Flutd (food Suggestions?)

[animallover07]

My 5 year old female cat has her first UTI and it's a doosy. The vet says it's FLUTD and was most likely caused by stress. She has been seen and treated 3 times by the vet and it's still sticking around. The last time we went to the vet he suggested Hill's Prescription food. Which is honestly just way too expensive. I have been looking into Purina, Iam's, etc with their special urinary formulas. I know the best thing for cat's with UTI problems is all wet food but she is a cat who loves dry food and barely touches wet. She has always been that way. Alternatively, she does drink quite a lot of water throughout the day. I was just wondering if anyone else in the boards has a cat with UTI problems and have had any luck on the lesser expensive brands as far as helping keep UTI's away. I do have 3 other cats and I feed them all wet food for breakfast. (She just barely touches hers, haha.) But I do leave dry food out all day so I would like something that all the cats could nibble on. Since the other cats are boys and they are genetically more prone to UTI's I'm all for a formula that will help their systems not develop any and I have read that Purina Urinary formula is okay for all cats to eat, so that is ideal but I'm not sold on any one brand. I just want something that will help keep the UTI's away since my cat is now going to be prone to them the rest of her life but one that hopefully won't have to be super expensive like the prescription based.

 

[Stinky15]

I had a Male cat that stopped up on my twice and naturally the Vet recommended Hill's Urinary wet food. I did a lot of reading about it and read this: Cat Urinary Tract Diseases: Cystitis, Urethral Obstruction, Urinary Tract Infection
I had always fed him wet and dry but I realized I had gotten lazy and he was eating a lot more dry than he should. He would barely touch the Hills so I ended up feeding him canned Fancy Feast Classics (limited fish) and Purina Urinary dry formula. I limited the dry much more than I had previously, he never stopped up again. I don't think you will find a Dry only diet that will solve your problem. There are a lot of good threads on this board about FLUTD and steps people have taken to prevent/avoid them you can find by using "search":
Search Results for Query: FLUTD | TheCatSite

 

[cheeser]

Just adding my humble voice to the chorus of recommending that article about urinary tract diseases at catinfo.org. Our cat was was having relapses every three months until we eliminated all dry food from his diet (including his much beloved Temptations he got as a little reward after his daily meds for other health issues), eliminated all fish from his diet (well, except for fish oils), and started trying to keep his daily carb intake to 10% or less. Oh, and we also got some Feliway diffusers and used some OTC stress relief remedies that the vet recommended.

It's been about four years now, and thank God, Buddy hasn't had a single flare up since. In fact, we were so impressed with the results, we decided to transition our older, kibble addicted kitty to a wet food only, fish-free, low-carb diet, too. It was a pretty rough transition for Oscar, but we got there after a couple of weeks or so.

We found this article at catinfo.org helpful: Transitioning Feline Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food.

 

[Furballsmom]

was most likely caused by stress

Can you also try music - there's an app called Relax My Cat, and also MusicForCats.com. Also take a look at this;
You, Your Cat And Stress