(Mike) wrote in message . com...
I need some food information for cats with Oxalate stones. I read
somewhere that cats with Struvite crystals should eat a meat based
diet and cats with Oxalate stones should eat a plant based diet. I was
always under the impression that plant based diets weren't very good
for cats so now I'm confused. Could someone clear this up for me? What
exactly does a plant based diet mean?

I'm also looking for the dry foods available for prevention of Oxalate
stones. It appears that there aren't that many, I only found four. The
ones I found are Hill's Prescription X/D, IVD Therapeutic Control,
Waltham/Royal Canin Urinary SO, and Eukanuba/Iams PH/O. Of these four
does anyone think one is better than the others? It looks like the X/D
aims for a urine PH of 6.6-6.8 while the others aim for 6.1-6.9. I
don't which is better. Also, even if the cat should be eating a plant
based diet, it seems like there's a little too much corn in these
foods.

Does anyone have any suggestions or opinions they'd like to share with
me? BTW, I will be talking with the veterinarian about this but I just
want to gather information before I do so I know exactly what's going
on.

Mike,
It will be helpful if you step back just a bit and examine
nutrients, not ingredients. Oxalates, struvites, purines, etc. are all
composed of nutrients, not one of them is composed of an ingredient.
Examining a food based on ingredients is kind analogous to simple
third grade elementary mathematics - simple addition and subtraction.
Taking the next step up and examining a food based upon nutrients is
kind of like advancing to senior high school mathematics - algebra and
trig.
Your cat has no use for a molecule of chicken/venison/beef/tuna
muscle tissue, what the cat needs is the individual amino acids
contained within that molecule of chicken. If your cat needs trytophan
for instance, it really doesn't matter at all if that trytophan is
sourced from beets or buffalo. It does not matter where the source is,
only that sufficient quantities of bio-available tryptophan is being
ingested.
While it is true that cats are indeed obligate carnivores, there
are colonies of cats at UC Davis that have been on a purely vegetarian
corn gluten diet for many many years, without any ill effects.
Plant source versus animal source has nothing whatsoever to do with
the type of urolith a cat may develop. Rather it is the provision of
excess amounts of magnesium, phosphates, and a urine pH that is too
high 6.5 that contributes to struvite development. In calcium
oxalates it is the levels of oxcilic acid and calcium ingested and a
urine pH that is too low 6.2
Certain breeds of cats are more prone to oxalate formation than
others. Burmese, Persian and Himalayan are all oxalate prone. Older
cats 5 yrs old are more likely to form oxalates than younger cats.
Some manufacturers take this risk status into perspective when they
create foods. Senior cat foods tend to create increased urine pH in
the 6.6-6.8 range, younger adult foods will usually be structured to
create a urine pH between 6.2-6.4. Narrow urine pH values indicate the
manufacturer is spending time and effort to control urine pH levels.
Wide ranges like 6.1-6.9 indicate the manufacturer either can't
regulate the production process well enough to provide a consistent
urine pH, or doesn't care to do so.
All dry diets are predominantly grain based. That means they
contain more grains than they contain meat proteins. For the purposes
of urolith prevention you should be looking at canned foods. Canned
foods force more water excretion through the urinary tract and thus
dilute the urine. Diluted urine is less likely to form uroliths. Dry
foods, even with added water, tend to force mroe water through the
feces and leave the urine more concentrated.