Hi Tasha, I see the most common cause of urinary problems in cats to be dry food in general, particularly those made of cereal grains – cats are carnivores who shouldn’t have cereals in their diet. Hill’s C/D dry is made from corn, wheat, and rice along with some chicken, which really doesn’t sound species appropriate to me even if they add a little DL-Methionine and potassium citrate to dilute crystals.

Moisture is so important for cats – more so if they’re already suffering urinary issues. Moisture dilutes the urine and helps reduce crystals forming, and dry food is counter-productive in this respect.

If your vet has told you Frontier Pets (essentially raw prey ingredients your cat would instinctively eat) is causing crystals, then ask why they would recommend you feed your cat a dry processed food made of cereals to fix the problem in your pet carnivore.

A better solution might be to remove the dry and see if your cat’s health improves. Even the Hill’s wet foods are more species appropriate. Or, even if you want to continue with the dry, would you consider giving your cat a raw chicken neck once a day or every other day?

Hi David,

What do you recommend for cat with previous utis and a blockage? I was recommended Hills CD and had him on that for a few months and had another uti. I switched to frontier pets lamb and fish while still feeding some hills. Cat had a urine test today and had crystals. The vet said it was the frontier pets’ food and suggested I stop feeding the frontier pets and only feed the Hills..

Hi Jose, lots of options, but for what reason do you need a high fibre/controlled calcium dog food?

Hi Bec, Tiki Cat looks pretty good from a formula perspective. Here’s a review.

Hi Kim, when a kitten (or pup) has been raised on one (or two) brands of pet food, it’s very common to see some digestive upset when you change the food. For this reason it’s worth changing gradually, so going from a bit of the new food to more of the new food over a couple of weeks. Moving forward, feeding your kitten a variety should stop them suffering digestive upset over the long term.

Feeding a mix of wet/dry/fresh/raw is all good in my opinion, and better than feeding a completely dry or completely wet diet.

As for brands I try not to make specific recommendations, but any of the best rated cat food page should be a good start.

Myself and my 3 children are getting a kitten in a few weeks and we are super excited! from what I know the kitten is being fed a combination of Leaps and Bounds cat food and Fussy cat food (cant say which one is wet or dry though) both of which don’t seem to have very good reviews that I read above. I don’t want to cause any upset to the kitty’s tummy so I’m assuming I will need to continue with those foods and slowly introduce something else, also something I’m not sure of lol!

I have looked at quite a few options and taking into consideration the financial side of it and availability, I landed on Black Hawk kitten food, I will be using a combination of wet and dry food.

Any feedback/advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your time 🙂
Kim.

Hi Callie, generally I think too much of anything is a bad idea, and the concerns with too much fish include mercury and other toxicity. Raw fish can cause thiamine deficiency when fed in excess, which although isn’t relevant to kibble is still a good example of why anything in excess can be bad.

Native cats would catch small prey, but also scavenge prey caught by large predators. You make a really good point though. I expect the only reason you don’t get “mouse”, “lizard”, or “gecko” cat foods is because consumers wouldn’t buy them. We humanise our pets which means most consumers would prefer to feed what we eat, so that’s what pet food manufacturers target.