Any experience with bladder stones in male cats?

[Grateful for Hope]

My oldest daughter has a male cat (Trouble) who is about 8 years old, and is 1/2 Maine coon (he is one of the offspring of my younger daughter's Maine Coon). Not sure if this info is important or not, but sometimes particular breeds have maladies that are more prevalent in that breed.

He has always been robust, and, interestingly, he is short-haired, but has retained the facial and body build characteristics of the Maine Coon. He is large, and is quite a handsome dark-brown tabby...even more interesting is that the father was steel gray, and his Mom is a light grey Maine Coon.

I digress. He was operated on this week because he had a very large, jagged stone in his bladder. His symptoms were that he began to urinate in the tub of his choice, and the urine was blood-streaked.

After seeing one vet, my daughter took him to another vet who operated on him that day because he could not believe the size of the stone after viewing it via x-ray. What the vet told my daughter is that he had to have been in quite a bit of pain because the stone was jagged, and was tearing the insides of his little bladder.

My question: My daughter told me that the vet also told her that treatment for a stone in the bladder is quite different from treatment if it were a kidney stone. If it were a kidney stone, I was all ready with objections to her Iams dry diet she has been feeding this guy. But, the vet said that stones in the bladder require quite the opposite treatment.

Has anyone here had this experience? I really don't trust vets, per se, when they talk about nutrition because most do not look beyond products such as Science Diet and Iams, and, I want to make sure that my daughter (her name is Tracie) gets the best advice she can about this little guy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As a PS: Tracie also adopted one of Trouble's sisters who she named Phoebe, and Phoebe also has the Maine Coon square face, but, she is the same color as her father and short-haired. Phoebe is also quite large.

Even more interesting...they look more like Maine Coons facially than their mother does. Go figure.

Thank you!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I had a cat with FUS.

They usually call bladder stones in cats Feline Urinary Syndrome (FUS). My old buddy Charles had it a long time ago and got pretty sick. I took him to the vet; they ended up doing surgery and he never had any problems again. This was in about 1980, and Charles died in 1995 at the age of 21. They may have different treatments for FUS now, though. I do remember having to watch his diet for awhile.

Charles:

[Grateful for Hope]

6. I am wondering what kind of diet

the vet will recommend. Thanks!

[demnan]

2. One of my cats along time ago

had the urinary track problem. He was brought in and revived very quickly by my well-sklled vet.

You can feed him food suggested for urinary track problems and most importantly, always have a good source of clean water available for the cat to drink. I have a Drinkwell fountain which has water circulating throughout the system. I recommend that as a preventative to any cats' urinary problems.

[Grateful for Hope]

7. I was wondering about my daughter's water

it is very, very hard, and, her family can't drink it. I am going to ask her if she gives it to the cats. Thank you!

[Eurobabe]

3. My oldest male cat had FUS (now FLUTD) really bad in

1994, he almost didn't make it as a guy (they wanted to do a penilectomy on him, I said no way!) The trouble stopped when I put him on filtered water (no chlorine). Stress in the household seems to exacerbate the problems too. The Daemon had it once, but knock on wood, he has been fine.

My vet also recommended keeping the magnesium content low, check labels. Here's a link http://www.thepetcenter.com/exa/uo.html

Best of luck, it sucks when our boyz are blocked!!

[Grateful for Hope]

8. Water again!

Wow...this really could be the answer then.

thank you!!

[NV Whino]

4. I had a male cat with the same problem

which can be deadly and fast. Fortunately I caught it in time. A low ash diet was recommended, but the vet also said that sometimes male cats are neutered before their urinary tracts mature and that can create problems with smaller ducts.

I fully support neutering and spaying, but I don't agree with neutering and spaying kittens younger than 7 to 8 months for the above reason.

[radfringe]

5. food

definitely low-ash food

we had a male cat, Ches, that was frequently "blocked", no problems after we switched his food over to one with low-ash content

"DADS" has a dry cat food formulated for urinary problems - we switched to this after the last bout.

Our vet told us that if switching foods didn't work, then we were looking at a 'sex-change' operation to open the tract wider. Thankfully we didn't have to go that route.

Ches lived to be 21 years old

on edit: he was also an indoor/outdoor cat. Eating the critters outside contributed to the urinary problem so we made him an indoor kitty in order to have better control over his diet

[Grateful for Hope]

9. Thanks, Radfringe.

Hopefully the vet will recommend a low-ash food. That sex change thing doesn't sound very good...hopefully my daughter won't have to go that route.

[japple]

10. Wysong Uretic might help. It's dry food but if your daughter

feeds her cats dry food, it would be easy to switch them. My cats LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. I've also started giving them water filtered through a Brita pitcher. They still drink from the toilet, though, and Tiny still licks the shower stall every morning.

[okasha]

11. Filtered water is good

but distilled water is best. Several years ago, I had a cat who spent his first adult year in and out of the vet's because of FUS. When I finally changed vets, the new Dr. got him cleared out and recommended not only the special diet but distilled water. (Local water is very hard and high in magnesium.) Eventually he went back to "normal" food, but I've given my kitties nothing but distilled water ever since, and have never had another problem.

[joanski0]

12. My Blue Himalayan had the "sex-change" operation.

It was a last resort, as he got plugged up often. It was scary, but I felt I didn't have much choice, and my lady Vets recommended it highly. It will be a year this March, and I haven't had any trouble at all with Himmy.

NONE of my 7 cats liked the c/sd -- neither the dry or canned. I had just paid $40 for 20 pounds of it and none of them would eat it. So this winter, the birds got it. And they loved it.