Urinary tract infection Options

[Dog person]

Hi cat lovers,
My girlfriend's Exotic Shorthair (would hate to see a longhair) was recently diagnosed with a UTI. We brought him special food for it and made sure his stress levels were kept to a minimum as we also have a 12 month old wiemeraner, also antibiotics. But a month on and she found a lot of blood in his litter box for his wee and when we took him to the vet they said he could have stones in his bladder, we will know after X-rays today. Now in March we took him for a check up and they said we needed to change his food to a dental one ( we usually feed both our pets Pro Plan) so we changed it to Royal Canin and I think that's where he has developed this UTI from. So I'm just seeing if anyone else has had issues with this brand.
Thanks
James

[Muffy]

No I use both Royal Canin & Science Diet dry foods & have no problems of that nature with any of my cats.

[kennyc]

Im using RC and SD, but going to switch to RC and IAMS.
My kitty is still new so been eating these brands for about 2 weeks. No issues so far.

Mind you i can't tell with the blood as i use oz-pet which turns the litter into sawdust so kind of hard to tell.

He solids are very healthy looking though. Black and firm and not much smell.

[catzlife2]

I have a cat that had a UTI and she was eating Whiskas and Iams. I changed that quickly when I found out that they use fillers in their foods. They now eat all natural dry food. It's a little pricier but it's better for them. It's called Innova.

[kittenmitten]

Proplan and royal canin are both premium cat food brands, and are in fact what I feed all my cats (persians, devons and a maine coon), and none of them have any issues with this. Unlikely that these have caused the UTI they are more stress related things, has anything caused an upset in her life recently?

BTW, an exotic longhair is a persian - exotics are an outcross that retains the features of the Persian, but a shorter coat (which though is just as dense and silky as a Persian, so a misnomer really that it is less work - they can also get matted if not groomed properly)

[jaspersmum]

Hi James, did the vet mention if the stones are oxalate or struvite as which stone it is will influence what you feed your cat. If they are oxalate then generally they are taken out under anasethetic as they are too large for the boys to pass, struvite ones and they can be passed in the bladder but it is painful. If your cat has to have a catheter in due to him being blocked then the crystals will be flushed out by the vet. If stress is the trigger (which in your case it seems to be) then maybe try some feliway in the plug ins in the house. Please watch this boy from now on as if this is left untreated it can be life threatening as the bladder fills up and the kidneys are damaged by the urine that is being held. I have two cats that suffer with this disease and I support them as much as I can with diet and medication.

My own personal opinion is that a raw meaty diet with small amounts of dry (of which I use Royal Canin) is better than a dry food with canned food as cats urinate in small concentrated amounts and dry food concentrates this even more and also the kidneys are working harder to excrete all the carboyhdrates in them as the dries and canned are full of cereals or stuff that cats don't need, so I don't know why your vet would beadvising dental food as the urine has to be bought back to a particular PH.

Kennyc - you will see the blood even using Ozpets