ROYAL CANIN VETERINARY DIET® Urinary SO® cat and dog food formulas taste great and nutritionally support urinary tract and bladder health in cats and dogs. Our diets are developed by nutritionists and veterinarians to specifically support urinary tract and bladder health through:
Struvite Dissolution - our diets effectively dissolve pure struvite uroliths.
Low Relative Super Saturation (RSS)technology predicts the crystallization potential of urine and is used to develop our diets to decrease the risk of struvite and calcium oxalate crystal and stone formation.
Urine Dilution - our formulas increase the urine volume to simultaneously reduce the saturation of urine with struvite and calcium oxalate precursors.
As for your second question I can only answer with my own experience with one of my cats that developed kidney disease. He already drank a lot of water when he was young and healthy, when his kidney issues started to appear I definitely noticed his increased drinking and larger amounts of urine in the litter box.
When someone says “not true” or “that poster is wrong”, as you did in two separate posts, it typically means they strongly disagree and wish to debate. You further went on to call the RC high quality, high end and maybe even premium. It may very well help with urinary issues but, forgetting wet vs. dry, the ingredients are low end and will likely lead to other problems down the road.
Can’t you look at the bag for carbs? From the second list Angela F provided, there are no less than 25 dry foods with a similar ingredient list and they were all in the 30-40% range. Compare that to the dry Orijin I linked above or the Weruva, which had most of their formulations under 10%. If you are worried about diabetes, I don’t think RC is the correct food.
Go back and read my post…I said the idea of “no dry food” is not true. I had/have no desire to debate anything, only relay my experiences and what I’ve decided to do because of them.
The RC is high quality and premium for urinary issues, especially for keeping life threatening stones from forming. I’m not talking about down the road, I’m talking about keeping my cat alive now in present time and RC is keeping him free of crystals/stones.
I may look into changing food in the future if necessary or if I become worried about diabetes but then I would need to find something that will treat/prevent stones and diabetes at the same time. My biggest worry at the moment is that Ralphie forms crystals/stones again and doesn’t get into the vet in time and dies, he came very close to dying this time.
I understand and see what you and Angela are saying about the carbs and went back and saw it on the web site. What I am confused about is why would several vets from different practices all highly recommend RC wet or dry if there is a future threat of diabetes. Especially when they all said Ralph needs to be on this food the rest of his life and that it will also help to prevent diabetes. I guess because Ralph has a high pre disposition to get crystals/stones that diabetes is the last thing they’re worried about if the stones will kill him first, not to mention the huge expenses of frequent emergency trips to the vets. The thing is that it was highly recommended that I put all four of my cats on this diet.
Yes many Vets and owners triage what is the biggest problem, and treat that primarily.
That being said, I still am unsure what ingredient is or is not in the RC food you feed/Your Vet recommends that stops/prevents crystals/stones.
Knowing that would help you going forward if you need to change foods.
Why do Vets recommend foods that are not ideal for Diabetic cats? I have NO idea, but I see it every single day on the Feline Diabetes pages I am on… Vets who recommend those RX diets that are WAY too high in carbs for any cats good, but particularly a diabetic one.
So many cats who get on a low carb [under 10%] wet food diet actually go into diabetic remission just from the diet change and without any insulin. Of those who need insulin many of those also, like mine, go into remission after anywhere from a few doses [in my case it was 4] to a year on insulin and the low carb diet. And getting that BG number down means avoiding SO many other medical complications. I really can’t see any downside to feeding low carb, I mean it’s even cheap! I use Fancy Feast at $.65 a can!
I am not one prone to becoming a cult-ist about things, but what I’ve seen in my cat and other diabetic cats and low carb, wet diets, I am certainly a cult member now.
I have no idea what ingredient or combination of ingredients stops/prevents crystals/stones in this food…but it definitely does.
Not all cats will get diabetes just as not all cats will get crystals/stones.
What is the difference of feeding a cat to prevent diabetes vs feeding a cat to prevent stones? Both can/will kill a cat and one chooses the food that will slow down/prevent which ailment is affecting the cat.
As a low carb diet is good “for many other medical complications”, RC Urinary SO is also good for kidney health and maintenance.
If any of my cats would actually eat wet food I would be feeding them wet RC Urinary SO to lower the carb numbers. Ralph’s attempt at several wet foods caused him to either puke it up like the exorcist or shit it out like a fiend, especially anything with a gravy. Ella will take one sniff of any wet food and promptly try to cover it up and bury it, she will actually stop eating if fed only wet. Johnny likes the taste of wet food but his guts are in knots a 1/2 hour after he eats it then his poor ass is burning with the squits for a week.
Maybe one day they will magically invent a cat food that covers the health of everything. But I digress…I said I did not comment to start a cat food comparison war, yet I got involved and did.
Something else I was told by the vet was that they have discovered that the majority of cats that get crystals/stones are males and oddly enough they find that red cats both male and female are more prone to them. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, I’m only repeating what I was told.
Thank you everybody for your detailed replies. It is obviously a dilemma for lots of devoted cat owners, I was pleased to see I am not alone. At the moment my cat is eating Hills c/d urinary biscuits specially formulated by a UK vet to taste good as well as to reduce crystals and stones plus standard supermarket gourmet chicken and fish flavoured pate which is wet. I think he would go 100% wet and it seems to help his weight. He lets me know what he wants. I am also pretty sure that the supermarket spring water PH 7.8 double filtered is making a marked difference. I to am taking this one day at a time and last night I couldn’t find him but early this morning I found him on the roof. This is huge progress he hasn’t done that for ages so just for today he is much better and most importantly has a good quality of life. Thanks again Pam
I took one of my cats to the emergency clinic for same problem, and they told me up front its $1,000 a day and can I handle that? I said no, they were able to express the urine manually to keep him somewhat comfortable until I could get to my vet the next morning. He ended up needing four surgeries, treating another cat for lymphoma during the same time period and in three months I spent $10, 600+ and still lost both of them.
When I rushed Ralphie in the vet immediately manually expressed enough urine to make him more comfortable. The office I had taken him to wasn’t equipped for surgeries so she put him back in his carrier and ran to her car to get him to the other clinic. As soon as he was put under his urethra relaxed and the stone causing the blockage came flying out. What would have cost $1000 ended up only costing around $300 including medications and urinary food.
Three urine tests over the last year almost cost as much as that!
I’m glad Ralphie’s problem was so easily solved. It is getting so expensive for routine vet care, never mind emergencies, that I don’t see how people can afford to treat their pets. Both of my cats were FIV+ in addition to their other problems. They both got sick before Thanksgiving so I had my Christmas bonus and then tax refund to help pay the vet bills.
Have the surgery. One of my rescued cats, Davis, had cystitis when he was a year old and the vets could not resolve it.
I had the surgery done, penis removed, urethra pulled down to dispose of the narrowing, and voila! Davis could still fight, could urinate, and lived to be 15 yoa with eating anything he wanted till he died of bladder cancer since the kidney stones and sand were still going thru his system.
Also try cosequin, a dissolved capsule 2x daily thru a kitten bottle mixed with water.
If your vet doesn’t know about the operation, find a board certified vet like mine. The male cat’s urethra, if I spelled that correctly, narrows when it reaches near the penis. Most stones and sand clog up there. I learned this with Davis back in the 1980s.
