Written by Dr.Laxmi Iyer Crystals! From a feline perspective it's a nightmare word.
Stones in the urinary tract - either the kidney, bladder or urethra can be a painful condition - that can be the reason for emergency surgery. The trick is to play with them - even if your cat is a religious carpet and lounge napper. Get them out to breathe some fresh air...Lift them if they won't budge.
Coax them into the garden. Make them play...Make them work a little to get their food.
That means if it's chow time, you could place their bowl in a slightly remote place where they would need to climb up and down staircases or walk through serpentine corridors. The dogs had their own role to play in making sure that the cats got their fair share of exercise.
Watch out for the magnesium levels
Magnesium when present in excess in the diet can cause the formation of magnesium-ammonium-phosphate calculi formation.
Examine the food
Whether you feed your cat canned food or dry food the important thing to take care of is to watch out - for how much of the stuff your cat is eating and whether in trying to maintain his or her caloric requirements, more of the magnesium isn't being consumed as well. When you feed your cat commercial cat food check the label to ensure that the magnesium content is less than 20 mg / 100kcal.
If the caloric value of the food your cat consumes is low then in order to meet the calorie needs, you cat will eat more of the stuff....and that in turn will lead to more magnesium intake....propelling the beginnings of a urolith to get formed somewhere in the urinary tract. The truth is that 90% of all the calculi or stones found in the urinary system of cats belong to a single group. Nine out of every ten uroliths detected are magnesium-ammonium-phosphate (struvite) crystals.
About 0.5-3% of the uroliths seen in cats are oxalate and urate while 3-5% are gelatinous plugs. These gelatinous plugs which have significant amounts of struvite occur in the urethra and most often near the urethral orifice. Besides your cat's genetic predisposition there are 4 common sense things you can do to prevent those crystals from condensing in your cat's urinary system. The best way to prevent the crystals from happening is to take care of WEM - an easy acronym for Water, Exercise and Magnesium.
Make sure that your cat drinks enough water
Water! The cool drink that can erase more than a hundred ailments can sure help your cat too! It's all the little drops that count. Make sure that your cats are well hydrated. A lack of water can be detrimental to your cat's health.
Remember the E word
Now, your cats are not natural aquaphiles. If your cat is not naturally fond of water – you need to tastefully inculcate the taste for nature’s brew. So, the best way to get them to the watering ground is to create the thirst. They need to be thirsty enough to down the aqua...and the reasoning that goes with it is that they will get thirsty when they have had their daily bout of good, wholesome exercise.
