CAT LOVEPURR

Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease. Help?

I need information on correct diets. The vet has given me Hills prescription s/d 4 a month then c/d for life. Is there anything else?

You won’t do any harm sticking with the food given for a month. But please don’t sentence your cat to a lifetime of eating inferior food!

That’s what Science Diet is. Crap in a bag (or can).

If you don’t believe me, then at least give it the canned variety if you’re going to feed that on a long-term basis. It’s still crap but at least your cat will be more or less properly hydrated by eating the canned food.

Why do I say it’s crap? Look at the ingredients.
Pork By-Products – um, WHICH byproducts? Hooves? Ears? What?
…Water, Pork Liver, Salmon, …
Ground Whole Grain Corn, Brewers Rice, Corn Gluten Meal, – Carbs, grains, sugar – cats don’t need these! All corn is a known allergen for cats.
….Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Chicken Liver Flavor, Powdered Cellulose, Calcium Sulfate, Choline Chloride, Fish Oil, Glucose, Calcium Carbonate, Iron Oxide, Xanthan Gum, Locust Bean Gum, DL-Methionine, Potassium Chloride, Brewers Dried Yeast, Taurine, Cysteine, Dried Egg Yolk, Glycine, Iodized Salt, Vitamin E Supplement, Potassium Citrate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Zinc Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Manganous Oxide, Beta-Carotene, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Biotin, Folic Acid, Calcium Iodate, Vitamin D3 Supplement.

I don’t have any quibble with the rest of the ingredients, assuming I know what they are. But the top of the list is bad enough!

In a nutshell what I recommend is switching your cat to a good canned food. See the What to feed link for some suggestions and info on how to identify the better foods. This will also help you understand why SD is so inferior.

And also 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.