jenn812,

Your goal should be to get more water into your kitties and control the urine pH. It should be around  6.5.

Feed wet food. Dry food dehydrates and causes the pH to go higher because of the carb content. Stay away from fish flavored foods. Your wet food should be high protein and low carb. The following websites and TCS article will help you evaluate food on your own:

www.catinfo.org

www.fnae.org

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/how-to-compare-cat-foods-calculate-carbs-dry-matter-basis

As far as particular brands, Tiki Cat, Weruva, and Fussie Cat are supposed to be very good for UTI prone kitties. These particular brands are low calorie, so please make sure you're feeding enough. Some of them are about 1/2 the calories of your average canned food.

You can also add water to canned food as an extra measure. Pates tend to be not only higher in protein but also especially good adding water. About 1 tablespoon/2 oz. should do it.

Get urine test strips and test the urine if you can. I say "if you can" because you need to get a midstream sample. Test strips are available either in the aquarium section of the pet store or you can order online from Amazon. The test strips will provide feedback and hopefully you can rest a bit easier.

Good luck!