Prevent urinary blockage

arleross

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We have had bad luck with male cats in the past.  Most of them developed urinary crystals that caused serious blockages.  We now have a five-month-old male kitten that will be neutered a month from now and we are worried about him.  We feed our two adult females two meals of Science Diet dry food (morning and evening) and one meal of canned food (Friskies) in the middle of the day.  They have done fine with this diet, and our vet approves.

We know that dry foods have been improved in recent years.  Will it be OK to put the kitten on the above adult diet when he reaches adulthood, since our females have experienced no urinary problems with it?  Or should we consider feeding him Hills Prescription Diet C/D along with the canned food, as a preventive measure?  We're not sure if the C/D is meant only for cats that have already experienced urinary problems.  We'll appreciate any advice you can offer.
 

vball91

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Actually dry food is the worst thing you can feed for urinary tract health. Here's a good site written by a vet about why wet food is better. www.catinfo.org. Scroll down to Urinary Tract Diseases on the right.
 

raintyger

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The Hill's brand is famous for ultra high carbs. It may keep away UTIs, but it just causes malnutrition health problems elsewhere.

I would recommend a high protein protein wet food or raw feeding for your kitten. Your other cats should be on wet food, too, no dry. Dry causes UTIs by dehydration, which is a condition that allows urinary stones to form. The only thing the dry prescription food is doing is limiting the amount of magnesium and phosphorus so that crystals/stones are less likely to form, but those are important nutrient minerals.

Most traditional vets don't know squat about nutrition, so the fact that a vet approves doesn't carry much weight with me. My old vet that treated my cat's UTI didn't even know the minerals to look out for in UTI preventative diet. My cat had a struvite stone a year ago and I never put her on prescription food. She gets canned food with extra water mixed in. For a little while she was getting a urine acidifier, too, but I might just do away with that because it seems the higher pH readings I was getting were probably due to daily urinary fluctuations--totally normal.
 

ritz

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Agree with everyone; dry food is really bad for cats with UTIs or those cats with a history of UTIs.  The prescription diets have a tiny bit of the urine acidifier and a lot of nonsense ingredients.  Wet food (or even raw) is much better.
 

rang_27

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Just this past week I have had my first experince with a blocked cat. I have four other males ranging in age from 10 to 4 years old. I have never (knock on wood) had a problem with crystals. One had a urinary infection once, but antibiotics cleared it up and never had an issue again. The cat that blocked is only 2 years old and he had a complete blockage.  He is now on CD wet food. I know many people here prefer to treat their cats health issues through other means and that is fine but for him I'm going to keep him on CD.

As far as the kitten I would make sure he is getting enough water and feed wet food. I do think water intake has a lot to do with the formation of crystals. If you are concerned get one of the water fountain dishes. After Leon had his blockage it dawned on me that I don't think I have ever seen that cat drink water. My other cats I see do it all the time. They really seem to like the dog bowl which I find odd since I have a raised bowl for my big dog. They have to stand on their back feet to drink from the bowl.
 

ritz

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You might change the water too, to a bottled type of water, especially if you live in an area that has 'hard' water.

My niece's cats will only drink bottle water; I believe they get their water from a well system (and, I  believe the cats may be spoiled!)
 
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