I have a male cat, neutered - probably about 3-5 years old. He's been
happy and healthy these 8 months that I have owned him, but suddenly
two weeks ago he started peeing much more frequently and then taking
forever at the box. I knew this was a UTI so I took him in.

Vet did urinalysis and determined that there were crystals in the
urine. Vet also gave me 10 days of Baytril to administer. Vet provided
24 cans of Royal Canin urine health food. My cat refused to touch the
stuff.

As a bit of a back story, cat has been eating holistic food the whole
time he's been with me - mainly Eagle Pack chicken dry kibble. I have
now switched to Wysong Uretic formula as of 2 weeks ago to hopefully
replace the prescribed food he will not eat.

The cat greatly improved with the antibiotics but the administration
of them was irregular. I'd come home from work and find that he had
spit out the morning pill sometime during the day, so I'm not sure
exactly how much of the 20 pills he kept down. I know that the last
3-4 days were 100% though because I got pill pockets.

2 days after the antibiotics are gone, symptoms reoccur and there is
blood in the urine. I go to emergency vet who performs blood work and
says its clean. They confirm crystals in urine and give him a shot of
antibiotics and painkiller. They give me painkillers to be given
orally for the next few days. Vet says that he thinks its just the
crystals causing issues and the diet change will fix it.

My problem is that I've already spent close to $600 on kitty and I
can't afford much more. He won't eat the prescribed food but is the
Wysong good for this problem? I don't want to have to go back to the
vet, I want this problem to go away without stressing the cat more
than he already is. I've heard Apple Cider Vinegar is good to acidify
the urine. I'm also giving cranberry powder with wet food once a day.
I have a stash of Doxycycline pills left over from a cat who passed
away recently - could I safely administer this to prevent further
infection?

My regular vet is sort of gung-ho on all sorts of procedures and is
extremely expensive. I took my cat in liver failure to him last year
and spent $800 for a day of care + euthanasia. You can see why I'm
worried about cost.