crystals in young cats urine

[viele katzen]

Hi , my approximately 10 month old cat has been diagnosed with crystals in her urine . The vet put her on cd and wants her to stay on this for the rest of her life . Do you have any alternatives? I am not impressed by the ingredients in cd . Thanks

 

[dr kris]

For a 10 month, female cat (i.e. extremely low risk of getting a blockage), who is otherwise healthy in every sense of the word, the first thing i would do before changing the diet is to see if i could repeat the result. I would have that little kitty in my office, obtain a urine sample by cystocentesis, and process it immediately. Sometimes you do that an voilia - crystals be gone. The presence of crystals can be a normal finding. Persistent, high level crystals that are causing signs of urinary stress I treat one way. Blocked cats coming in with crystals galore - for sure i want to change their diet forever and ever. The occasional crystals found on a sample in the fridge, or that got to me a few hours later? Or collected overnight and delivered to the clinic first thing in the AM? Or present with a first time urinary tract infection? Not convinced those crystals didn't decide to precipitate out in the sample while it was sitting there.

The safest thing to do here is retest the urine. By cysto. And process it while it is still warm right out of your cats body! There is absolutely nothing wrong in retesting on new samples.

k

 

[viele katzen]

Thank you for your response . The Dr did get the sample by cytocentesis , and the reason we were looking at her urine was that she is urinating outside of her litterbox at times. However , she had been at the vets office for several hours before the sample was taken and I am sure that it did stress her out . . The vet was talking about some crystals and not a huge amount of them .

 

[juniorthecat07]

This happened to me. My cat just had PU surgery in June, not fun!  I hope your little kitty gets well!