Kibble free

As of today, the cats in our household are kibble-free.  I feel a mix of emotions about it, because kibble is so convenient and relatively inexpensive (even the good stuff), and I can’t get it out of my head that kibble promotes good dental health.  Still, after discussing Derek and Chelsea’s weight problems with the vet, we decided that feeding wet food exclusively might end up being the answer.  The wet food doesn’t have the carb-laden fillers in it, like corn and wheat, and the vet thinks that could be what’s causing the obesity issue.  From now on, I’m to feed all the adult cats one-third of a can of wet food, twice per day, and to monitor their weight.  The cats have no complaints so far.

Unfortunately, because of Derek’s bladder crystals we need to feed all the adult cats the Urinary SO (so he can’t get his greedy paws on any other type of food), and it’s going to cost us a fortune—about $110 per month, I figure.  I was hoping I’d be able to try a premium brand of wet food instead, like Merrick, but the vet really discouraged it and said that if we went that route we’d need to monitor Derek for bladder crystals and bladder stones closely, to the tune of $250 every three months for x-rays and urinalysis.  If you’ve been in the car with Derek, you’ll know why we don’t relish the thought of having him the car more often than necessary.  I asked the vet if Derek could have developed crystals because of stress (his first and only episode with crystals was when he had a fight with Frank and had an infected abcess on his leg), but she sort of pooh-poohed that idea.  I’ve read the theory many places though, and wonder if it deserves a bit more research.  Just feeding all the cats the same canned food for the rest of their lives seems like a bit of a cop-out.

The single thing that really bothers me about the prescribed treatment is that I don’t like the Urinary SO food.  I resent paying $1.20 per can on food whose first four ingredients are: water, meat by-products, chicken by-products, and animal fat.  The cats love eating it, but it seems to me that it’s full of crap.  At least if I pay that much for Merrick canned food I actually see chunks of chicken and pieces of carrot and snippets of cranberries—it’s not just a glob of stuff scraped from the slaughterhouse floor.  I resent paying for anything called a “by-product” - it’s either meat or it isn’t.

As with so many things, I feel torn.  I feel like there must be a better way, that my suggestion to feed a premium canned food (organic, holistic ingredients), combined with a recheck in a month, is a justifiable option.  As always, I invite any anecdotal input from anyone reading this, and if need be, I might discuss the issue with a different vet at the practice we go to.  I like the vet we saw, and she specializes in cats, but she can be sort of rigid about things.  What do people do who can’t afford Urinary SO food, or who live in areas where it isn’t available?  What do holistic vets prescribe for bladder crystals?

Other than the food issue, Chelsea and Derek passed their health checks with flying colours.  Chelsea weighs 12 lbs. and Derek is about 15, so they’re not quite as big as I’d envisioned, but they still need to take off some of their excess baggage.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/24 at 08:37 PM

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  1. Good luck with the diets and the wet cat food.  In my kitty food research I have found a lot of info that does suggest that wet cat food is the way to go.  I tried a smorgasbord of wet cat foods with Bear.. but he will have none of it.  As for the prescription diet.. a second opinion never hurts.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  03/25  at  06:13 AM

  2. No clue, sorry. I’m worthless. I’ll mourn the ease of kibble for you, though.

    Posted by Diana  on  03/25  at  11:32 AM

  3. Our cats eat a mix of dry and moist food every morning. At night, they get just dry.  They all eat Eagle Pack (dry and moist) which isn’t too expensive, about 99 cents per can from our local (that is, 20 miles away) independent pet food place. I don’t know if Eagle has urniary food, but it’s worth checking out their page to see if they do. www.eaglepack.com

    Our husky has the crystal problems. We found the urinary moist food made him projectile vomit and the urinary dry food gave him hotspots. THe holistic vet recommended giving him 1 vit C tablet every morning and that has cleared up the problem. I think he gets 500 mg a day. I don’t know if the same will work for a cat, but it’s worth a try.

    Posted by Nio  on  03/25  at  02:46 PM

  4. I should also add that the “pill” Jaxsun gets is not actually a pill. It’s a capsule that you can open up and pour out the contents onto the moist food and mix in so your cat won’t know it’s there and you won’t have to wrestle to get it into him.

