What is the best way to bring up a kitten/cat so that it never gets UTI?

I have read so many people complaining about their cats' UTI. It seems like a very common infection among cats (especially male cats). Even if this is not true, what is the best way to bring up a kitten so that it never gets UTI. What would be the best way to keep a kitten its healthiest?

Would eliminating dry food be better for an adult cat compared to a diet containing both wet and dry food? I scoop out litter once a day; people say ideal is 2 times. Does this affect UTI prevention in any way?

My one year old cat has already urinary tract issues... and he's one...

My vet says it's genetics and bad luck because I've been feeding him top food, no cereals or added sugars, quality protein and low mineral levels...

If I'd been feeding him regular supermarket food he might be dead by now...

My vet said to give him special urinary food for the rest of his life... being a food geek I looked into all the ingredients and almost had a heart attack, you get rid of the urinary problems but over load the kidneys because of all the cereals and co... not really ideal is it?

Anyways it's been 2 months now that he's on wet food ( high quality wet food, needless to say, Feringa, Catz Finefood, stuff like that with very low minerals ( specially magnesium ), only high quality meat, no cereals and maybe 1-2% veggies ) and he's doing great. The symptoms went away really quickly too, he pees much much more ( he was not a drinker, even though I have a fountain ).

I've been reading a lot on the subject and cats should be on wet food, specially those who drink very little, and it's very important to have low mineral values ( which is often not the case in dry food ). Worst case scenario you can soak your dry food to get your cat to drink more.

Here's my experience, not an expert or anything, but have done a lot of research for the sake of my kitty.

The reason people say wet is best for UTIs is to do with hydration. Cats evolved as desert creatures, with a very low thirst drive. They're designed to get around 80% of their fluid intake from their food. Left to themselves, they just don't compensate for the dryness of kibble.

Hydration is so important because it leads to less concentrated urine that is better at flushing out tiny crystals (which all cats have) before they get big enough to build up and cause a problem.

If you want/need to feed a proportion of dry food you just need to take extra measures to boost fluid intake to compensate.

With the cat litter the reason we say scooping twice a day (or more) is simply cleanliness - would you like to use an unflushed loo?
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What most people call a UTI is really NOT a UTI.

UTI stands for Urinary Tract Infection.  It is rare for cats, especially younger cats to actually have an infection.

What they have is Cystitis. Cystitis literally means "Inflammation of the urinary bladder".

In today's terms, they call it FUS. "Feline Urinary Syndrome"  Also called FLUTD, "Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease"

But anyway...

The first thing within your control is to feed NO dry food.  Cats fed kibble are always dehydrated. Their urine is very concentrated and a concentrated urine can precipitate crystals. Wet food, along with a water fountain or other means of encouraging your cat to drink may be all you need to prevent urinary tract problems. 

Normally the pH of cat urine should be 6.0 -6.5. Cats with FUS normally have elevated pH. 7-8-9.  This is frequently diet related. Commercial diets are loaded with grains and veggies which will raise the pH. A cat's NATURAL diet has minimal to no veggies and for sure no grains, and is naturally acidifying.

Selecting a wet food, or even better a well balanced (do your research!!) raw diet with no grains and minimal vegetable matter would more mimic what a cat wold eat in the wild.

It is also known that cats that go outside are less prone to FUS and that stress plays a big role.

Presumably a cat allowed outdoors have more space, can hunt,prowl, and kill their prey, allowing their natural instincts to be satisfied.

They can climb up a tree, and look down, a very good place for a cat to be and there is no fight for space.

I'm not at all advocating for cats running loose outside.  Not at all!  But we can relieve a lot of stress if we provide our cats what they need while safely inside.

Cat trees,shelves, enough space, keep outside neighborhood cats away from the house (!!) play time!! Get interactive toys which will allow for the hunting/prowling/killing thing..

Look for what may be stressing your cat. Changes in the household. (People moving in or out, visitors..) Conflicts between people in the house.

