Thread: Crystals?
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Old November 30th, 2012, 01:54 PM
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Soundy Soundy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sugarcatmom View Post
Except that feeding a wet food diet really IS the cornerstone of FLUTD treatment, followed by tweaking ingredients if a cat continues to have issues. For instance, fish is pro-inflammatory and should generally be avoided in cats with recurring urinary tract problems. Perhaps the wet foods you tried contained ingredients that didn't help maintain the appropriate urine ph (eg too much plant matter).
No idea, all I know is that any time we switched up his food, he'd end up squatting over drains.

Quote:
I'm glad that Buster's crystal formation has diminished on the PC food, but hope that you aren't trading one health problem for another. The ingredients in that food are completely inappropriate for an obligate carnivore and could easily lead to diabetes, obesity, allergies, IBD and CRF, to name a few.
His sister has been on the same food with no ill effects. Buster, unfortunately, had to be put down last year as he had a fast-growing brain tumor, but aside from that, his health was fine for the last 8 or 9 years on the PC food...

Wheezie has reaped the benefits of her brother's demise as we've now been able to give her greater variety in her diet, most of it still crunchies of one kind or another. She's the runt of their litter, barely three pounds, but utterly bombproof. She doesn't like any form or wet or canned cat food, although she does REALLY like the dogs' tripe food.

Quote:
Also, why were the crystals treated with antibiotics? Was a culture and sensitivity done on a urine sample to determine if there was bacteria present?
Do I look like a vet? I have no idea why they chose what treatment they did... the first couple times he had the symptoms, I remember they did take urine samples, reported crystals, and prescribed the antibiotics, which cleared the problem up. Once we knew the symptoms, we could tell the vet, he'd simply give the antibiotics again, and the problem would clear up again. But we realized that the only time it happened, was when we changed his food, so... as long as we didn't change it, he never had the problem. Sometimes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the best path.

Not to turn this into a big nutrition debate or anything, but sometimes I think these things are WAY over-analyzed. Our dogs growing up in the country were fed almost entirely on 20lb. bags of Buckerfields kibble, sometimes laced with bacon grease, leftover gravy, roast drippings, or for an extra-special treat, boiled potato skins. Any "junk" fish we caught would be frozen and saved, and sometimes we'd boil a couple of them up so the bones were nice and soft, and mix that into the kibble as well (the dogs loved it, but holy crap did the house stink!) Naturally the dogs got their fair share of table scraps, especially in the summer when they'd wander off to other vacation places around the lake, where everyone had a different name for them and would gladly invite them in for steak and potatoes or whatever other yummy stuff they had.

Our cat back home had a similar kind of diet - sometimes some brand of grocery store kibble, more often the Buckerfields (because it was all they had at the nearby feed store - the fancy stuff like Meow Mix required an hour's drive into town), along with various scraps, and whatever wildlife she would catch.

The cat lived to the ripe old age of 17 or 18... the one dog did fine the 12 years we had him (never did know exactly how old he was when we got him, we were told he was 3); the other disappeared when he was about 10, we never knew if he was taken out by an animal, or a hunter, or if he just ended up going home with someone he was visiting.

In any case, none of the animals seemed the worse for wear from their non-science-designed-vet-approved-super-duper-natural diets - the only vet visit any of them ever needed was the one dog when he got a fractured hip from being hit by a car.
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