what cat food for male cats

[Tiggeroo]

if you cat is prone to urinary blockages what are you feeding him. I'm off to the pet store and we have switched to purina urinary care from the script food. He didn't like two other brands that I thought were better. Vet feels purina is fine. I don't want to be back in the vets with this problem.

 

[chrissyk]

If your cat had struvite crystals, a lot of vets push Science Diet S/D or C/D for this issue. If he had bladder stones from calcium oxcilate crystals, the food would be different (not sure which one). My cat can't tolerate these foods (he vomits them up), so he is on a natural diet (Petguard) with acidifiers (Methagel right now). As you know from my other thread, he's going to have the surgery because the dietary means are just not going to be enough in his case (this has been going on for 7 long years)

While I'm not a huge fan of foods like Science Diet for other reasons, they do appear to work for cats that can tolerate them. Also, our vet says no dry food...only canned cat food. They want to increase urine volume as much as possible, and cats that eat dry food don't have enough urine volume. We just started on an all-canned food diet with extra water mixed in this week. I feel bad for my other cat, as she likes the dry food, but she'll get over it.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I don't have cats anymore but if I had a cat with issues I would consider a RAW food, holistic, or I would prepare it myself. There are holistic vets out there and many books on preparing homemade food for your pet.
I am not sure the best course for your cat.
I believe the book "Food Pets Die For" is a pretty good eye opener.

I didn't know all of this until recently and it is worth looking at anyway. I wish I knew this earlier, I could have given my cat Honey a better quality of life. She had bowel issues. I didn't get a chance to try though.

 

[nwdisgal]

I always used Science Diet for my male cat. He had 17 good years!

 

[Planogirl]

Our male cat had a severe blockage several years ago and it almost killed him. His veterinarian put him on Purina's perscription dry food for cats with urinary problems and he's done fine. He also offered Science Diet but the cat hated it while he eats the Purina without a problem. Our cats do not get canned food but the cat with problems drinks tons of water so I'm not concerned.

I noticed that the stores now sell Purina One with a formula for these cats. I wonder if it's any good?

 

[kendall]

Our male cat has this issue - he won't touch Science Diet. He will eat Purino Pro Plan Urinary Tract; we also feed him about 1/2 can of canned food a day - the vet recommended we add water to his canned food and make a "gravy" - this increases the fluid intake. Sure enough, he often drinks all the gravy. BTW, "sliced" canned food works the best for our cat for "gravy" - he won't eat pureed smooshy food.

 

[chrissyk]

I don't have cats anymore but if I had a cat with issues I would consider a RAW food, holistic, or I would prepare it myself. There are holistic vets out there and many books on preparing homemade food for your pet.
I am not sure the best course for your cat.
I believe the book "Food Pets Die For" is a pretty good eye opener.

I didn't know all of this until recently and it is worth looking at anyway. I wish I knew this earlier, I could have given my cat Honey a better quality of life. She had bowel issues. I didn't get a chance to try though.

I absolutely agree with you from a nutritional standpoint. Cats with urinary blockages from struvite crystals need to have their urine acidified also, though. We won't feed our cats a commercial petfood (Purina, Science Diet), but we will feed them a natural diet and then give the male an acidifier. Unfortunately, 7 years of strictly holistic veternary medicine (remedies, "acidifying" with cranberry and vitamin C, etc.) didn't solve our cat's urinary blockage issue. Sometimes you have to use a commercial acidifier even with the natural diet. Honestly, you can't treat a dead cat, and urinary blockages are deadly.

BTW, I agree that the book "The Foods Pets Die For" is an EXCELLENT eye-opener!!

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We buy whiskas that is seafood-free. Our male cat cannot have any seafood at all others he'll start getting crystals and then a UTI.

Whenever we have bought catfood that claims it is for a certain type of cat--it never works! Our vet didn't bother to tell us to go get a special urinary formula. Just no seafood and it worked like a charm.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

My cat eats Science Diet C/D. I can have his urine tested and possibly put him on something less expensive, but I haven't since it's such an ordeal to get the urine sample. His sister is also on the food since it's hard to feed them different things. I do try to keep our cats and kittens eating their respective food, but that's easier said than done.

 

[nwdisgal]

I'm not a catfood expert by any means, but I heard a long time ago that it was additives in the petfood like ash that blocks the cats up? It was this same friend that told me about the additives who recommended Science Diet. Of course, at that time (many years back - I don't want to date myself aw: ) there was not much choice in the pet food market in that particular formulation besides Science Diet. Now it sounds like there are all sorts of options.

