RE: Food for FeLV plus Urine Crystals, Brissle Update

[Hideyo Yamamoto]

Kathy, if you read the ingredient of Hills – it includes preservative such as BHT or BHA – if you know what they are, it’s something that you do not want to give your kitties to at all –   I would personally recommend stop giving Hills completely, but instead give her/him 250 mg to  500 mg of L- methionine  (amino acid) in stead, my cats almost blocked with crystals in the past, but it completely got cured with this -   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Melbeach Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 1:30 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: Food for FeLV plus Urine Crystals, Brissle Update   Kathy,   Hill's is actually the same thing as Science Diet. That's what I'm trying to get away from because of the byproducts. It does work great though for the crystals.   -Kyle ----- Original Message ----- From: Kathy Koutsis To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 8:38 PM Subject: Re: Food for FeLV plus Urine Crystals, Brissle Update   After Killian had urine crystals our vet recommended HIll's Prescription Diet CD/S.  You can only buy it at the vet's office - $25 for 10 pounds.  But ever since Killian has been eating it, which is about 3 years now she has not had any reoccurences.  Don't know if it has any byproducts though. Kathy Melbeach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Well I'm at the end of my bag of Science Diet CD/S. So it's time to buy more food. Here's my dilemma. Brissle is my FeLV+ female. Her FeLV- brother Squermie has urine crystal issues. They are both 8 years old. Squermie was about 2 when he had his urine crystals episode. It was really bad. He had to stay at the vet twice with a catheter inserted, once for an entire week. They said if he had another incident, they would have to "make him a girl". Apparently, girls have wider tubes and don’t have these problems.   Up until Squermie's incident, we were feeding them Max Cat. I don't remember which type. But I was warned about byproducts and the Max Cat said it had no byproducts. So we used it and paid dearly. After the incident, they have both been eating only Science Diet CD/S. That was all 6 years ago and Squermie hasn't had another incident since. So I really don't want to tamper with success. But now I'm hearing more about how bad Science Diet is with byproducts. Is there a no-byproduct dry food that's also especially made for urine crystals? I say "especially made for urine crystals" instead of "low-magnesium" because I'm not sure if low-magnesium is the only thing that makes Science Diet CD/S so special. I remember asking my last vet if I could just buy one of the low-magnesium foods at the pet store. But he said absolutely no. Only Science Diet CD/S.   I want to avoid feeding them both different foods. For one, it's soooo much easier to just keep a bowl of food down and forget about it. That's just always how it's been done with them. Also, if I give them different food, Squermie will surely get jealous and start picking on Brissle. I've considered giving Squermie back to the ex. But if I did that, Brissle would miss him. He can be an ogre at times. But he's gotten much better with age. I think weighing everything out, it would be better to keep him. I just have to be real fair about everything.   Brissle has been doing great. We finished the VO injections about 2 weeks ago. She's almost back to her normal weight! She has plenty of energy. It's looking real good! I'll be taking Brissle to the vet next week for blood tests. One month ago, when this all started, her HCT was 9.7%. The pink in her nose makes a good visual indicator of HCT. It's still pretty light. Nowhere near as dark pink as Squermie's. But on the day I brought her to the vet, her nose was completely gray! I really don't remember how dark her nose was originally. I would highly recommend making a mental note or taking a picture of the pinkness of all your cat's noses, especially the healthy ones, so you have something to gauge by.   Thanks for listening! -Kyle