In article ,
(MarkF) wrote:

I have a question regarding my cat with FLUTD. My cat had two
episodes of being blocked so the doctor recommended him eating a
prescription food, Hill's c/d-s. The cat would not eat it at all,
neither canned nor dry, so instead the doctor recommended that we put
Uroeze (Ammonium Chloride) in his normal wet food. This worked well
and the cat ate the food. Sometimes as a snack, my wife tried giving
him the dry Hill's c/d-s food and he began to eat that. Recently when
we spoke to the doctor he told us that the cat should not eat both
food, only one or the other.

This does not make much sense to me. The analogy that I used was if a
person was vitamin C deficient and a doctor said, "You can eat 10
oranges or 8 lemons a day", it would be perfectly legitimate to eat 5
oranges and 4 lemons and you should still get the same amount of
vitamin C. Or another analogy would be if you were trying to eat low
fat foods, you should be able to eat any low fat food, not just one.
The same logic should apply to the cat foods.

Has anyone else had experience with this? Any advice? Thanks!

I think that the concern is that it is possible to over-acidify the
urine by combining the Uro-Eze and the c/d-s (which of course has an
acidifier built in). The vet's instructions, perhaps even the bag of
c/d-s, is full of warnings not to use acidifiers concurrently with the
prescription diet. I'm not sure how the Uroeze works physiologically,
whether its effects could carry over, so frankly I'd trust your vet on
this one if you've been quite clear with him on how you're managing the
cat's diet.

My cat has had both struvite crystals (form readily in alkaline urine,
can be dissolved by acid urine) and oxalate crystals (form readily in
acid urine and cannot be dissolved) so I am leery of mucking with my
boy's pH with artificial acidifiers. Oxalate crystals are present in
nearly 50% of clinical cases of FLUTD these days, so I'd think anyone
whose cat had the disorder would be similarly concerned. Since the
A-Number-One factor in prevention of blockage is providing a dilute
urine (if he's peeing a lot and frequently, he's flushing the bladder,
crystals have a hard time forming, mucus plugs have a hard time forming,
etc.) I personally think that feeding a wet diet (I even add water until
each meal is soupy) is of major importance and I don't bother fiddling
with pH or prescription diets. So if your vet is saying, feed the plain
wet food and if you have to give crunchy treats use the c/d-s? That
makes plenty of sense to me.

-Alison in OH