Good Food For Cat With Struvite Crystals?
Friday January 20, 2006
CRE8VE asks: "My sister's cat has struvite crystals. The vet recommended Hills and Waltham S/O foods. My sister's cat doesn't quite like the taste of these foods (he was on Wellness) and my sister doesn't like the fact that they use chicken by-product in their foods. Does anyone have any recommendations of brands and foods that she can give him?"
Comments
It’s weird that I should come across your question, as it is the very exact question I was searching for an answer to just now! My cat Olive was also eating Wellness before, and suffers from struvite crystals in his urine. Two different vets have prescribed the Waltham and the Hills Science Diet foods for him. Animal nutrition is my passion, and I hope to become a nutritionist one day.
I have spent the past 6 years researching about pet food and nutrition, and have picked up on several things. The first being never feed dry food. Cats with urinary tract issues must have moisture in their diets, and eating dry food keeps them from obtaining enough liquid (and no, they do not know to drink enough water to make up for it, and watering down dry food only causes the development of harmful bacteria that live dormant in spores on the dry food).
The second is my pet peeve about prescription diets. Although they work, the way they work (for urinary tract issues) is by removing the magnesium from the food in order to prevent crystals from forming. Crystals form in the urine only when it is alkaline, and the magnesium reacts with the alkalinity to create struvite crystals. But one thing people don’t understand is that magnesium is essential to a cat’s diet, or it will suffer other negative health side effects. What you need to do is lower the alkalinity of the diet rather than removing the magnesium. And another thing, you are right, prescription diets mostly contain nothing but grains, meat by-products and harmful preservatives. So, it’s no wonder most cats don’t even like them. Grains cause alkaline urine. So who on earth invented these UTI prescription diets anyway?! What I keep running into is the consistent recommendation to feed all cats a moist diet high in meat protein, low in carbs, and grain-free. Supposedly, this should solve ALL the health problems a cat would ever have… Good luck! We’re all going to need it.
Ok, so what should I feed my cat? I’m currently feeding him Royal Canin S/O. Thanks
I just today got my cat back from the hospital where they removed a urinary blockage. My comment is this If the veternarian says feed the animal one type of food why argue. Vets go to school for many years, and seem to treat their patients better than most people hospitals do. It was a sad event to deal with and I hope to not have to do it again. So if vet says do this why not do what they say?
What I’ve come across is that most vets are not experts in nutrition as well medicine….
Vets receive little, if any, nutritional education in vet school. Insteady what they get are ‘informercials’ from reps of the commercial pet food industry.
Cats are obligate carnivores and as such are designed to obtain all their nutritional needs from their prey. In the domesticated cat, prey is usually unavailable so we’ve come to rely on dry kibble loaded with grains and other crap. Grain has no place in a cat’s diet. They are unable to process it or derive any nutritional value from it.
If your cat was eatig Wellness and developed crystals, I’m stumped. There are some groups on Yahoo! dedicated to feline kidney disease. My suggestion would be to search out those groups and get suggestions from them as to a better food than Hills or Waltham.
Mine and a friends cat have developed struvites while on Wellness Core. I’m currently alternating Solid Gold dry and Wysong’s Feline Uretic while she’s using Wysong’s Archetype. I have not had a recurrence in a year.
It always astonishes me to see people saying “vets know nothing about food but I know a lot more by surfing the Web.” Frankly, I trust sources like the Cornell Feline Health Center over the second or third-hand information circulated on the Web from people I have never met and don’t know the backgrounds of. For instance, people like to repeat the “obligate carnivore” line because it makes them sound knowledgeable. Cornell also uses the phrase but does not say dry food is bad for cats. When I see people say that their cat probably died because it was fed a certain brand of food, I have to wonder how would you know? Are you a veterinary pathologist? Did you do an autopsy yourself? People don’t distinguish between correlation and causality.
Quite frankly, if my cat had a serious health problem, I would trust the foremost feline health research center in the country rather than relying on the hearsay and anecdotal information from self-educated “experts.”
My cat also developed large crystals while eating Wellness. He had surgery and now has been eating one of the prescription diets with no recurrence of crystals. The food is very irregular though and not consistent so I am looking for a better food that will not cause crystals to re-occur.
My cat became alergic to chicken after switching to Hills Diet. No more of that crap. Some vets are just cannot be trusted.
Hah! How on earth do you expect the vet know that your cat is allergic to chicken in the first place? Bet you didn’t even know it yourself.