Outside cats making your kitty territorial. Not enough space for each cat if you have many. Not enough human interaction, a cat who spends most days alone.etc. etc. etc.   Some of these can be controlled, others can't.  But IF things are a bit stressed, play therapy can be a real stress buster.

IF your cat has signs of urinary tract issues,such as peeing outside the box, a vet visit is the first thing to do!

But, please realize that most vets will prescribe antibiotics to anyone coming through their door with urinary tract issues, whether they have been able to examine the urine or not.   IMO, that is criminal!!  (It is the same in human medicine. I actually do the testing for these things in a hospital lab, and the policy is to give anyone that comes to our ER with ANY urinary complaint an antibiotic no matter the results of the urinalysis.. !!!)

There really needs to be a culture done to properly diagnose not only an infection but what antibiotic to use. Not all/Few vets bother with the culture... Most of the time it is Cystitis and and antibiotic is useless for Cystitis.

Unfortunately there are no allopathic medications that really helps with cystitis.  Anti inflammatories won't do much if anything for Cystitis, and are risky, so are better avoided.

Pain meds ARE ok.   Buprenex is safe for cats. It is a controlled med. so many vets do not want to prescribe due to the paperwork involved, but it can really help your kitty with the pain, so ask for it!!

Sorry, went rambling there......

I applaud you for wanting to prevent this if you can!  I spent several years with a boy who had repeated bouts of Cystitis/FUS/FLUTD/UTI.

(But not an infection. Never an infection)   And he was on a raw, acidifying diet from the age of 12 weeks... Go figure!!

His thing was stress... Anytime there was stress in the house, visitors etc. there would be 2 weeks, and there we were again...

My cat peeing on my couch, and everywhere else.  Took me a while to connect the dots, and what they perceive as stress is of course very different from what WE think is stressful.

He finally outgrew it at the age of 8 which is a common age for the problem to go away. (Don't think anyone knows why) and we've had several years now with lovely pee balls in the right place

Best to you, and to a future with good feeling peeing ;-)

Ok I'm confused, are we talking about cystitis or stones?

I was talking about struvites, having actually no experience with cystitis, I was hoping it was one but no, there were lots of stones...

And he got antibiotics twice (!), metacam and UroPet somethingsomething.

So if I understand correctly ( you'll have to excuse me here, english is not my mother-tongue ), cystitis are stress related and stones are either genetic or bad feeding... So if you want to avoid cystitis you have to reduce stress? Or do they have anything to do with the food?

very interesting "ramble", as you say.

In cat terms, UTI can be either infection OR inflammation. Its not technically correct, but in general conversation UTI is sometimes used as a blanket term for all the urinary tract issues.

Ok, kibble isn't ideal, but it shouldn't cause any problems if extra steps are taken to compensate for its dryness (see the article in my earlier post). The two biggest factors with FLUTD in general are dehydration and stress. Both of these risk factors are pretty easy to minimise with a little time and thought. 

heidi124 said:

 
My vet said to give him special urinary food for the rest of his life... being a food geek I looked into all the ingredients and almost had a heart attack, you get rid of the urinary problems but over load the kidneys because of all the cereals and co... not really ideal is it?

I've been reading a lot on the subject and cats should be on wet food, specially those who drink very little, and it's very important to have low mineral values ( which is often not the case in dry food ). Worst case scenario you can soak your dry food to get your cat to drink more.

Click to expand...

Besides the issue of feeding urinary food or not, your vet saying he has to be on it for the rest of his life is not correct. The University of Minnesota who analyses stones from cats and dogs from all over the world, used to have a chart, among so many of their interesting charts, of the ages of the cats who had submitted tones for analysis. For some reason there was a sharp drop of at the age of eight.  No one seem to know why... I had the same experience. After several years of intermittent cystitis, 8 was our magic number when we had no more trouble (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!)

