Hi, I want to first say congrats on your new cat! I hope all is going well. I also have some info about LUTD in cats that I wanted to share with you to help you prevent anything like that happening with your new kitty. Sorry, it will be lengthy, but it is helpful, I promise.
I agree that water intake is extremely important for urinary health, and so is the kind of food. But good urinary health isn't just a matter of increasing your cat’s water consumption. And feeding a meat-based diet or avoiding certain ingredients really isn't going to prevent urinary issues either. Some people will try to simplify the solution to those things, but it’s incorrect and potentially harmful to do so. It's important to know how crystal formation works to understand how nutrition does make a real difference.
Urine is a pretty complex fluid made up of water, dissolved minerals (such as phosphorus, magnesium, and calcium), and other compounds. Urinary crystals form when minerals that are floating in the urine attach to each other. They can be a normal finding in healthy urinary tracts. In high numbers, though, crystals can cause irritation, plugs, or can stick together to form stones. Bladder stones that form could be just one type of crystal, or a combination of different types. In cats, by far the most common types of crystals are calcium oxalate and struvite. Calcium oxalate stones are most common in male cats, whereas struvite are more common in female cats.
Crystals and stones are more likely to form in the following conditions:
- high level of minerals in the urine (particularly calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus)
- highly concentrated/low volume of urine
- alkaline urine (particularly with struvite crystals)
- urinary tract infection
So knowing how crystals and stones form, what can help prevent them?
1. Adequate water intake is crucial for either kind of crystal. Getting enough water can be tough for many cats, though, because they’re not naturally inclined to drink a lot. You can feed wet food to help for sure, but not just any wet food will do, since, as I mentioned, mineral levels are also very important. If it’s wet food, it needs to be the right wet food, too. Other things to help increase water consumption - especially if your cat doesn’t care for wet food:
- make sure fresh water is always available
- put several easily-accessible bowls of water around the house
- keep water bowls away from high-traffic areas or the litterbox
- try one of those water fountains or similar things to help encourage drinking
- separate feedings into smaller meals, as this can increase the number of times cats visit their water bowl
- try different types and sizes of bowls and find the one your cat likes best. Some cats like clear glass bowls, others prefer metal bowls. Some like larger bowls so their whiskers don’t brush the edges, others like to dip in their paws to drink.
- some foods have higher levels of sodium to encourage drinking and thus increase and dilute the urine. As unhealthy as this might sound at first, it has actually been studied and shown that, unlike humans, cats are not negatively affected by increased salt intake. Rather, the opposite has been shown to be true, as moderate increased sodium levels have shown to significantly increase cats’ voluntary consumption of water and improve urine dilution. (Here is just one study done on sodium intake in cats, if you’re interested:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...567.x/abstract).
2. Mineral levels must be considered! In order to greatly reduce the likelihood of stones forming, certain mineral levels need to be controlled in cat food. The really important minerals in relation to FUTD are phosphorus, magnesium, and calcium (but there are more), because these are the very minerals that form the most common types crystals in cats. It has been shown that if these minerals are controlled at certain levels, then the urine will be “under-saturated” in these minerals so that crystals do not form. Crystals can form and grow if the urine is more saturated in these minerals.
3. Urine pH might be important, but it depends. With struvite crystals, urine pH does play a large role. Alkaline urine is a factor in the formation of struvite crystals, and acidifying the urine can even dissolve these types of crystals. Calcium oxalate crystal formation, on the other hand, is not influenced by urine pH. Clinical urinary diets will usually create a moderately acidic urine to prevent and treat struvite crystals, but this factor is not really important if the problem is calcium oxalate crystals.
With these things in mind, you should feed a food that controls the specific mineral levels to create under-saturated urine, that creates a slightly acidic urine pH, and that helps dilute urine through adequate water intake. The really good pet food companies do on-going research on urinary health and formulate their feline diets based on these well-studied factors. If you choose to feed raw or homemade, it's absolutely essential that you understand how mineral levels in particular will affect urinary health, and how to control those mineral levels. In my opinion, if you don't know 100% what you're doing, you shouldn't do it.
I also want to add that many cats suffer from feline idiopathic cystitis, which can be helped by creating a stress-free environment for your cat that really respects his needs as a cat. Check out this website for some great tips:
http://indoorpet.osu.edu/cats/
Hope that helps you out! Wishing you the best of luck with your little guy!