Very strange that many of you mention struvite crystals and Wellness food. My coon cat is 5 years old and has just developed struvite crystals. She was also on Wellness Healthy Weight and Wellness Indoor cat. She has just started with Hill’s C/D. I’m hoping this will help her.
one of my cats has struvite crytals and has had recurrences while on prescription food as well. this makes me very angry. the best result i’ve had is purina o.n.e. urinary health formula. he’s never become ill while on this diet and only seems to have problems when i try a new [and always more expensive] urinary health formula–whether prescription or iams or science diet or whatever. strange…
I feel that as a pet owner you have to take initiative and do research. What do cats in the wild eat? Rice, wheat, flour, barely? I’ve never seen a cat cook a bowl of hot cereal. And if they have, they’d still have moisture in their food. Dry cat food & stress are both the common links to feline crystals. The food is totally dehydrated. A mouse is made up of over 80% of water. Dry food has 10%. If that’s the case, why would a vet recommend dry food as part of the solution? Our 3 year old female Siamese has been diagnosed with strivite crystals. I am not about to put her back on dry food if that is partly to blame. I did not purchase the food that our vet recommended. Not without doing proper research. She has been on
blue buffalo for 2 yrs & prior to that royal canin. We now are looking into a raw diet as that is what we have our puggle on. We may even switch to a high quality can food. I think orijin may have one. Vets are like doctors, they push food that reps insist on. No different than people doctors. I do feel at times, vets go into their field of expertise with good intentions. I also know a vet who dropped out cause, eventually she saw that they could & were making some animals sicker. I don’t have answers. I’m on here for the same reasons. I love my animals, all animals. I’m doing my research & I ask you to do the same.
hmmmm, I too have a male cat that has been having issues due to Wellness food…not sounding good for that company. Heather, I am pretty much where you are at, have been searching for years for the best nutritional diets for my pets, with little help from my vets. Not that I don’t care for my vet, he is good. But when it comes to nutritional issues I really don’t feel that many vets have done their homework. I almost lost a black lab due to skin allergies, went to many vets to no avail, had to find the answer from searching Medical Journals online and take the printout to a new vet who helped get some of it under control. The rest I worked out with diet and supplements.
I am however a bit stumped on what to feed for the struvite crystals. The by products and grains really are a turn off in the diets prescribed by vets. I almost had my boy switched to raw diet till he began turning his nose up at it. Not sure what to do now…currently using the hills, but only because I ‘m not sure what other venue to try???
My two cats have only been fed felidae all their 2 years of life. My female just came down with a quarter size struvite stone that was removed. My male cat is having to be put to sleep today because he is blocked and they are unable to clear him. They are brother and sister cats. I want to feed my cats a food that is by-product free which is why I fed them felidae to begin with.
Glad to have found some comments. I was looking for support. Our cat just came back from the emergency clinic due to crystals. I was intrigued to think maybe going to raw foods might be helpful. I also fed him wellness. I am wondering about that now. we have royal canine from the emergency vet and like everything else for animals and humans we have to be cautious of who is paying for what and the influence they have. It is difficulty.
To all of you whose cats got crystals and you fed Wellness, are you referring to Wellness wet or Wellness dry? There’s a huge difference in water content, and water is extremely important in the prevention of crystals.
Good quality wet food is the answer.
Also, if you have a cat who becomes blocked, that could be due to anatomy. Some cats have very narrow urethras, and become easily blocked by crystals. For some of these cats, a vet may be able to place a urinary catheter to unblock them, and a change in diet and encouraging more water consumption will prevent a recurrence. For other cats, surgery to increase the size of the urethra will take care of the problem once and for all, but it’s always a good idea to feed grain free wet food and have lots of free water around for the cat.
Is it ok to post links?
Here’s a really informative link about cat food, written by a vet.
http://www.catinfo. org/
How Bizarre!
I JUST got home from taking my 2 year old altered male cat to the emergency clinic for crystals.
He has been fed Wellness core DRY cat food since he was old enough to eat dry food.
I am extremely concerned about the number of people on this thread that have had issues with urinary crystals and Wellness brand cat food.
My beloved cat of 14 years recently passed away. When he was two years old he started having difficulty with passing urine because of crystals and even had to be “cathed”. The vet told me to switch pet food and I did. I used a dry common brandname urinary tract maintenance formula and the problem didn’t return until a few years later when I had to have him boarded for a week. They fed him the wrong food because they thought he was refusing his regular food, and I had to take him to the vet the very next day of my return. Once he was back on his urinary maintenance formula, things went back to normal and he never had the problem again.
He suddenly passed away three months ago. It was completely unrelated to his diet, and he went quietly in his sleep without any signs of suffering. Arguing over whether vets know cat nutrition is silly. Being politically indignant over the ingredients because it doesn’t comply with your belief system of what cats should eat is also silly. I loved my cat, he loved me, his food kept him comfortable and healthy, and we had 14 wonderful years of mutual companionship. If you love your cat, just live with the compromise: Feed him the food he likes that will best control his condition so he can lead a comfortable and healthy life. After all, he is a cat who loves you, and not a political statement.