high-quality wet food for kitty with struvite crystals in urine

[MissPurryJess]

I'll write more later, but I wanted to give you the details from Daisy's urinalysis. *not sure what "HPF" means, but I'm including it anyway*

Appearance: cloudy
Specific gravity: 1.036
pH: 7.5
Protein: 1+
Glucose: negative
Ketone: negative
Bilirubin: negative
Blood: 1+
WBC: 2-3 HPF
RBC: 2-3 HPF
Casts: none seen LPF
Struvite: 2-3 HPF
Amorphous Phosphate: 2-3 HPF
Bacteria: none seen HPF
Squamous epithelia: 2-3 HPF

Comments: high pH
sm # struvites none really seen on in house sediment
USG still fairly high despite trying to incr water intake


Her next comment talks about her phone conversation with me - one bit says, "reluctant to use Rx diet but may if we strongly recommend".

WTF?! Grrrr. I guess me adamantly saying, "I'm not using it" left some room in her mind for negotiation. I love how THAT is her solution to this whole problem. Give me Rx food.

Back to the first vet! At least she accepted my "I'm not using it" and decided to help me find a good canned food. Even if she's learning as she goes she's not as dense as the one who wrote this report. I have the lab results paperwork in hand and I'll give it to the first vet when I go back to have Fitzy tested. Now I just have to have the awkward "break-up" conversation with this last vet. Since they're expecting to see Fitzy soon for his urinalysis I guess I should probably just tell them I won't be back at all.

ETA: The kitties are grooving on Merrick's Thanksgiving Day Dinner now. They've boycotted the Instinct duck. I'm still going to pick up the Instinct LI turkey when it comes in - I'm hoping they'll like that. But the Thanksgiving Day Dinner seems pretty good - a bit too high in carbs.

[MissPurryJess]

Adding yet more water to the food should help with the USG. I also have a link somewhere about how to get more fluids into a cat, but the easiest is just to make the food as wet as they'll tolerate.

As for the pH, you can get L-methionine from a health food store and add a measured amount to the food (if you need dosages, I can find that for you). But I would strongly advise only doing this if you can test the urine pH at home, since you need to be sure you aren't over-acidifying.

So the new food they've been enjoying is the Merrick Thanksgiving Day Dinner, and it's really wet already - it's super goopy. We add a bit more water and try to mash it around (I think there are little cubes of liver in there, and the kitties always leave those behind, for some reason ) to get the pieces more uniform. The kids have always preferred a pate to chunky, but the chunks are so small in this that they don't seem to mind. I have the Nature's Variety LI turkey on order, so we'll put that into the rotation once it arrives.

Yeah I don't think I'd be comfortable dosing them at home - I think DH would have a fit over that, too. The last thing we need is oxalate crystals! There's no way for me to really check their pH - I can't get down there when they're there, and they're already a bit weird about their box (we've had past incidents with pooping outside the box ), so I don't want to freak them out or discourage their good litter box behavior. Do you know if they ever prescribe L-methionone at the vet's office? Because I'm really curious as to what they'd suggest if the diet change isn't enough to change the pH.

Fitzy has an appointment next Wednesday to have a cystocentesis first thing in the morning - 9am. Hopefully he has a full bladder. That little dude always has an empty bladder!

The kitties have never looked better! Their coats are super shiny, they're shedding less, their stress-induced-by-going-to-the-vet dandruff is gone (I swear they start molting the second they get into that vet office). Seriously, their fur is beautiful right now. Their behavior is the same - sleepy most of the time but really playful and active (like running up and down the stairs full tilt, screeching around the living room, jumping across furniture). Last night I gave them some catnip and I felt like I was watching two stoners - they were rolling around, licking the scratchy pad (where the catnip was), and then they got up and went to their food bowls to eat! Reminds me of my friends in college. In any case, I hope their improved outer appearance is indicative of an improvement on their insides, too.

