Is there a nonprescription urinary tract cat food comparable to Hills?

I haven't actually tried it but I've heard that Wysong Uretic is a very high quality food that SHOULD do the same thing as Hill's C/D..

Cats with urinary tract issues should NEVER NEVER NEVER eat dry food at all! The best types of foods for these cats are foods with a high moisture content that are meat based, such as Innova Evo 95% chicken and turkey, which is what I feed all of my cats. Hill's is actually really crappy food, and why it is recommended by veterinarian's is beyond me, even though they get a stipend to endorse the food, their conscience should come in somewhere and they should think more about the health of their patients! I was lucky enough to find a vet with extensive knowledge on nutrition of cats and dogs, who recommended Innova Evo to me. We've had no problems since we started this food whatsoever! And they love it!

First, I'd get vet approval for anything you do.

But if you go to petco.com and click on cat food, they have categories and this is one of them. You can scroll through what they have and their reviews are really helpful! Some of the people sound knowledgeable.

If you find something, though, definitely run it by your vet. There are definitely some out there.

Yes. Any wet/canned/raw food diet is better than any prescription dry diet your vet is "prescribing".

My biggest piece of advice is if your vet advises you to use a 鈥減rescription diet鈥?food鈥?choose to skip that route and go for a strictly wet food diet, canned or raw, instead. Vets that prescribe dry prescription foods and even canned prescription diets as the cure to Urinary Tract problems obviously know nothing about feline nutrition and are only bandaiding the problem instead of preventing it in the first place. Sadly, most vets never learn anything about feline nutrition except what the cat food companies teach them. *roll eyes here* Any vet that would tell you to put your already sick cat on a garbage food made with cheap fillers like Hills Science Diet, Royal Canin, or Purina Prescription clearly knows NOTHING about cats nutritional needs

Cats were never designed to eat dry food. NEVER. They eat their prey whole and wet. Cats do not have a thirst mechanism. So because of all that鈥?cats are designed to eat only wet food. We idiot humans feed dry only for our convenience. Shows how much we used to know, huh?

Because of all the above, we, by feeding dry, are usually the cause of all UTI issues in cats. They do not take in enough water on a dry diet and so their systems do not fully flush out so they get UTI issues.

What you need to do is unconcentrate the urine. To do that you need to stop feeding all dry foods and switch to an all wet diet. Either a canned diet or Raw. Did your vet recommend that? Wet food will help flush the system faster so that crystals and bacteria can not form.

Get your kitty on a STRICKTLY wet food diet. Either high quality canned, or a raw diet. It鈥檚 not cheap but it will cost you less in the long run than the vet. You can learn about raw food at www.catinfo.org and www.catnutrition.org or canned鈥?choose Wellness, Merrick, Drs Foster and Smith or something with those matching ingredients.

No matter which you choose鈥?no more dry food for your cat ever. Wet food only!

I鈥檝e also had success using Glucosomine and Chrondriton for preventing inflammation in the urethra. Discuss this with your vet and ask them to look into it. There are some major feline studies being done on this that are VERY promising!

If your kittys urine needs more acidity because of struvite Crystals you can also add dry cranberry extract, just a pinch 2X a day on wet food. And you can try a pinch of Vitamin C sprinkled on as well.

Give your kitty distilled water to drink only. Both my vet and I are convinced after speaking with vets all over the county that the hardness and mineral content in water in different areas contributes to the # of cases of UTI鈥檚 in those areas. From here on out鈥?distilled water only. Another suggestion鈥?is to get kitty a water fountain. I bought the Bigdog Drinkwell for my cats and keep it filled with distilled water and they love it. It鈥檚 a great way to encourage their water consumption.

Lastly, get yourself a bag of scientific litter so you can keep track of kittys PH levels at home. You won鈥檛 be able to detect the crystals at home that cause blockages, but if the ph was off鈥?you could get kitty in for a urine analysis right away and possibly head off a blockage.

Good luck!

Unfortunately there is but this is not what you want to feed. The system needs water and the dry foods caused the problems in the first place.

Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat鈥檚 health
Contrary to what you may have heard; dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean? Is the first ingrdiant a muscle meat like chicken or meal or other things?
http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Rea...
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i鈥檚 and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms
The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in
Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, most use horrible ingredients and don't use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn't have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck? http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bp...

Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics...
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.ht...
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.ht...

try this site.http://www.nextag.com/urinary-tract-cat-... i have 2 cats on the hills urinary tract cat food.they have been on it for about a year and they are thriving.its expensive but worth it.

I have two male cats with FLUTD,and they thrive on Purina ONE Urinary Tract Formula.

I have used Purina One for Urinary Tract Health for 2 yrs now since my cat was blocked/uti...he hasnt had one since

Yes. One is typically as good as the other - because they all suck with teeth. Especially if they're dry.

Feeding dry food to a cat with urinary issues is like trying to moisturize your skin with dust.

This is from my blog.
CATS AND URINARY ISSUES

This is not my area of expertise, but this has been my experience: As a kitten, Poppy developed both a weight problem and a UTI. My vet told me to start feeding her special food which he happily sold me *gulp*. Poppy refused to eat it. Back then I was less aware of how to get cats to eat new foods, so I just said the hell with it and bought Purina One's urinary health food, mixed with weight management. She ate that from then until she was 2 years old. She never had another UTI. Does this mean that this food is as good as the overpriced prescription food, or did I just get lucky? I don't know the answer, although I suspect the former statement is probably true.

For various reasons, I soon thereafter began researching cat nutrition. I learned about the benefits of wet food, and found that in many cases, that's all that's required to prevent future UTI's. Even the crappy brands like Friskies would be better than dry food!

I don't claim to be a vet, vet tech, vet student or anything like that. But I know how to research and examine results. I've read a bit on this topic which is how I've reached the conclusions I have.

At the very least, were I to have another cat with urinary problems, I'd sooner try them on a GOOD QUALITY canned food before shelling out the dough for a "prescription" dry food (or even their canned varieties). That's because I believe that good nutrition and species appropriate food is much more likely to keep a cat healthy than inferior ingredients which have been tweaked to change their chemical composition.

What should YOU do? If your vet recommends a prescription diet, I can safely recommend that at the very least you get the canned version of that food. That way your cat will get the extra hydration it needs. And don't feel bad about giving your cat this food - temporarily. It will do what it's designed to do, so you can be sure that your cat will do well while you do more research. And I would encourage you to do so. Don't take my word for it - read up on these things for yourself. Stabilize your cat with the prescription food while you look for something better. If canned food (or raw) alone is not helping enough, there are other supplements you could research. I have not done so, but I know that Wysong makes a supplement for urinary issues. "Biotic pH- is designed for cats or dogs needing assistance generating and maintaining an acidic urine to help prevent struvite crystal formulation."

I can't endorse this particular product, but know that it's out there. And if it is, there are sure to be others. Again, I would sooner feed good food, with a supplement such as this, than the crappy prescription foods.

UPDATE: I wanted to quote some info I ran across this morning (3.8.08). This info is taken from discussions in WholeCatHealth. While in and of itself it may not answer any questions, it can at least demonstrate that this group would be an excellent resource for anyone whose cat has a urinary problem.

"S/D and C/D are acidifying diets - meant for short-term use to bring down the urinary pH. There are risks associated with long-term use of these diets....." (see the last paragraph for more info on this).

"Feeding a high-quality, low-carbohydrate, meat-based, high-moisture diet reduces risk of urinary problems, incl crystals. Meat proteins provide the amino acids that naturally keep the urine slightly acidic (desirable for cats is 6.0-6.5 pH)...and the moisture (about 78%
for canned and 68% for the premade raw) helps promote urine volume and pee
frequency, which reduces risk of crystal formation. But some cats, even on a species-appropriate diet, can't maintain pH...so it's important to monitor the urine, which you can do at home with pH paper or urine dipsticks. If the pH consistently stays about 7.0, then you can add an acidifier such as L-methionine or ammonium chloride to the meat-based
food...and then still monitor to see how the pH is doing."

This last bit is from http://vetsites.vin.com/Kidney/FLUTD.doc...

"Chronic use of acidifying diets leads to metabolic acidosis, which can lead
to decreased bone formation and detrimental effects on calcium, phosphorus,
potassium, and magnesium balance. Potassium depletion, hypokalemia, and chronic
renal failure can result from feeding acidifying diets which have a marginal
potassium content. The use of acidifying diets is also contraindicated in cats
with chronic renal failure as these animals are often already acidotic. The
use of diets high in NaCl should also be avoided in animals with congestive
cardiac failure. Finally, as indicated above, the use of diets designed to
dissolve struvite may lead to a higher risk of calcium oxalate urolithiasis."