Wet foods for urinary crystals

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itzj

itzj

Member Since 2014
Non-diabetic who had a blockage just had his pee retested and he has high crystals again. Vet wants him on royal canin urinary. I'm not opposed to starting him on those, but I don't like the looks of the ingredient list. And we are a house of 11 cats so the less seclusion for feeding the better. Massimo also unfortunately doesn't like wet food. When he came home from the blockage after 3 days of not really eating anything he still wouldn't even really touch the wet food at all. I'm at my wits end.
 
I know ECID, but my Rosa was on RC urinary S/O for about 6 years until right before her diabetes diagnosis. If I could do things over with her, I would have found another solution rather than feeding that food. From what I've learned now, a high protein, low carb wet food is also good for helping with urinary crystals/stones. Do you think you might be able to switch him over to a wet food if you did it very gradually so he still has some dry to begin with - it took a while to get my 2 off dry food (or at least to stop going looking for it) as they'd been fed dry food their whole lives, but they did reach the point after a few weeks where they would choose wet food over dry. I also found that mixing a lot of water with the wet food helped - they'd treat the food as gravy then...and the one type of wet food they did like was the "in gravy" type because they could lick up the gravy and leave the chunks of meat so turning the whole thing into a thick gravy encouraged them to try it.
 
Yeah I'm thinking I will have to go slowly for them all but try to nudge Massimo a little quicker. I got him to eat a little of the friskies urinary tonight with water in it. Do you think until I can get him off it all the way that I should temporarily have some of the royal canin dry on hand as I wean him off the dry?
 
While he's coming off the dry food, the urinary formula is no worse than most other dry foods I don't think and no doubt is better for the crystals than some of the other commercial dry foods. I let my two have a mixture of that and canned food while I was switching them over to all canned. Regan (Rosa's twin) had no reason to be on the urinary formula anyway other than me being unable to get them to agree to eat different food from each other. As you're planning to get him onto canned food, you probably don't want to try switching him to any of the ultra low carb dry foods either - I'd go with letting him have some Royal Canin and some wet and gradually increase the amount of wet food until you can stop the RC completely. Hopefully adding water will make the difference for him - I was having no luck with either of my 2 wanting the wet food until someone told me about adding extra water to it.
 
If you're up to making your own, you might pay for a consult with Dr Pierson of Cat Info, to work out a recipe suitable for him.
 
April, how much water did you add?

I'm not sure I could swing making my own. Been a vegetarian for 5+ years now. If we have to go that direction I'll have to beg my mother to do it as she lives right by us.
 
I don't measure it by any sort of exact amount - I just add some, mash the food and the water together with a fork and then add a bit more water as necessary until I get a consistency like a really thick gravy (with bits in it from the food of course). If I had to guess I'd say maybe 2/3 of a can of water to a can of food. To me it looks awful when it's mixed, but the cats love it!
 
Watch out for the RC Urinary s/o. Saoirse's problems seem to have started with that food. It helped with the uroliths but she piled on weight and I now know she had an allergic reaction to it (overgroomed her tummy till it was bald). One thing of major concern is the calorie content of the dry version. If you do need to feed it, go for the moderate calorie version. FWIW, I second BJ's recommendation about checking out catinfo.org for advice. Since switching to wet food with water added last June, Saoirse has not had any problems with uroliths (anti-jinx, anti-jinx).
 
Critter Mom said:
It helped with the uroliths but she piled on weight and I now know she had an allergic reaction to it (overgroomed her tummy till it was bald). One thing of major concern is the calorie content of the dry version. If you do need to feed it, go for the moderate calorie version.
Click to expand...
Ouch - I didn't know about that as a reaction. Now I feel even worse about feeding it to my 2...Regan went through a huge phase of overgrooming soon after I switched to it and piled on weight too (very obvious as she's not a big-built cat to begin with). My vet never made a connection between either of those things and the food - just told me she was a stressy cat (which she is) and was overgrooming because of that and that I was feeding them too much. And then of course Rosa finished up diabetic too. Seems like there are more problems with it as a food than I knew about.
 
I had exactly the same "stress and overeating" response from our vet at the time, April. Saoirse's never been a big eater (apart from the diabetes-related polyphagia).

As soon as I switched Saoirse off RC food her tummy fur started regrowing immediately. That was the first indication that the overgrooming was diet-related. I really do consider that the RC foods started her down the path to where she developed the problems she has (allergy, then IBD, then panceatitis, then diabetes).
 
I guess my 2 split the problems with it between them - Regan got the weight gain and grooming problem (that did ease off after a while but now I think about it, it was after that that she started with an allergy to Frontline and her fur is in way better condition now on wet food than it had been in years). And of course Rosa got the diabetes. It's probably a good thing I'm not still in the same country as the vet who insisted they had to be fed the s/o anymore - I think I'd be having some fairly harsh words with them if I was still able to contact them easily!!
 
There is also a drug that can be given twice daily. It's called ammonil. My cat is on Hills Urinary Health dry maintenance and does very well. There are several options out there. Good luck from jane and stewey.
 
Thank you all for all the help. I'm having a hard time getting him to eat the wet so far. I ordered some cosequin for him and the diabetic, not sure how he'll take it. He will not let my husband within arms reach of him now since he was the one to do all the transporting during the hospitalization. I am hesitant to force anything down his throat and then none of us be able to handle him.
 
Retail low carb dry foods:
Evo Cat and Kitten
Stella and Chewey's freeze dried
Young Again 0 Carb - they have a formula for older / urinary cats.​
Transition food slowly to avoid GI upsets and food refusals - 20-25% per day.
 
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