As far as their urine goes - there are huge pee clumps in the litter box - they're urinating more often. I need to be more vigilant and clean after each one goes so I can see exactly who is doing what (I can tell their BMs apart easily but I don't know their pee ).

I think that's it - I guess now it's wait-and-see? I don't know what else I can do at this point. Once Fitzy is tested he'll have been on wet food only for 3 weeks - is that even enough time for his urine to normalize? Maybe I should wait another week before testing? I don't know. They're both eating low-phosphorous grain-free wet food with water added, which is great, but I really, really hope that just this diet change (and it's a pretty big change) will do the trick. If one more vet suggests the Rx diet as the "cure" for their pH I'm going to and you'll probably hear it all the way in Canada.

sugarcatmom - Does anything in Daisy's results look weird/concerning to you? I can read a blood test pretty well but I'm not familiar with urinalysis results.

Everyone cross your fingers and toesies!

[sugarcatmom]

Originally Posted by MissPurryJess

I'll write more later, but I wanted to give you the details from Daisy's urinalysis. *not sure what "HPF" means, but I'm including it anyway*

For some reason I totally missed this post the other day!

HPF refers to a value per "high power field", often the maximum magnification of the microscope.

Originally Posted by MissPurryJess

Appearance: cloudy Would be better if it was clear or slightly cloudy, but since this is a subjective evaluation by whoever is analyzing the urine, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Specific gravity: 1.036 This is a wonderful and perfectly normal USG for a cat. In fact it's actually on the slightly dilute side of things rather than being too concentrated. I'm thinking the vet is getting cats and dogs mixed up.
pH: 7.5 Ideal would be 6.0-6.5, but it does tend to fluctuate. Would be nice to get more pH tests at different times of the day.
Protein: 1+
Glucose: negative
Ketone: negative
Bilirubin: negative
Blood: 1+
WBC: 2-3 HPF
RBC: 2-3 HPF
Casts: none seen LPF
Struvite: 2-3 HPF
Amorphous Phosphate: 2-3 HPF
Bacteria: none seen HPF
Squamous epithelia: 2-3 HPF Do you know for sure how they got the urine sample? Was it via cystocentisis or did they express Daisy's bladder? Squamous epithelia cells aren't usually seen if acquired via cysto.

Everything else seems normal to me. Here's a great link explaining in extraordinary detail the aspects of a urinalysis: http://ahdc.vet.cornell.edu/clinpath...ut/ua-rout.htm

And this one is a little more "understandable": http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=0&aid=3136

Originally Posted by MissPurryJess

Her next comment talks about her phone conversation with me - one bit says, "reluctant to use Rx diet but may if we strongly recommend".

WTF?! Grrrr. I guess me adamantly saying, "I'm not using it" left some room in her mind for negotiation.

Oh HILARIOUS!!!! That's awesome.

Gotta go feed my kitties but I'll try to respond to your other post sometime this weekend.

[MissPurryJess]

Appearance: cloudy Would be better if it was clear or slightly cloudy, but since this is a subjective evaluation by whoever is analyzing the urine, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Specific gravity: 1.036 This is a wonderful and perfectly normal USG for a cat. In fact it's actually on the slightly dilute side of things rather than being too concentrated. I'm thinking the vet is getting cats and dogs mixed up.
pH: 7.5 Ideal would be 6.0-6.5, but it does tend to fluctuate. Would be nice to get more pH tests at different times of the day.
Protein: 1+
Glucose: negative
Ketone: negative
Bilirubin: negative
Blood: 1+
WBC: 2-3 HPF
RBC: 2-3 HPF
Casts: none seen LPF
Struvite: 2-3 HPF
Amorphous Phosphate: 2-3 HPF
Bacteria: none seen HPF
Squamous epithelia: 2-3 HPF Do you know for sure how they got the urine sample? Was it via cystocentisis or did they express Daisy's bladder? Squamous epithelia cells aren't usually seen if acquired via cysto.

Thank you for those links! The second link is relatively easy to understand, but DH will have to help me through the second link.

