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- Mar 3, 2015
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Our cats are both on wet food, one on home made raw and the other on grain free wet. Rigel (the one on raw) has a history of urinary problems caused by a badly done unrelated procedure and since then he has been visiting the internal medicine specialist every 6 months for blood and urine tests. All the tests check out fine except for one: at the last couple of checkins we've been told his urine concentration is slightly too high. The vet said it is nothing too worrying but while on one hand it shows that the kidneys are functioning well, on the other it is a sign that we should try to get him to drink more water.
Unfortunately he rarely drinks aside from his meals. We use TCFeline premix and add a little extra water, so his food is very moist. We have tried a number of other things to encourage him to drink more. They include but are not limited to:
* Numerous water fountains of different kinds (he destroys them)
* Ice cubes in water
* Chicken broth ice cubes
* A few drops of tuna in water (but I am very hesitant to use fish-anything as I'm not comfortable feeding him seafood with his urinary history)
* Trying to play with him in the water, throwing his bouncy balls in there
* Seeing if he'll drink from the tap
* Bringing home some snow (from a clean location)
* Multiple bowls of different types around the house, making sure they're always clean with no filmy residue on the edges
* Feeding wet Royal Canin Urinary S/O which increases thirst (this works when he eats enough of it, but he is also not a fan and usually just takes a few bites and walks away)
Tonight I am going to make chicken soup for him and try to give him some warm chicken broth to see if he'll have any. The thing is he is not a very food-motivated cat in general. He is currently underweight because his appetite never fully recovered after his hospital stays. We get as much food as we can into him and he is healthy and energetic, but he just isn't super into eating so any flavoring related thing we add is likely to not have much of an effect on him.
Does anyone have any other suggestions on what I can try to convince him to drink more?
Thanks!
Unfortunately he rarely drinks aside from his meals. We use TCFeline premix and add a little extra water, so his food is very moist. We have tried a number of other things to encourage him to drink more. They include but are not limited to:
* Numerous water fountains of different kinds (he destroys them)
* Ice cubes in water
* Chicken broth ice cubes
* A few drops of tuna in water (but I am very hesitant to use fish-anything as I'm not comfortable feeding him seafood with his urinary history)
* Trying to play with him in the water, throwing his bouncy balls in there
* Seeing if he'll drink from the tap
* Bringing home some snow (from a clean location)
* Multiple bowls of different types around the house, making sure they're always clean with no filmy residue on the edges
* Feeding wet Royal Canin Urinary S/O which increases thirst (this works when he eats enough of it, but he is also not a fan and usually just takes a few bites and walks away)
Tonight I am going to make chicken soup for him and try to give him some warm chicken broth to see if he'll have any. The thing is he is not a very food-motivated cat in general. He is currently underweight because his appetite never fully recovered after his hospital stays. We get as much food as we can into him and he is healthy and energetic, but he just isn't super into eating so any flavoring related thing we add is likely to not have much of an effect on him.
Does anyone have any other suggestions on what I can try to convince him to drink more?
Thanks!