Bladder Stones Cat Food - Special Diet For Cats With Bladder Stones

Bladder stones are a common problem for cats, and knowing how to recognize the signs and treat and prevent reoccurrences can save your cat from a serious health risk.

As cats are typically stoic by nature not always alerting owners to illness or discomfort, it could take a keen-eyed owner to notice a cat’s bladder stone problem before the situation is critical.

Some signs include refusing to use the litter box, frequent trips to the litter box and/or frequent urination, inappropriately urinating outside the box, blood in the urine or straining in the litter box but unable to urinate (a case when the stones have lodged in the urethra and blocked the urine). If the cat cannot expel urine, his bladder could literally burst, which is fatal if untreated.

What are bladder stones? They are an accumulation of mineral deposits collecting over a foreign substance (such as bacteria) in the bladder. The deposits collect, causing the stone to grow larger and irritate the bladder.

Treatment can include dissolving the stones with medication, diet or surgical removal; the treatment depends on the mineral makeup of the stone. Struvite stones (made of ammonium, magnesium and phosphate) can be dissolved by medication. Calcium oxalate stones cannot and must be removed surgically.

If you suspect that your cat has bladder stones, the veterinarian will palpate his or her abdomen and bladder, take x-rays and maybe perform an ultrasound examination.

Once stones are treated, the cat may need to be maintained on prevention therapy, and that may include diet change or medication or both.

Though cats can be affected to either types of stones (with females being more prone to calcium oxalate and males to struvite), many experts agree that years ago cats rarely suffered from calcium oxalate stones. Instead, most stones were struvite. To combat this issue, the pet food industry acidified cat foods in effort to prevent crystal formation. As a result, struvite stones occurred less frequently, but because acidifying the cat’s body lead to a more acid urine pH and, thus, calcium loss in the urine, cats began forming calcium oxalate stones more frequently. In fact, nowadays, calcium oxalate stones are most common stones.

Veterinarians recommend for cats with calcium oxalate stones a lower protein alkalinizing (rather than acidifying) diet. Because maintenance and prevention goals including diluting the urine, more fluid intake is necessary, and canned food is recommended over dry. You can add more water to canned food as well. Experts also recommend set mealtimes instead of free feeding. Prescription foods by Hill’s and other pet food manufacturers are available through your veterinarian.

Struvite stones would require a different diet, one that is more acidifying, so knowing the makeup of the stone is an important part of the veterinary diagnosis.

In such cases, many experts suggest against generic cat supplements for cats with bladder stones as some vitamins can exacerbate the situation. However, your veterinarian may recommend specific supplements for treatment like vitamin B-6 because deficiencies can lead to stone development.

Life’s Abundance cat food states that it contains grass, which has nutrients that support the urinary tract.

Hill’s Prescription Diet offers two formulas—s/d Feline for struvite crystals and x/d Feline for oxalate crystals. S/d has low magnesium levels and acidifies the urine pH. X/d has reduced sodium levels and added potassium citrate to help produce alkaline urine pH.

Martin Goldstein, DVM, author of “The Nature of Animal Healing,” Knopf, says that a diet low in minerals allows the body to reabsorb some of the minerals in the stones. He also recommends that owners of cats with bladder stones give only steam-distilled water and not tap, spring or well water as they can contain minerals.

A note of caution: do not feed your pet cat foods made for urinary tract or stone issues without first checking with your veterinarian. As you can see, the formulas are very different depending on the type of stone; therefore, your veterinarian must know what stones your cat has before recommending a diet.

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