Hello! As I said in my presentation, I came to the UK in December. I had 3 cats back in Portugal, and I'm now considering bringing my best friend Lee.
About a year ago he started peeing with blood and stopped eating. Apparently he had crystal formations in the urine. The vet said we had to feed him special food AND ONLY that food. Royal canin Urinary S/O in Portugal. The thing is, there are a lot more brands here. What diet would you advise? Which brand? Dry, wet or both? And do you think some treats would harm? Thank you in advance =)

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Meow?

Hi, I have no experience of this myself but the main thing I wanted to say is that you need to be feeding wet. Wet wet and more wet, no dry.
I am sure someone else will be able to advise further.....

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I've just consulted my book:

1) Urine in carnivores eating meat is acid not alkaline. Dry food causes your cat to have very alkaline wee. This is not how it should be and leads to inflammation.

2) Dry food provides almost no moisture, whereas prey (mice etc) would have 80% moisture. Cat's don't have much of a thirst for water and this leads to a dehydrated cat with very concentrated urine. Unnaturally high minerals in the urine causes UTIs.

3) If you cat will eat wet food, his urine will return to a normal PH level, and crystals and stones will no longer be a problem.



So no more dry, feed only wet and the UTIs will go away.

You probably know you can get Royal Canin s/o cheaper online. I can't give advice over other brands, but obviously make sure a different one is for the management of his type of crystals. Hills may do one?

The general advice is to give cats with any kind of urinary problem wet food -not sure if he's having the dry or wet version.

He's been eating ONLY urinary dry food for a year. Followed the vet's advice, now I understand he was wrong. According to him, wet food causes diarrhea...
So shall I feed him wet food special for urinary problems? Like this one? http://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/c...ription/186263

Thank you for the answers!

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Meow?

hiya.
my cat is also on a special diet.
he needs to be on hills s/d for the same thing you are describing!

i was also told to stay clear of dried food.

Personally if the Royal Canin S/O food is working for him then I would stick with it, as crystals can be fatal.

Where is DB as she has a cat on S/O and I think she gives him a little wet food each day.

What exactly do manufacturers have to prove (if anything) to say that a particular food is a specialist diet? These things hold no license and aren't listed on NOAH. Do companies like Hill's and RC have to submit these 'special' diets for any sort of independant scrutiny?

I'd like to know that aswell in fact, gonna give it a search.

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Meow?

Hill's call their products 'prescription' diets and RC call theirs 'veterinary' diets but we all know they are not prescription products and don't have to be purchased through a vet though vets do tend to recommend/sell one or t'other.

The claims are usually that a particular food is low in X or high in Y. What I'm interested in is whether this just means lower (or higher) than in their other products or is at a level scientifically proven to make a significant difference and cannot be replicated without buying a prepared special diet.