Flutd?

[NaturallyKait]

Anyone here have any experiene with cats with FLUTD? My 2.5 year old girl is at the vet today to get a urine sample because she was peeing everywhere and avoiding her litter box. Last year we went through the same thing and she was there three days refusing to pee and it turned out to be an infection and a lot of struvite crystals. The vet said she didn't want to diagnose FLUTD with one incident, so she prescribed the urinary food and an antibiotic for the infection. She ended up being allergic to the food (she has a lot of allergies apparently) and the vet reccomended a raw diet, which she's been on ever since. She started peeing again last week and the crystals are back for sure (you can see them when she pees on the hardwood floor) and I'm not sure what our next step will be. The vet says it's definitely FLUTD now and she's just waiting on the sample to see how bad the crystals are, and if there's an infection again. Does anyone here know what the next step is if she can't eat the prescription diet? I loved the raw diet for her (and she is crazy about it! I have a feeling no matter what she'll still get some raw) but if I need to go back to a commercial diet for her, I will as much as I don't want to. Experiences?

[rhiOrion]

I wish I had some answers for you, but I do have so much sympathy. I have more experience than I wish I had with FLUTD.

Squirt, my himalayan buddy, has had serious battles with the dreadful struvite.

But the two things that worked for him were prescription food and the PU surgery to remove his little kitty penis. But since your cat is a girl, that won't help! But it does mean she's less likely to get completely blocked.

Squirt normally eats Royal Canin SO, but when he had recurrent struvite issues a couple of years ago, we switched him to Science Diet SD for one small bag's worth. It's a short-term diet, not something they're supposed to be on for long. Well, that one bag seems to have done the trick. It helped completely knock out the issue, and he hasn't had any pee problems since then. Maybe you could try a different Rx diet than what you already tried, and just for one bag?

Also, antibiotics have been shown to help, though even my vet admitted that they have no idea why. I knew I wasn't crazy when I thought they helped. But I had the vet before that swear to me that there was no infection so he didn't need antibiotics. And as un-MDC as it is, I was actually arguing that it didn't matter if there was no infection, that antibiotics always make him better. It was sort of a funny argument that I never thought I'd be making. But google will show that the use of antibiotics for FLUTD is pretty controversial.

You can also try to encourage kitty to drink more water- though I usually do that by wetting down the food, and I imagine a raw diet is already pretty moisture rich.

Sorry I don't have any real help- but I just wanted to tell you that I know how annoying it is!