Struvite crystals

[Sunshineshimmy]

Hi everyone

my cat had cystitis back in March and the vet put it down to stress as I’d been away in hospital for a few days and his routine was completely changed! He took some medication and everything was fine until this week. Unfortunately he was having problems urinating so we were back at the vet again
He had a slight blockage and the vet has explained he appears to be more susceptible to struvite crystals/cystitis
He will be taking Cystaid capsules daily, I have a Feliway plug in and a water fountain arrived today, all of which I hope will help.
I’ve been told to put him on a urinary diet but so far he is being really fussy with the food and wont eat the wet food at all. There doesn’t seem to be much choice available. Does anyone have any recommendations? Or tips of how I can transition him to the new food? I want to do the best thing for him but not sure what options I have if he wont eat the food. Is there an alternative non prescription option?
any advice welcome!

Hi OP - my cat has the same issue with crystals.

He won't eat the wet food but you can get urinary dry biscuits that he eats just fine. We feed Purina s/t biscuits, but there are other brands out there to (Royal Canin and Hills both do a urinary food).

The vet told us that making sure he had plenty of liquid was more important than getting him to eat the urinary wet diet. So he just has his usual Felix and then we swapped him to the urinary biscuits which he has left down all time - he loves them! I think they're less fussy with dry food as it all has the same texture whereas wet is a bit more varied.

He also takes Cystease twice a day and I have him on a supplement called D-Mannose which he also takes twice a day. He's not had any issues in six months now.

I think tryi g different brands is worth a go, mine only seemed to like the Royal Canin biscuits. Zooplus have a decent selection of wet foods, but ours wouldn't eat them, so we stuck to the veterinary biscuits and his usual wet food. Some are better than others and I found the proper vet strength that are supposed to reduce struvite crystalsones seemed to work better than ones labelled urinary care. Hope he's feeling better!

I used to have a cat with the same problems. He had the Royal Canin urinary diet and it really worked. Because he had hardly any teeth (stray who moved in and cost me a fortune) we gave him a mixture of the dry and wet.

He was never too keen on drinking water from his bowl and preferred rainwater, preferably licked off the wheelybin lid or out of the pond . I do miss him and his weird ways.

Hope you find something to suit your boy.

Thank you everyone

coffeecupsandfairylights where do you get the D-Mannose supplement please?

@Sunshineshimmy I got ours from Amazon :)

They're chicken flavoured which seems to make them more appealing!

I'm going through the same with my boy at the moment. Luckily he's not a fussy eater so he's transitioned over to Purina urinary really easily (good thing he has, because I could only get the biscuits in a 5kg mega bag!). His vet suggested also adding some water to his food to keep his intake up and prescribed him metacam to reduce the inflammation in his bladder.

Her advice for getting him to change foods was to offer him a buffet for dinner: one bowl with the new food and another bowl with a wee bit of the old one. Hopefully that will work for you!