Cat diet - vomiting, urinary, raw

[BobbyNW]

Hi all

We have a kitten, well, he’s nearly 1 year now. He has vomited almost daily since we got him. He’s been to the vets numerous times and they put him on a gastrointestinal diet (royal canin gastro mousse) and it didn’t help. We tried dry, wet, mousse, adding water, different meats etc.

Finally, we got him on Katkin raw entirely natural diet - he threw up with the beef and lamb varieties but the fish one and the fish/duck mix one he has gone three weeks without vomiting.

BUT he’s now got bladder stones/crystals forming. He was struggling to urinate, took him to the vets again and no blockage thankfully but crystals forming and inflamed bladder. No infection seemingly so we’re not sure what the cause is but diet seems possible.

Vets suggested putting him on a urinary diet - almost all are chicken based or have grains etc. We went with Royal canin and unsurprisingly he is vomiting regularly again. (He is also on pain killers for the inflamed bladder but these didn’t make him vomit for the first half a week until the vets suggested putting him on the urinary, so definitely seems like the urinary food causing the vomiting).

The urinary issue is potentially life threatening if there’s a blockage. So obviously if it’s a choice between a life threatening condition and him being sick most days, then we’ll have to go with the sick option.

But has anyone either seen any urinary fish based diets or have you got any other recommendations for dealing with urinary issues? We’ll stick with the bet urinary food until he’s got rid of these crystals, but we’d like to ideally then find something he can keep down which won’t form crystals again in the future.

Thanks.
B

Zooplus has other flavours of urinary food

@dementedpixie

Zooplus has other flavours of urinary food

Thanks, but the only ones I could see all have chicken and usually pork mixed in. Purina’s salmon one for instance - the main ingredient is “meat derivatives” with only 4 per cent salmon, same with their ocean fish flavour, Kattovit’s is the same. The ingredients on Hill’s “ocean fish” are (in order) Chicken liver, pork, chicken, salmon (4%) - not sure which ocean they were looking in!

He can’t eat dry food (throws up even the smallest kibbles) and, strangely, a lot of the urinary diets are dry - strange given most “cures” involve ensuring a lot of fluid, which they will get less of with dry food!

I'm sure someone on here gave their normal food but added some sort of powder to the food to help with crystals

Have you tried giving him cystease tablets?

My kitten was diagnosed with crystals a couple of months ago. We did switch his dry food (I think it's chicken based though) but before doing that, we added cystease to his diet - he gets two capsules a day. He's never had a reoccurrence since and his wee has been normal with no blood or abnormal behaviour around the litter tray.

They're £5 for a 30 on Amazon but once you know they work you can obviously buy in bulk if you want to. They're a game changer for us.

Blink Cats is grain free wet food. There’s a flaked tuna fillets variety with no chicken or grain - you can customise a subscription to only be one or two flavours if you want, so you could eliminate chicken entirely.

Anyone know what type of beetle these are?

My cats are on katkin but we add extra water in their food combined with about half a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar - extra water to flush through and the vinegar prevents the crystals from forming.

Our little girl is prone to sickness and is much better on Katkin and our boy had a couple of bouts of UTIs when he was little but touch wood nothing since.

In fact the last bout he had (that came on at bedtime, typical cat style!) he was almost back to normal by the time we could get to the vets in the morning by syringing water and ACV.

I know it sounds like an old wives tale but it really works.

Feeding dry food (which most UTI foods are) is counter intuitive to me.

Thanks all. He has actually been on the uti food and not thrown up for three days now so fingers crossed he’ll be okay on it. We have been given some capsules from the vet to sprinkle on his food - some apparently lines his bladder to stop inflammation, but some also helps with his digestion so maybe those are doing the trick.

We add water into the uti (royal canin) food and he seems to keep it down. It still has ingredients I’m not overly keen on, but if we can find something that he can keep down and hopefully minimises any urinary issues then it’s going to be a game changer!

Will give the cystease a go as well once we’ve got into a bit of a routine with this stuff (watch him throw up for days in a row now I’ve posted this!)