cats and crystals?

Question

i am getting really worried about my cat he is bob tailed and fixed and since then he has been getting crystals ever couple months and the bill is getting expensive. I dont know what i can do to try and stop this he is on vet food and has been for a long time but they keep coming back and seem to get worse everytime what can i do

Answer 1

I've heard a couple of things - make sure he drinks TONS of water, and also there are cranberry supplements you can buy online to help his urine.

Answer 2

You can feed a more appropiate food for a cat and that should help. The system needs water and feeding dry foods won't cut it.

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.
Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean?
http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Read_a_Pet_Food_Ingredient_Label
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. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms
The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in
Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, 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. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck? http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bpo_ch4a.php

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 3

ONE very important thing you can do to help avoid infections is to give your cats plenty of CLEAN water. What this means is that the BOWLS must be clean. It does not do any good to rinse out a bowl and fill it again. In order for the drinking water to be sanitary, you must fill a DRY bowl. I accomplish this by having two special bowls I use for cat water. I change out the bowls at least twice a day. I rinse them and let them air dry. I run them through the dish washer once every few days.

If you have hard water, the minerals will begin to attach to the bowl and then the bacteria will begin to attach to the hardened minerals.

I also let my cats drink out of the tub faucet whenever they want! If they come to me and ask me to follow, they'll go to the tub and they want me to turn it on. I let it trickle and will leave it on for 10 - 20 minutes.

Cats need fresh, clean water. That is what will keep their kidneys, bladders, and urinary tracts flushed and clean!

Answer 4

Oh dear.

Have you tried switching your cat's food to a formula made especially for such problems?

And has your vet offered suggestions? If not, you might want to try another one.

In any case, make sure to offer your kitty plenty of water- unless you are otherwise instructed.

Good luck! I used to have a cat with the same problem, until the vet did surgery on him.

Answer 5

Give him lots of water and love. Talk to your vet about the bill and if the vet doesn't budge or your cat does not get better, than find a new vet or leave it be.

Answer 6

HERE IS THE ADVICE I GAVE TO OTHERS LIKE YOU WHO WROTE, pls. see below:


**I can help.***

Years of experience even PRIOR to vets inexperience with the horrid affliction!

Signs:
~ Uneasiness, straining and frequency in the litter box
~ Appearance of or doing squatting position (like ready or peeing) in odd places or in box.
~Pinkish tinges in smallish amts. of frequent pee.(sign of irritation and the pink is tinges of blood)
~Complete blockish is meowing loudly (howling) in box, unable to pass any pee,.. then is VET asap, to use cathreter to try to unblock the crystal in urethra.
***PLEASE try to give mainly wet can foods (despite what any vet says, I find dry the culprit),.UNLESS the dry is from vet's and specially formulated with "acidifiers" to dissolve crystals.
***OR if you do give some dry fds., MAKE sure it has the ingredient "DL Methionine" in it (read side panel),.. that is a natural neutralizer which prevents crystalization. (also found naturally in cranberry juice,...which you could also buy in grocery store and just squirt with syringe in cat's mouth to prevent).
I went through (as did my poor male fixed cats) h e l l watching them suffer until I did research, experienced this affliction in them.
I now do not neuter till at least 8 mths., when all their organs are fully develop and ONLY give them dry fds. with DL Meth. in it and plenty of can wet fds. too.
{Oh, and NO milk/cream products, etc., it promotes crystallization}

Hope this helps, although I KNOW it is all good! Pls. be consistant with regime of only dry as prescribed (or with DLMeth., primarily wet) I also find Purina product dry the worse, especially "Cat Chow".

Answer 7

make sure he has plenty of fresh water i know he does but change it every day the fresher the better to them, one of mine like dripping faucets. ask ur vet if u should take him to an university for further testing. ur doing the right steps with the urinary food