 

[kayeandjim00]

We may be dealing with a UTI problem ourselves. We are in the 'urine sample' stage which has been quite difficult. They gave us plastic granules to put in a litter box in the hopes that he would go there and we could extract it with a syringe. We kept him sequestered trying that and that didn't work - he held it for 18 hours! As soon as he was out he went straight for his regular litter box. The next step was trying to extract it straight from the bladder. We kept him away from the litter box for about 13 hours total and when we got to the vet - NOTHING! How is that possible?? So we continue to try. He's on some antibiotics but they still want to figure out what's the underlying problem (as do we.) His major symptom was going to the litter box over and over- sometimes going, sometimes not. Sometimes he goes a "pea sized" amount and other times he sits there forever and nothing, then yet other times he goes like normal. : It's just started happening over the past week. Any thoughts? As for food we feed Wellness as we've heard it's "people grade" ingredients were best. Our 2 cats get soft and dry and eat both well.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

kayeandjim--it could be crystals, it could be a UTI--our male cat has had both a couple of times. Now that he has a history---his main symptom is when he starts eliminating on my recliner. When it first happened...we thought it was behavioral and then he kept doing it. We talked to the vet about it--and after his samples, it was discovered he had a UTI.

Then it happened again a while later--maybe a few months (we didn't eliminate seafood, yet). So we had him checked again. This time crystals.

Turns out--when he's sick--his choice place to go is on my recliner--Nature's Miracle is my friend btw!

They said drop the seafood and we did. Never had a problem for several years until we had an infiltration. Hubby bought a cat food based on what the front of the package said. The cat went on my recliner again. He thought it had no fish. Looked at the ingredients--it had something "fish"y. Called the vet....they needed a sample for records purposes but they gave us an antiobiotic anyway and would change it if necessary. We knew it was crystals and sure enought it was.

Our cat chooses to go where it is comfortable when he's got UT issues and your cat is probably electing to do the same. Unfortunately--they need that to diagnose as you know.


My question--is he drinking anything? Not saying your kitty is a genious...but maybe he's not drinking as much b/c it is too uncomfortable to go, hence having nothing to give to the vet. Perhaps I am giving the feline too much credit--but worth a check to see if he is getting enough fluids.

 

[kayeandjim00]

We have been watching that and don't think he is drinking enough either - we were wondering the same thing. WE have been lucky thus far as we've had no "elimination" accidents - he is only going to the litter box he just goes CONSTANTLY! In the 20 minutes I was doing laundry last night he went in his box 9 times! He was acting as if he didn't feel well earlier in the week - very clingy, didn't want anything to do with our other pets and we kept finding him in our dirty laundry basket sleeping which he'd never done before. I'm going to check on the seafood thing as they have had more "seafoody" type soft foods lately.

 

[chrissyk]

We may be dealing with a UTI problem ourselves. We are in the 'urine sample' stage which has been quite difficult. They gave us plastic granules to put in a litter box in the hopes that he would go there and we could extract it with a syringe. We kept him sequestered trying that and that didn't work - he held it for 18 hours! As soon as he was out he went straight for his regular litter box. The next step was trying to extract it straight from the bladder. We kept him away from the litter box for about 13 hours total and when we got to the vet - NOTHING! How is that possible?? So we continue to try. He's on some antibiotics but they still want to figure out what's the underlying problem (as do we.) His major symptom was going to the litter box over and over- sometimes going, sometimes not. Sometimes he goes a "pea sized" amount and other times he sits there forever and nothing, then yet other times he goes like normal. : It's just started happening over the past week. Any thoughts? As for food we feed Wellness as we've heard it's "people grade" ingredients were best. Our 2 cats get soft and dry and eat both well.

Wellness is a good food. They do tend to mix the seafood ingredients with the other ingredients, though...I seem to recall things like "chicken and salmon" when we tried Wellness. We ended up using Petguard and LickYourChops instead, as they are of the same quality as Wellness. California Natural is another good one.

Anyways, what your cat is doing is EXACTLY what mine does before he blocks up bigtime. Please monitor him. If he goes to the litterbox and he is straining but not passing urine, that is a veternary emergency and can cause death if not treated asap. That is what happened to my cat this morning (and many other times). In our case, we're getting him the surgery to enlarge his urethra. Male cats have a more narrow urethra that can get blocked by the crystals that LisaLovesPooh is talking about. That's what keeps happening to ours, and it sounds like that's what is happening to yours. BTW, ours has a UTI in conjunction with the crystals/blockage right now. That isn't uncommon, apparently, so just treating the UTI may not relieve the potentially deadly crystal blockages.

