Apologies for the long post but I’d really appreciate if you could bear with me if you feel you can offer any blockage/urinary diet related advice.
I posted a couple of months ago on the previous site about my 7yo cat Ernie who had been hospitalised with a urinary blockage, and had some really helpful advice from people here. He had appeared to have recovered and I was praying that it was a one-off but it looks to be an ongoing problem
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We have just had a traumatic weekend after the same thing happened again, total blockage, emergency trip to vet, very distressed cat and 2 very distressed humans. Ern was catheterised for 2 days and stayed at the vets for 3. We brought him home yesterday as he was anxious in the vet environment and it was felt that he would recover better at home, and he’d had the catheter out for 12 hours and was weeing on his own. He seems fine in himself, he is so happy to be home, but we are watching him like hawks and I am extremely worried about a further re-occurrence.
I am desperate to prevent this from happening to him again and here is where the confusion starts.
The first time it happened we were told it was ‘probably’ caused by struvite crystals. I accepted this and we started him on Hills CD. He did not like the wet food so I also tried other varieties of urinary support wet to no avail, he just wouldn’t eat it. So we switched to Hills CD dry, a combination of the normal and the low-calorie version (also recommended by someone on here, thank you) which he really took to. I was giving him small amounts of non-CD wet food because he was also on one Cystease per day and I needed something to mix it in with. Things appeared to be going OK. The vet confirmed that the CD dry was better than reverting back to ‘normal’ wet food, even though there would be a lack of fluid in his diet it would make him drink more (I did notice he was drinking more which was good).
But- this change in diet has obviously not done the trick in preventing blockage (unless the tiny amounts of other wet food were enough to cause a problem) and to add to the confusion my vet now reports that there were no crystals in his urine at all, which he said was ‘surprising’. I asked if we should switch him back to ‘normal’ wet food as the CD is designed to dissolve crystals but the vet said it would be ‘foolhardy’ to do this. I asked what else could cause a blockage other than crystals and he did not really have an answer (although I admit I was in a panic and may not have taken everything in), other than we must get him to drink more and get his weight down a bit- he’s 6.2kg, but is a well-built muscular boy, broad shoulders, but I admit he is a bit chubby
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Over the weekend I have tried to do some research online. The majority opinion seems to be that it’s essential to have the cat on a good quality wet diet, no dry at all, and that this better than ‘prescription’ dry food. Any opinions on this please?
I am at a total loss
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I have read on the net that repeated catheterisation can cause scar tissue inside, which in turn can cause repeat blockage. I also made the mistake of looking at some pictures of what they actually do to them during this process and now I will do ANYTHING to prevent him going through this again. But if crystals are not the cause I just don’t know where to start. I wonder now if it is anything to do at all with what he’s eating? Is there any point in him being on a crystal-dissolving diet if he has no crystals in his urine? Would good quality wet food be better than dry CD? I am loathe to keep him on a diet that so obviously didn’t help, but also extremely wary of going against my vet’s advice.
It was also suggested that stress could be contributing, but he is the happiest most chilled-out boy normally, he purrs and chats away to us all day and loves being at home or in the garden with us…we have had no changes at home to stress him out and we’re a one-cat family. The vet explained that we don’t always know when they are stressed, but could a happy cat get a total urinary blockage from hidden stress?
Any advice at all would be very gratefully received as I am in a total panic. If this is going to happen every couple of months he is going to get extremely traumatised by the repeated invasive treatment and I can’t bear to see him scared and in pain again
![Crying or Very Sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
![Crying or Very Sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
thanks for reading
Lin x