I believe it was via cystocentisis. That's what her invoice says, at least.

On the test there's a little "H" next to any results that aren't inside the ideal range - there are "H"s next to pH, protein, and blood. There's no H next to squamous epithelia - it says 0-3. Do you think that's to account for a urine sample obtained through expressing the cat's bladder? She didn't mention any of this - I always get copies of their blood tests so I can read them, but I've never asked for a copy of a urinalysis before. I will be from now on - so much info in here that I want to look into.

DH said he saw the sample - he was looking out the window in the door when the vet was examining the sample, and he said the urine was yellow.

Man I was reading back over some of my old posts and I'm a helicopter mom. Heaven help any human child that I end up raising! I'm kinda . Like I literally sound like a crazy person. I know I'm passionate about the kitties but geeeeeeze.

[MissPurryJess]

Quick mini update! The Nature's Variety LI turkey is a big hit. Between that and the Merrick Thanksgiving dinner the kitties are completely off the high-phosphorous venison and have switched to a COMPLETELY canned diet of low-phosphorous turkey/duck! No more crunchie dust, no treats, nada. They're eating plenty and their coats are beautiful and they're active and happy and getting along with each other better than they have in years (which may be coincidence, but still). Fitzy is getting his urine checked Wednesday morning.

[MissPurryJess]

Another update: I took him in on Wednesday - he had an empty bladder.

Today at 1pm I realized he hadn't used the box since 8am, and he'd eaten - I called the vet and asked if I could bring him in RIGHT THEN, and they were able to fit me in. They actually got some urine! The in-house test showed no crystals, BUT the tech said there was a small amount of blood. I think she could see my face completely change from "Yay! No crystals!" to "OMG WHAT?!" but she said the vet would contact me tomorrow with more urinalysis results (pH, RBC, WBC, protein, etc.). The vet was going to decide whether or not to send the urine out for a culture.

I'm concerned - I don't even know what this means - but I don't want to get too freaked out until I can hear the rest of the results. She said it could be a number of things, including an infection - I didn't ask her at the time, but could a cystocentisis cause some blood in the urine? From them puncturing their little bladders with a needle?

On the food front - they're eating the Thanksgiving Day Dinner (with water mixed in), but the Nature's Variety LI turkey appears to be giving him GI trouble. Daisy pees in the box and there are big clumps of urine - his are much smaller. So obviously things aren't all hunky dory down there. I'm just anxious to get this all worked out. The good thing is that he's acting completely normal otherwise - eating plenty, sleeping with me, running around, playing, etc. His behavior hasn't changed at all. So I'm assuming that's a good thing.

Ugh. I just want this to be settled once and for all. It seems like such a basic thing - food and the elimination of it!

ETA: Got his urinalysis results this morning - pH is 7, down from 8. Specific gravity is 10.41, down from 10.56. No crystals, no WBC. There IS protein and 50 RBC (she said they visually saw 50 individual RBC in the sample) in his urine - they're sending it out for a culture. She said there's a possibility it's an infection, or bladder irritation, or even if they hit a small blood vessel while doing the cysto. I guess we'll have to wait for the culture test to see what's really going on there.

To ease his GI issues for the time being she suggested probiotics - so now I'm going to do some reading to see which kinds/strengths are best.

sugarcatmom and anyone else - any thoughts on this? It sounds like the pH and concentration of his urine have improved, and no crystals, but I'm concerned about the blood. And any suggestions on probiotics? I'm going to go look around, I know I've seen this discussed in the forum before.

[angeldogs]

I give jag natural factors mega acidophilus with f.O.S.it is just powder without the capsule and has 6 billion active cells.and must be refridgerated. was told the probiotics that need to be refridgerated were the best ones to give.

Hope the culture comes back good and the blood was the vet getting a blood vessel

[MissPurryJess]

The 24 hour results came back - negative on the cultures. I need to call for the 48 hour results - I was out of town for a few days. I'll edit later with more info, hopefully.