My female cat has been diagnosed with Cystitis AGAIN! What should I do?

Question

I can't take it anymore. This is the 4th or 5th time my cat has had cystitis in 3 years. Now, I have two children, both under the age of 2. I can't have her "tinkling" around the house. Is it wrong to ask the vet to put her down? There is no cure and no medicine helps. I'm at my wits end.

Answer 1

Go to your vets and ask if they can prescribe you with CD Feline food, it comes in a dry biscuit or wet sachets, it is a food that is specially designed for the urinary tract, Good luck

Answer 2

Yes it is wrong as you already know and the answer is simple. Feed the proper food which means stop feeding dry foods


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

Before putting a death sentence on her, see if you can't find someone else to take her. Or surrender her to a shelter. True, they may ultimately put her down, but you can try to find a no-kill shelter instead. But at least give her the chance to go to a new home first.

That said, you may solve the problem if you feed better (canned). I have to assume you're feeding her dry food. With two kids on your hands it just seems likely. And many people do.

Switch her over to canned food and the problem will likely be solved. I suspect you're going to want to buy the food at the grocery store (you sound like a harried mother!). That's not great, but it would be an improvement over feeding dry.

I suspect you've got enough on your hands and probably aren't ready to process a ton of info. No problem. Just get canned food at the grocery store (Iams would be a good choice if you do buy there, it's the best of the worst from that source) and you'll find an improvement in time.

The cat obviously needs to be treated for now and it sounds like that's happening. But if you then switch to canned, she may never get another one. And it doesn't have to be special food either - so long as it's wet, it'll help.

If you're up to reading more, the following is from my blog:

CATS AND URINARY ISSUES
This is not my area of expertise, but this has been my experience: As a kitten, Poppy developed both a weight problem and a UTI. My vet told me to start feeding her special food which he happily sold me *gulp*. Poppy refused to eat it. Back then I was less aware of how to get cats to eat new foods, so I just said the hell with it and bought Purina's urinary health food, mixed with weight management. She ate that from then until she was 2 years old. She never had another UTI, so that tells me that the overpriced CRAP the vets sell you are typically unnecessary. The grocery store crap is just as good.

For various reasons, I soon thereafter began researching cat nutrition. I learned about the benefits of wet food, and found that in many cases, that's all that's required to prevent future UTI's. Even the crappy brands like Friskies would be better than dry food!

I don't claim to be a vet, vet tech, vet student or anything like that. But I know how to research and examine results. I've read a bit on this topic which is how I've reached the conclusions I have.

At the very least, were I to have another cat with urinary problems, I'd sooner try them on a GOOD QUALITY canned food before shelling out the dough for a "prescription" dry food (or even their canned varieties). That's because I believe that good nutrition and species appropriate food is much more likely to keep a cat healthy than something designed to change their chemical composition.

Answer 4

Food directly affects what's happening in a cat's body. There are specific foods for cats who are prone to this condition.

There's also an operation for this kind of chronic thing as well.

You need to do a discussion with the vet on your options.