Our vet wanted us to give our cat "Methagel" to acidify his urine. We are trying that, but at the same time we're going the surgical route because this is such a longstanding problem. If your cat has struvite crystals, then the vet will probably put him on such an acidifier along with possibly having to catheterize him. They will also probably try to talk you into Science Diet, because most of them aren't very well versed in natual diets for pets. You have to do whatever works for you. For us, we've elected to have the surgery, stay with the natural diet and to add the Methagel.

 

[kayeandjim00]

Thank you for the advice chrissyk we are new to cat parenthood and I did know that blockages were very serious! I just keep getting confused as he goes, then he doesn't, etc. Did your cat act fine otherwise? He seems fine now as far as playing, etc. just the litter box thing. We are watching him like crazy (he's probably getting paranoid ) as we are just terrified that something could happen. Our vet really is great - he actually suggested a holistic medicine for an eye problem we were having with him (feline herpes) and it cleared it up in THREE Days!! He's had it for months. We were so happy about that, he's also the first vet we've gone to that didn't sell Science Diet in their office so I was happy knowing they wouldn't push that.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

k-and-j

I wish they were accidents--these are deliberate acts so my kitty can be comfy!

I wonder if it wouldn't be too outlandish to ask for your kitty to have an IV so he will have liquids and then they can do a clean catch on site.

I never knew it was crystals that caused the blockage! Makes me thankful that my kitty has the recliner habit so we can get him treated promptly.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

one more thing to add on.

Our kitty behaved normally except for the new elimination habits he gets when he's sick.

 

[chrissyk]

Thank you for the advice chrissyk we are new to cat parenthood and I did know that blockages were very serious! I just keep getting confused as he goes, then he doesn't, etc. Did your cat act fine otherwise? He seems fine now as far as playing, etc. just the litter box thing. We are watching him like crazy (he's probably getting paranoid ) as we are just terrified that something could happen. Our vet really is great - he actually suggested a holistic medicine for an eye problem we were having with him (feline herpes) and it cleared it up in THREE Days!! He's had it for months. We were so happy about that, he's also the first vet we've gone to that didn't sell Science Diet in their office so I was happy knowing they wouldn't push that.

Mine acts more clingly than normal when he is getting a blockage. Otherwise, he acts normally including eating normally. It's terribly deceptive, because you'd never know that he was fully blocked if you didn't see him straining in the litterbox.

Our old holistic vet treated our cat with subcutaneous fluids to "flush" him out for years. Today the emergency vet explained why that was only a quick fix. The crystal sediment sits at the bottom of the bladder and never gets "flushed" out the urethra with regular fluids. He had to put a catheter in, relieve the crystal obstruction, and then leave the catheter in. They are periodically using the catheter to push in saline to "flush" out the crystals. That is the only way to get them out. From there, we can have the surgery done. He will continue to make crystals, but the urethra will be wider so he won't block up anymore (knock wood).

In 7 years, we have NEVER been able to control the crystal formation. Some cats are just prone to it. Our cat is a stressball anyways (to the point of being on Prozac!), and cats that stress out are more likely to form crystals for some reason. At this point, we need to relieve the acute, potentially deadly problem via surgery so we can work on the crystals. If I had it to do over again, I would have begged our old vet to do this surgery 7 years ago. When I think of what our cat has gone through in the past 7 years, I want to cry I am 100% all for holistic veternary medicine, but if a cat is having repeated blockages then I would recommend getting an opinion about having the surgery done. The good nutrition that you feed will help him heal faster from the surgery, and you can always work on the crystals after you have surgically removed the acute risk of him blocking up.

 

[kayeandjim00]

Thanks so much to everyone for the advice! Sorry for hijacking the thread this has been on my mind constantly and I've done a lot of looking around online but haven't come up with a whole lot and cats are so hard to figure out sometimes! The vet told us that cats are very good at hiding illness so it can be hard to know something's wrong if you aren't really observant of them normally. The IV idea my DH mentioned as well and we are going to ask about that. I'm probably going to take him back on Tuesday to try again for a sample. I am even more concerned knowing he really can act perfectly fine and have this going on! It's scary being a furry kid's parent when they are sick!

 

[kayeandjim00]

chrissyk you were posting at the same time as me. One last question - what qualifies as straining? Is it very obvious? He sits in there but I don't see him obviously having trouble going just that he sits there - last night he sat in one are for a while - covered up like he went (but I saw that he didn't) went to the other side of the litter box and did the same thing. He doesnt' act like he's in pain but it just seems weird to keep going back to the litter box so often that has us concerned. Then yesterday I noticed that he went more normally (a more significant amount) once but that was it.