What would make cats get urinary tract infections? My cats both get them often.?

Answer 1

The first few answers have good points. Water. The p;oint is, you are feeding DRY foods, aka kittycrack and tghere is not enough water passing through the system. Your cat cannot possible drink enough to make up for what is missing. The prescription crap the vet sells is only a temporary relief and can cause other problems down the line.

Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health
Contrary to what you may have heard, dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods.
The problems with it are that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process. Most of the moisture a cat needs is gotten
out of the food and 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Also, most use horrible ingredients and don't use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn't have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods.Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics.html
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm#Dry_Food_vs_Canned_Food.__Which_is_reall

Answer 2

Do you have hard water where you live? You can tell by putting 2 tablespoons of water in a glass and leaving it to evaporate. If there's a white looking substance on the bottom of the glass, you have hard water. This can cause problems as well as the sort of food they eat. You can get special food that is easy on the urinary tracts at a good pet store or your vets.

Answer 3

Male cats get them often. There is special food for urinary tract health - ask your vet or get some at a pet store. It's more expensive than regular food, but cheaper than vet bills!

Answer 4

There are thought to be a number of predisposing factors for UTIs: diet, individual susceptibility and overweight. This does not necessarily mean you're feeding your cats the 'wrong' food, but if both cats are prone to them then a diet change would certainly be a good idea.

I would hope any vet you've seen would've advised you on lifestyle changes to help prevent reoccurence of UTIs. There are supplements available to promote urinary tract health (Cystease is one of them), and also diets. Ask your vet.

Chalice

Answer 5

The only thing that I can think of is not drinking enough water or maybe a food that is not the right PH.

You can change the food to a vet diet that can help the PH of the urine and they also have food that has large sodium that will help increase thirst so they drink more. Also make sure and dump water bowl daily and fill with clean cool water this will help them drink more if they are picky about the water.
Also bottle water with no chloren or chemicals.

Answer 6

Male cats are more prone to these because their urethra is different than females' - I forget if it's shorter or longer.

Cats eating dry food only or as a main part of their diet are more prone to them as well because that food leaves them dehydrated and they don't drink enough water to compensate. This causes the urine to be concentrated.

Outside of that, I'm a little unsure, but you can read more about it from the link below.

Answer 7

They can have crystals that can build up in their bladder that can cause frequent urinary infections. Sometimes their diet can help restrict many of those crystals.

Answer 8

Let me guess, you're feeding them dry food. If you are, don't, cats are meat eaters not cereal eaters.