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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Question: Rx Urinary Health Pet food
It looks like our dear boy is going to need to be switched to prescription cat food to prevent urinary crystals.
Are there multiple brands? What do you recommend? Is it okay to mix this with regular food or should it be fed exclusively once he gets switched to it?
They gave us Royal Canin SO dry food for the little guy and a few cans of wet but I didn't notice what kind it was.
Any advice here would be appreciated 
Re: Question: Rx Urinary Health Pet food
Life and Love at #16 | our married life blog
Dry food helps a cat's teeth about as much as chomping on crackers helps ours. Totally false.
The wet food is most important in helping urinary health. If you can find a good quality wet to feed primarily it will do more good than the crap in Royal Canin's dry food. Most of the ingredients are not helpful.
I think a couple of other gal's with cats with urinary issues (there's one that I think has a cat with crystals) should be able to help. I'm sure you don't have to go the Rx route.
ETA: Corn gluten meal and ground corn are the 3rd and 4th ingredients; that's ENTIRELY too much corn for your cat's diet (heck, ANY corn is too much corn). And "natural flavors" is just a way of saying they're trying to make the food taste better for your cat.
B/w 1/8: betas 17,345, progesterone 25.6
Ha! Love this!
Anyway.....
The cat at my parents (Big Kitty, and my cat growing up) has some kidney problems and instead of using the Rx food we bought a food the vet approved of and fed more wet food. The only down side is he did have some stinker breath, but over all not horrible or anything! He was a little gassy too, but that was just from switching foods.
I would use the Rx food for awhile though, it's probably a good starting point and if the price is similar to another food you might be looking at, I would go ahead and stay with the Rx food.
I am not a vet and make no scientific claims here, but my experience with Lily and her crystals:
I added wet food to her diet, and mixed it with water. I also added more water sources around the house to encourage drinking, also used a water fountain for a while (until she got bored with it). The key is to add more hydration. I didn't want to go the prescription route because of the crap ingredients and my vet supported my path. It's been a few years and they never returned.
Try this site for great info on a wet diet:
http://catinfo.org/
I worked at an animal hospital for 6 years, but I'm not a doctor.
That being said I saw a lot of blocked cats come in (this happens when crystals form and get so big they can't pass, poor little guys). This situation is always the same: painful, expensive & life threatening.
If your cat hasn't blocked yet and they are recommending to put him on rx food, DO IT. It may seem expensive, but it is cheaper than any treatment you would face in the future for a blockage. I promise.
The one we always put cats on was Hills Rx, it used to be called CD but I think they changed it to UD (for urinary diet). It's a super high quality diet and is worth the money.
Also, the special food needs to be the ONLY thing your kitty eats. No treats, no other type of food what so ever. The purpose of a prescription diet is to completely balance kitty's functioning, and that won't happen if it's not exclusive.
Good luck with your little guy! On a good diet I'm sure he'll do just fine
Our Max gets crystals. We started out with Science Diet C/D. It worked for him. It was crazy expensive, and loaded with garbage, but somehow it helped. And when we'd try to switch to other stuff, things would flare up.
Finally we found that Taste of the Wild dry works for him. He can eat any wet food in the world, but if it's dry it has to be TOTW. We also frequently mix water in with his food, wet and dry. All the extra water you can get in your cat will help, even if it's only 1/4 a day.
He also has an unrelated bladder condition called Feline Interstitial Cystitis. Like with crystals, there's no cure, but there is prevention. He is on two capsules of Cosequin daily; one of the compounds in Cosequin is part of what helps form the bladder wall in cats.
Good luck...crystals are a b!tch.
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Thanks everyone for the kind words and suggestions. I'm considering switching him to a wet food only diet since he loves his canned food anyway and it seems to be a helpful thing to do.
I noticed a few of you said to do the rx food. Does that need to be a permanent switch or just for a little while? I will ask the vet these questions later today. I just think it's a little ironic that the dry food that she's recommending has a lot of corn in it when yesterday she was telling us that it's the worst carb for cats to digest.
Life and Love at #16 | our married life blog
Thank you! We will absolutely do this!
Life and Love at #16 | our married life blog
Question her on this. Ask her where her info comes - scientific journals or her local Hills food rep?
Say what!? Have you read the side of the can?
I don't knock anyone for using it - it's scary stuff to deal with when it's your beloved cat - but I've read the ingredients on several Hills products and super high quality they were not.
When my cat had a UTI we gave him the Royal Canin RX food for 2 bags. Our vet recommended doing this and then did say that after that we could either mix it in with his regular food or we could just quit the RX food because we were pretty sure the source of the problem was us giving him unfiltered water (we had just moved and have a well that apparently has a lot of minerals that caused the UTI). So to answer your question about mixing - my vet said it was fine after getting him straightened out.
He has not had an issue since and it's been over a year. We feed him wet food every day (along with dry food). We feed Wellness canned.
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I have a boy with UTI issues. We did the Hills prescription food for a while, but the UTIs kept recurring. Cat is allergic to corn, so it wasn't helping at all. I've done some research and if you have to do a dry food, we like this one:
http://www.wysong.net/products/uretic-healthy-natural-cat-food.php
We were doing ok on TOTW, but there is more fish in it than I'm comfortable feeding with the UTI issues Cat was having. I also feed wet, although it's not a high-quality wet (he's beyond picky when it comes to wet food), so this is just a supplement.
Wet food and perscription food is the best thing you can do to prevent crystals from forming. And yes it is a life long change.
Some cats may never form crystals again, but once a cat has formed crystals they are much more likely to form them in the future.
The goal of the perscription diet is to change the pH of the urine so the specific stone your kitty got can't form. Mixing in other foods can alter the pH which can counter act the good that the perscription diet you are using.
I know you think the ingredients are bad for cats, but it is the best thing you can do for your cat. A blocked cat is a life threatening, painful, medical emergency.
The prescription foods vets recommend are complete and utter crap.
I am guessing here that your cat has struvite crystals (magnesium ammonium sulfate). The urinary diets for this type have two characteristics: low magnesium levels and added L-methionine which acidifies urine. Struvite crystals form in alkaline urine which is often times caused by grain consumption, although my kitty was on grain free dry food when he got his crystals.
Through exhaustive research I decided to go with Weruva paw lickin chicken wet food with lots of added water. This cleared up his crystals within 6 weeks. He is now on Evo canned food with added NaturVet urinary support goo as it has the L-methionine to acidify his urine a bit as his 2nd urinalysis was crystal free but the pH was still higher than we wanted.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. BTW everything I said is not relevent if your cat has the other kind of crystal: calcium oxalate. Find out what kind he has so you can go from there. I really didnt want to put my cat on the rx diet the vet wanted because I know how low quality it is.