Having low mineral values is only part of the story...the part that the pet food manufacturers want you to believe.  What determines if the mineral amount can cause problems or not is the pH of the urine... Urinary diets are loaded with grains and vegetable matter. They ALL raise the pH when what we want is a lower pH.  MEAT, ORGANS and BONES will lower the pH, but it is much much more expensive...  This is why they add chemicals to lower the pH.... MUCH cheaper than making a species appropriate food...

I would really caution against adding water to your dry food.  Mold is present in dry food, more or less. Adding water can cause a mold bloom that can be toxic and deadly.

Most dry food recalls are due to mold. And we all know that pets die from this.  Molds produce toxins which can destroy kidney, livers and other vital organs.  If your cat has had ANY urinary tract issues, just don't do dry food anymore.

In the end, we do the best we can. Some things we can control, and others we can't.

We can feed a diet suitable for a cat. Protein based, no to very little veggie mater and NO grains. Acidifying and hydrating. We can try to keep stress at a minimum...

This alone should prevent a high number of FUS.    But then there is genetics and stress that we can not do anything about...

Furmummy said:

 
I would really caution against adding water to your dry food.  Mold is present in dry food, more or less. Adding water can cause a mold bloom that can be toxic and deadly.

Most dry food recalls are due to mold. And we all know that pets die from this.  Molds produce toxins which can destroy kidney, livers and other vital organs.  If your cat has had ANY urinary tract issues, just don't do dry food anymore.

Click to expand...

 Absolutely right. I would never advocate adding water to kibble. Adding water to wet food is fine though - and some cats actually prefer it that way.

Furmummy said:

 
Besides the issue of feeding urinary food or not, your vet saying he has to be on it for the rest of his life is not correct. The University of Minnesota who analyses stones from cats and dogs from all over the world, used to have a chart, among so many of their interesting charts, of the ages of the cats who had submitted tones for analysis. For some reason there was a sharp drop of at the age of eight.  No one seem to know why... I had the same experience. After several years of intermittent cystitis, 8 was our magic number when we had no more trouble (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!)

Having low mineral values is only part of the story...the part that the pet food manufacturers want you to believe.  What determines if the mineral amount can cause problems or not is the pH of the urine... Urinary diets are loaded with grains and vegetable matter. They ALL raise the pH when what we want is a lower pH.  MEAT, ORGANS and BONES will lower the pH, but it is much much more expensive...  This is why they add chemicals to lower the pH.... MUCH cheaper than making a species appropriate food...

I would really caution against adding water to your dry food.  Mold is present in dry food, more or less. Adding water can cause a mold bloom that can be toxic and deadly.

Most dry food recalls are due to mold. And we all know that pets die from this.  Molds produce toxins which can destroy kidney, livers and other vital organs.  If your cat has had ANY urinary tract issues, just don't do dry food anymore.

In the end, we do the best we can. Some things we can control, and others we can't.

We can feed a diet suitable for a cat. Protein based, no to very little veggie mater and NO grains. Acidifying and hydrating. We can try to keep stress at a minimum...

This alone should prevent a high number of FUS.    But then there is genetics and stress that we can not do anything about...

Click to expand...

I totally agree with that. I don't trust vets, food speaking... it's all marketing! I can't believe that they would see you this crap because they touch money on it and I'm sure they know it's bad for your animal...

And again, agree with you on the food level... of course it's full of cereals, it costs so much cheaper... what a rip off.

As for the wetting dry food, didn't know that... I've read that on other forums, won't do anyways, I have both my cats, the one that had stones and the kitten, on wet food, hoping to avoid problems that way.

And of course, wet food that has no cereals and very weird additives, because that too, they make you believe that buying just any wet food will do the trick... totally not true...

So now with that high quality wet food, cross my fingers, I won't have recurring stone issues, because next stones = operation for my kitty...

And of course, the idea would be a BARF diet, but that makes things a tad more complicated.

There's very good info here about diet and urinary issues: http://catinfo.org/?link=urinarytracthealth

A canned food diet can prevent urinary issues in many cats. Some cats are just prone to urinary issues no matter what type of diet fed. Something like stress may induce cystitis in some cats.