How do I persuade a cat that has always eaten dry food to start eating
canned food?

I have two cats, Bebop (male) and Samba (female). Samba is currently getting
over a urinary tract infection. On the advice of people at this newsgroup
and with the agreement of my new vet, I'm trying to switch her from dry s/d
to canned s/d. (When her pH is back down to the normal range, I plan to
switch her to canned c/d.)

A few days ago, I bought a few cans of s/d and gave a quarter of a can to
each cat and garnished each meal by putting plenty of dry s/d over top of
the 'wet' food. Bebop devoured the stuff and has no problem with it; he is
clearly ready to eat wet or dry food.

Samba is far more reluctant. She looked at the new food and sniffed at it
but was clearly unhappy. She nibbled a bit at the dry food that was covering
the wet s/d but only very sparingly. I'm guessing she found even the dry
food unpleasant when it touched that 'icky' wet food. She usually eats
ravenously so she obviously didn't find wet food, even garnished with dry
food, to be a treat. At their next meal, the can had been in the fridge
overnight so I once again put a quarter of the can in each dish, garnished
the meals heavily with dry food, and even heated the food in the microwave
for about 10 seconds. Samba was still very reluctant to eat it, even though
she must have been starving from having eaten so little at the previous
meal. She nibbled a tiny bit and then left the rest for Bebop. I went back
to dry food for both of them after that.

But I can't really let this stand; Samba particularly needs to be on wet
food to help keep her pH down so that she doesn't form any further crystals.
(Her current crystals are struvite.)

Can anyone suggest any way to persuade her to start eating the canned s/d?
Or should I just accept that she won't eat canned s/d and try her on other
prescription canned foods? My new vet also has Royal Canin and one other
name brand (the name escapes me at the moment).

I could even give her commercial canned foods if she doesn't like the
prescription stuff but I'd prefer to try the prescription route first. Would
commercial canned foods be a reasonable idea if she can't be coaxed into
eating the prescription canned foods? If yes, what brands would people
recommend?

Rhino