Recovery after a urinary blockage (cat)

[verycontrary247]

My male cat had to have surgery yesterday after discovering he had a blockage. They haven't mentioned what caused the blockage yet, but I suspect they are going to try to sell me on a prescription diet that's chock full of corn and by-products to help prevent any future problems.


Does anyone know of a higher quality food that is beneficial to a cat that is recovering from a blockage?

[Velvetshady]

Many people swear by Wellness wet food for this. My cat was eating Wellness when he had to have PU surgery, but the vet said his urethra had a "kink" in it and would likely have needed the surgery as long as he had any type of crystals of any size. She was shocked when I told her he was eating Wellness, because that is what she usually recommends.

[shellfish26]

We are JUST going through this. My cat had struvite crystals and had to be catheterized over the weekend. He came home from the hospital on Monday.

I have been struggling with the food thing as well. I had been feeding California Naturals dry and Solid Gold wet, but obviously that didn't stop the crystals from forming. For now, I am giving the Royal Canin s/o wet until I can find something with better ingredients. I think the most important thing is to increase the water in their diet, so wet food only.

Wysong makes Uretic, which is supposed to aid in preventing crystals, but I am still not comfortable feeding dry.

Ugh. I wish there was an easy answer.

[minna]

My cat had struvite crystals. He has been eating Wellness canned food for a few years now, and hasn't the crystals haven't reoccurred. We tried the Rx food, but it made him throw up, so I had to find an alternative.

[Velvetshady]

Another suggestion--with you don't already have one, get a fountain for water. They usually help with water intake, which helps with the crystals.

[verycontrary247]

Chuchi did not have crystals and the vet seems pretty clueless about what caused the blockage.

He eats Wellness Salmon dry food. Wellness wet food is available to him every evening, but he shows little to no interest to it. H is thinking if we can't find one that interests him we might have to cut dry food out completely.

We are looking into a fountain.

[shellfish26]

Glad to hear its not crystals! In that case, I probably stick to my original recommendation of an all wet diet. Wet food is 80% water and can really help to make up for not drinking enough. Any good quality food would be fine, but if he is currently refusing it, you might have to look around to find something appetizing. When my cat was on a hunger strike, he refused his usual Wellness Chicken and Lobster. Just to see what would happen, I gave him regular tuna and he went nuts! I eventually discovered Solid Gold tuna, which he loved. BFF also makes a good tuna. I also picked up a few cans of Weruva, based on some recommendations of friends who swear by it. We haven't tried those yet, but they have a good variety.

[ae711]

How is your cat doing now? My kitty is currently at the vet being treated for the same problem. We will obviously see what the vet says for recommendations, but I was glad to hear what some recommended on here.
I am really worried because we are going on vacation in a week, and while we will have someone coming to feed and check on him, I am just worried that it is going to happen again.

[mrssavy42112]

My cat had this happen twice. He did have A LOT of crystals, poor guy. In between the first & second time I tried to feed him OTC urinary health food and it didn't do anything. The crystals came back & he was right back in the hospital.

While I agree that the quality of the Hill's Prescription Diet isn't the best due to the by-products, I'm more interested in preserving his urinary health so he isn't in the hospital. Unfortunately, according to the vet, there is nothing OTC that compares and I'm personally not willing to take the risk in trying different types to see if any would be good enough.

[sillystraw]

My cat wasn't blocked (we caught it early thankfully) but he did have a UTI. The vet recommended the Royal Canin Rx, which isn't the highest quality either. However, it does have some important components to it so we fed him one bag of the Rx diet. At that point he was well over his UTI so, like PPs we went to feeding him Wellness wet at night. He hasn't had any issues since and it's been almost 2 years. So, point being, don't feel bad about giving your kitty the Rx food until he is free and clear and then I would start transitioning in Wellness for long term prevention.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure if this is still true or not, but when my guy was on Wellness (before his 2nd time nearly blocking) I had read a lot of stories from people who felt Wellness contributing to their cats being ill. It's been 5 or 6 years but I still avoid the Wellness canned for my cat.

I can't remember the amounts right now but you want to watch the Magnesium and Ash contents in the food. I would (and have) fed the perscription food for a month or two after he's sick and then transitioned to another wet food. Currently I'm feeding him Nature's Variety Homestyle (you could probably feed their Instinct line but it's too high fat for us)

Almo was good but my cat didn't like it

And Innova was good but they were bought by someone and supply became inconsistant about a year ago. Our pet store eventually pulled it because it was more hassle for them then they felt it was worth.

And definitely feed him canned exclusively if you can. It costs more but it's better then rushing back to the vet.

[ae711]

It's interesting that you said you read that wellness contributed to some cats becoming sick. We recently switched to wellness dry food (maybe it was just the canned food people were commenting on though) and now this is the first time he has had an issue. It was several months ago now, but still pretty recent in my opinion.

[Deleted]

At the time we were feeding a mixture of dry and canned - dry is definitely not a good idea so it could have been more the dry food then the brand. But yeah, in our case I considered it recent enough to avoid Wellness from now on. I know lots of people feed it for years without a problem so it may be an over reaction on my part.

But thought I'd toss it out there. Since I know a $1500 bill tends to change my opinion on a number of things. Especially when that was the cheap end of the estimate

Hope he recovers quickly. Good luck!