    Posted by Nio  on  03/25  at  02:48 PM

  5. Nio, when I was trying to find “the perfect kibble” last week, I’d decided on Eagle Pack because they had a variety of formulas which would work in our household.  Then I discovered that their kibble contains corn, which we try to avoid having around the house because our shih-tzu has such terrible allergies to it.  I didn’t pay much attention to the canned food, but looking at it now, it looks like good stuff.  I know our local “dog bakery” carries it, and I do remember the prices were good, so I’ll definitely try it out (if only on the kittens).

    I wish the “premium foods” were easier to get.  I’ve read the Innova FAQ where they say they only sell to independent stores because “large chains purchase in large quantities and don’t always have the freshest stock”.  Really though, if the Innova people thought it would benefit all our pets to eat their food, shouldn’t they make it easier to obtain?  Have shorter expiration dates if necessary, but it seems there’s an element of snobbishness perpetuated by manufacturing a food which isn’t available to everyone.  All the small, independent stores seem so “iffy”—I worry they’ll go out of business and I’ll be left with no source of the brand of food I need.

    Regarding the vitamin C additive, I guess it means your dog’s bladder crystals are caused by slightly alkaline urine?  The vitamin C is an acid, so I think it would lower the urinary pH.  Our shih-tzu, Phoenix, has bladder crystals caused by acidic urine, so she takes potassium citrate to raise her pH to prevent stone formation (and she drinks bottled water, the snob).  I don’t know what sort of crystals my cat had—I’d need to find out before I tried to tinker with the pH with additives, and I still think there’s a chance the cat would do fine on just a good wet food with a high moisture content.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/25  at  11:32 PM

  6. Coll, my cat Sweet Pea wouldn’t eat wet food either.  She ignored any canned food I offered, and didn’t even want any snacks unless they were crunchy.  The only thing which slightly interested her was the water from cans of tuna—I would often drain the water into a bowl and she’d lick at it a bit, but she didn’t want the tuna itself.

    One odd thing about our cats is that they all have a definite preference for poultry and don’t care for fish or beef at all.  Even the kittens, who are “good eaters” and who’ve been exposed to a variety of tastes and flavours, want nothing to do with beef.  Surprisingly, Tie took a big lick of Vietnamese hot sauce from the top of the bottle yesterday and even went back for more, so he says, “spicy good, beefy bad”.

    I read a website where a person managed to convert their cat to a wet diet by just offering the food on a daily basis, in addition to kibble, but the transition took something like 9 months.  That’s a lot of wasted food.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/26  at  12:28 AM

  7. Jaxsun’s urine wasn’t “acidic enough” which is why he’s getting the Vit C (that’s how Wolf put it) so I think that means the pH was low. You should find out from your vet about Derek’s pH so maybe you can correct it in an easier and more economical way.

    Posted by Nio  on  03/26  at  04:47 AM

  8. re: pH, the lower the pH, the more acidic the urine.  A pH of 6, for example, is “more alkaline” than a pH of 5.  In theory, a pH of 7 is neutral, and everything above is alkaline and everything below is acidic, although there’s a wide range of pH values which can be considered “normal”.  If you added an acid to food you’d make the urine more acidic, hence you’d be trying to bring pH down.  And the only reason I write this is because I spent lots of time in chemistry class and I want it to have been useful for something :)

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/26  at  05:49 AM

  9. Could you possibly feed the cats separately?  I know it would be a huge pain in the butt, but it might help with the pain in the wallet.

    Our BC is on a prescription food because of his portosystemic shunt.  Rather than feeding both the pups the insanely priced food, we feed them individually.  I am not sure if that is possible to do with cats, but it might be worth a try just to save a few bucks!

    Posted by Expat  on  03/27  at  04:25 PM

  10. Expat, I’m feeding the kittens separately from Derek/Chelsea/Jackson separately from Frank :)  I give the kittens and Frank the Merrick food, and give the other adults the prescription diet.  Derek needs it anyway and Chelsea and Jackson like it, and it’s still nice to see Chelsea eat with enthusiasm.

    Feeding Merrick still often ends up costing about the same as the prescription diet, but I feel better about it.  My “beef” (no pun intended) is with the ingredients in the prescription diet—they don’t have the quality implied by the price.  I wrote to Royal Canin to ask why the food only contains “by-products”, but no one has replied.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/27  at  11:20 PM
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