For cats with urinary tract disease, please refer to chapter 10 of my cat cookbook. The subject of urinary tract health is covered in detail along with recipe recommendations for the prevention and treatment of urolithiasis in cats. Some of the information below is also relevant to cats.

About 85% of struvites in dogs are caused by UTI and controlling the urinary infection will prevent a recurrence. About 80% of struvites in cats are “idiopathic” meaning there is no obvious cause. These cases cannot be cured with antibiotics.

If a pet is being fed a home-made or raw diet, it’s important that the recipe be balanced. Feeding an unbalanced home-made or raw recipe can lead to struvites. Since calcium and phosphorus compete for uptake from the gut, too much phosphorus relative to calcium in a food results in too much phosphorus being absorbed from the gut. The excess phosphorus is then excreted in urine. Struvites are composed of magnesium-ammonium-phosphate. Excess phosphorus in conjunction with high protein intake can therefore drive struvite production. In this case, changing to a properly balanced recipe will generally correct the problem.

The commercial struvite diets reduce struvite risk by strongly acidifying urine. There are no human foods that will acidify to the same degree. There is no recipe in my cookbook that will acidify to the same degree as the commercial veterinary acidifying kibbles.

However, feeding home-made is a lower risk for all crystals because of the higher moisture content of home-made foods. By adding extra water to every meal, owners can further lower the risk of crystals of any type. In most cases, preventing UTI along with feeding a properly balanced home-made recipe with extra water added to maintain a dilute urine (SG < 1.030) will prevent recurrence of struvite crystals and uroliths. It is not possible to formulate a home-made recipe that is acidifying to the degree that it achieves struvite dissolution.

The second type of urinary stone is calcium oxalate. Certain human foods are extremely high in oxalate (for example peanut butter, sweet potato, spinach etc). There are low oxalate recipes in the dog cookbook (R61-64) and in the cat cookbook (R96-101). As well, please refer to the tables of high risk foods on page 48 of the dog cookbook or page 67 of the cat cookbook.

Again, with any type of bladder crystals, moisture is your friend. Feed extra water with every meal, and/or provide liquid treats (greatly diluted broth, milk, juice etc) between meals to keep urine dilute. Have your veterinarian monitor your pet’s urine for specific gravity, UTI and crystals on a regular basis.