Urinary/bladder problems, what have you found works?

[ohreallyIsee]

Dcat has had a blocked urethra with struvite crystals twice now. We ended up at emergency vets on Friday as he was struggling to wee and passing blood. Thankfully he wasn't yet this time. He's on the pro plan urinary wet and dry(mainly wet
) and has a wet bowl upstairs and downstairs. He is a very stressy and nervous cat so we have a feliway diffuser.
Just wondering what other people have found helps.

Hi there, the very best thing to do is reduce/ remove stress. Are there other pets, children, neighborhood cats around? Is he allowed outside?

Read up on body language to help recognise when things aren't going well for him. Staring, spraying, going outside of his litter tray, another cat in his territory, a change in diet, stressed owners, not being able to get either high up or in a safe cave....

Has anything changed in his world? House move, air fresheners, different detergent?

When is he happiest? Do more of that!

Keep all resources separate. Food, water, litter all at least metres away from each other. Ideally different rooms. Ideally more than one source for each.

Also worth looking up how to help him wee 😥

There's so many things that upset him, he doesn't like people, gets very alert if some one walks past the front window on the street, hates people coming to house(postman, tesco delivery etc
He does go outside, gets upset if he can't.

Only cat, hates other cats, all the other cats on street run when they see him

dd2 is his person, one common factor between this episode and last is her going on holiday in the last month but she can't stop going away

So we can't stop people coming to house, he gets upset if he can't go out but hates other cats and people on street and dd2 is entitled to visit friends, so can't change those factors.

I sometimes think the only thing we could do would be to move to a house miles away from any other people and cats, to never have deliveries and for dd2 never to leave the house or garden.

We have a cat with this problem, it cost an unholy amount in vet bills last summer. As well as the urinary diet he’s on Cystease capsules in his food twice a day, they work wonders for bladder health.

The same as your DCat, mine’s person is DH who has to work away 2/3 times per year, the most common trigger for issue. Weirdly, he’s fine in the cattery, I think because it’s run by a big bearded bloke who looks like DH, so him and his poor brother get carted off when DH goes away, even if i’m home- the cattery is cheaper than the emergency vet!

Knowing his triggers is good because you can manage for it- gabapentin does wonders for our boy and the vet is happy to prescribe for DH’s trips away. He gets a dose a day, 2 if I’m out for the day as well- we’ve just managed a week of DH being away on the gabapentin alone! It chills him right out and also makes him extra snuggly- he will come to bed with me whereas usually he’d only entertain DH.

I second cystease capsules food twice per day. We were told to only feed wet food as dry food can form a sediment in the bladder. Cats shouldn't eat grains so we only feed wet urinary food or grain free food. Also adding an extra litter tray, we found that this helped as the stress one then had a litter tray just for them.