Feline Lower urinary tract disease is substantially more than just
urine pH. Magnesium levels, potassium levels, calcium levels, sodium
levels and a number of biological factors must be taken into account.

Pet foods designed for struvite dissolution or struvite maintenace
almost always are subject to much more critical testing than just urine
pH. Hill's prefers to use a system called APR - activity product ratio.
You can google on this and learn more about it if your wish. Basically
this tests ALL the factors involved, including biological and
determines if a given nutrient profile will acheive the goal. Waltham /
Royal Canin uses what they call the RSS - Risk Super Saturation - it's
similar test process, but done in vitro. I am not sure what Purina does
nor Eukanuba. Neither promote thier food for struvite dissolution, only
for stuvite maintenace. They haven't ever published anything relative
to the process they choose to use. Leo over in Europe uses RSS as well.

Where ZUZU always goes wrong is she allows her undisguised hatred for
Hill's to interfere with her logic. It's an emotional decision and not
one established in any science or logical facts. Wellness has never
published ANY testing of any kind to insure that struvite dissolution
will ocurr with thier diet with added methioform or any other urinary
acidifier. Wellness can't even tell you what the mean urine pH range
will be of the various diets they produce and why on earth should they?
- they are not in the business of creating theerapeutic diets. They
create diets for healthy kitties.

Like usual ZUZU likes to stick with third grade math level of analyzing
diets - just the ingredients and never mind the nutrients. In the case
of any animal with a disease condition that is patently dangerous in
the extreme. Examples of this cat or that cat that "did well" are
completely meaningless. We are talking about the general population of
struvite dissolution cats here, not one single cat or even a dozen
single cats. The peer reviewed published data covering Hill's and Royal
Canin's dissoltuion products is huge - in contrast there isn't a single
bit of published data to support Wellness and methioform tabs. Advice
like that can send the cat back for another surgery and will ZUZU pay
the bill for it? Not likely.

As an interesting note to the whole discussion. You may know that since
1981 Calcium Oxalate stones have grown as a percentage of all stones in
a cat. By 1995 CaOx stones overcame struvites as the most common stone.
This trend began reversing itself in 2002 and now once again in 2004
there were more struvite stones found that CaOx stones.

1999 33% Struvite, 55% CaOx
2002 40% Struvite, 50% CaOx
2003 42% Struvite, 47% CaOx
2004 45% Struvite, 44% CaOx
The missing percentage is taken up by urates, cystines, and assorted
other unusual uroliths.

Adding an acidifier to an already acidified diet is very risky business -
but if the cat won't eat a prescription diet, you may not have a choice.
However, adding an acidifier to an already acidified diet is a bit more
complicated than just giving the cat the pill or mixing it in food and
checking urine pH and sediment once in awhile.

The dose must be carefully calculated and serum chemistries that includes
total CO2 content and potassium levels must done periodically to make sure
that the cat's acid-base status is still normal.  Otherwise, chronic
acidification can lead to metabolic acidosis which in turn can cause
potassium depletion which causes further metabolic acidosis and even further
potassium depletion and eventually renal dysfunction and bone
demineralization.

Wellness contains a lot of plant material (sweet potatoes, carrots,
vegetable gums, flaxseed, alfalfa, cranberries, blueberries, yellow squash,
yellow zucchini, garlic, spirulina)  so it has to be already highly
acidified to produce a low urine pH.  The amount of dl-methionine already in
the diet must be considered in calculating the dose because high levels of
dl-methionine causes hemolytic anemia, met hemoglobinemia, and Heinz body
formation in cats.

Phil

My first cat Pookie was on Methioform daily for about 10 years, after a
wicked UTI and obstruction.  He did beautifully on it and never had
another incidence of UTI/obstruction.

-L.

If it ain't broke don't fix it - that would be the first rule here. I
presume you are seeing your vet on a regular basis? Getting a
urinalysis done occasionally? One of the issues around bladder stones
and crystals is that the age of the cat has an impact. Cats from 1-6
years of age are more likely to be struvite formers, cats over age 7
are more likely to be CaOX formers - feeding methioform or other
urinary acidifiers to a cat forming CaOx stones would be the wrong way
to go. Persian, Himalayans, and Burmese are more likely to be CaOx
formers as well. Let you veterinarian be your guide here, s/he has much
more knowledge and more importantly knows _your_ cat as an individual.

marys@catlover.com wrote:

Yes, we know that. Read the post again and take note of where I said "or
you don't want to feed your cat crap." Then go read the labels on some
of the prescription foods and look at some of the garbage they contain.
Prescription foods are not the be all end all to treating a medical
condition and there are always alternatives.

Megan  

                                   

This sounds like a great idea.

Here you go again with your BS. You don't need a "peer reviewed" study
to know if something is crap. Do *you* need one to know sh.t is crap?
Probably. Ingredients have been discussed here over and over and
claiming a cat can "tolerate" corn, soybean mill run, ethoxyquin and
other garbage you put in pet food doesn't mean it should be in there or
that it is species appropriate. You can do all the smoke and mirrors you
want. Smart people see right through you. Oh and while you're at it,
we're still waiting for you to answer the question equalizer put to you
asking if Hill's, who claims they don't do animal testing, uses/pays
outside sources to do animal testing.

Megan