male cat 3 years old has some kind of growth

Question
My cat had blockage two times with crystals and then pees blood still. He was on several meds and shots that lasted two weeks. So recently he is still peeing red blood and the doctor did am thrid ultra sound. He found something inside his bladder and wants to operate. If it is a tumor that cannot be removed or is in bad shape he said he will call. How can i tell if this surgery will be the last for my cat and if will continue to get crystals? He is only 3 and deserves a great life. What now?

Answer
Sue,

I'd be lying to you if I said that I could guarantee you that tis will be your kitty's last bout with crystals and surgeries to deal with them. Unfortunately I am not a vet so I can't really make diagnoses or provide you with a prognosis. In reality I believe that the bulk of feline health issues, including the presence of high amounts of crystals or stones within a cat's urinary tract or bladder are related to these cats receiving species inappropriate diets that are highly processed. Nobody can predict what the vet will find when he goes in to perform the surgery on your kitty's bladder and only you'll know how far you're prepared to take treating this kitty if the worst should happen. It's possible that the area your vet has seen is simply an area of inflammation caused by the irritation that sharp edges of crystals might have caused in the lining of the bladder which would probably be the best news, but again I'm not a vet so I can't really make any kind of diagnosis, prescribe treatments or give you a prognosis because that's outside the area of my expertise. The vast majority of pet food on the market today (YES, this includes so called premium pet foods, many prescription pet foods, vet recommended foods, etc) is absolute junk and simply not suited for a cat's unique nutritional needs. Kibble is a really bad choice for cats for a few reasons:

- Kibble contains very little moisture. Unlike dogs, people or other mammals today's domestic cats most likely evolved from the deserts of Egypt where water was scarce. As with any problems within nature there are solutions created over time with evolution. In the case of the first domestic cats the scarcity of water led to evolutionary changes that have ensured the survival of the species and created domestic cats as we know them today. Cats differ from dogs, people and other mammals when it comes to their instinctive drive to consume water, where many mammals have a strong drive to drink water this just isn't the case with domestic cats - they evolved with very little instinctive drive to drink water. Since there was very little potable water available to these cats in the deserts of Egypt they've evolved in a way that allows them to consume the moisture that their bodies need to function properly by eating their prey. Approximately 70-75% of a cat's natural prey is made up of water and dry food generally contains very little moisture in comparison.

- Cats are obligate or true carnivores, this means that they absolutely MUST have a meat based diet. The majority of dry cat foods are mostly made up of cheap, low quality carbohydrates used as cheap fillers. Cats don't digest carbs very well and unfortunately the nutrients within foods like rice, corn, potatoes, etc aren't nutritionally available to cats. In nature a cat's carbohydrate intake would be extremely low, in fact any carbohydrates that the cat consumed would be somewhat pre-digested for them within the digestive tract of their prey.

- Most commercially produced cat foods are very highly processed and loaded with chemical preservatives. Dry food is more processed than canned foods simply because the ingredients are combined, cooked, molded into kibble, dried out to the point that the kibbles are crunchy then preserved with chemicals such as fungicides, BHA, BHT and other chemicals that minimize the risk of the food becoming rancid during its long shelf life. Such highly processed foods don't come close to providing cats with the most basic nutrients that they would normally get from freshly killed prey so the majority of these nutrients must be replaced via vitamin/mineral mixtures that in some cases are synthetic in origin. In terms of the nutritional needs of people this is somewhat akin to living on a diet made up of highly processed foods and vitamin/mineral supplements rather than getting the bulk of the nutrients we need in order to be healthy through a good quality diet made up of fresh foods which is infinitely better for us. Just as with humans who spend the majority of their lives eating such a highly processed diet made up of low quality ingredients, chemical preservatives and vitamin/mineral supplements this is likely to shorten the life expectancy of a cat significantly and cause potentially serious health problems that could eventually prove fatal as is the case with a kitty that has stones within his bladder and/or urinary tract.

While you've written to me concerning the issues within your kitty's urinary tract, namely crystals I do think that it's in your (and his) best interests to take some time to educate yourself about the role that improper nutrition could be playing in this situation - after all you don't want to spend copious amounts of money on prescription diets that may actually be making things worse for your kitty and above all else you really don't want to subject this kitty to any more invasive medical procedures, surgeries, etc than you absolutely have to.

For many years I searched for a veterinarian that my cats and I were completely comfortable with and I really didn't take much time to research the pet food industry beyond the information provided to me about the nutritional needs of cats by a number of veterinarians over the years. When my eldest resident cat was fairly young I approached a local vet in the area and asked for information that would allow me to provide the best possible nutrition for my baby girl. I naively assumed that veterinarians receive extensive training in the area of nutrition so I took the nutritional recommendations made to me at that point and for many years to follow at face value. For many years I fed very well known, expensive veterinarian recommended pet foods in the misguided belief that my cats would be healthier and happier because they'd be receiving the best possible nutrition that I could provide for them. I believed that the premium, super premium and prescription diets that veterinarians recommended cost so much more than other brands of pet food because they were made from higher quality ingredients which would naturally cost more.

During the Menu Foods pet food recalls of 2007 my eldest resident cat was 8 years old, she developed acute renal failure in November of that year. Initially we noticed that she was vomiting a bit, but she still had a good appetite and seemed to be okay in every other way so we opted to wait for a couple of days to see if our girl's vomiting was related to a hairball before we took her in to see our vet since she'd had her annual physical only a few weeks prior to starting with the vomiting and been given a clean bill of health. Unfortunately within about 36 hours of our girl starting to vomit a couple of times a day I woke my husband up in the middle of the night so that we could rush to the emergency vet clinic. I had woken up to the sound of hissing, our other two resident cats seemed bewildered, they were keeping their distance from their fur sister who was hunkered down in a corner with hugely dilated pupils alternately retching as if she was going to vomit and hissing out of fear. It was immediately clear that something was very wrong so off we went to the emergency vet where we paid an obscene fee for an x-ray and some blood work.

The veterinarian on call came into the exam room with the results and very bluntly told us that our girl was in kidney failure and she recommended that we put her to sleep without delay. We weren't prepared to make that decision without at least consulting with our family vet so we brought the x-ray and a copy of the blood tests home with us and spent a couple of hours cuddling and trying to comfort our girl while we waited for our vet's answering service to put us through to our vet (at that time the service wouldn't put anyone through to the vet after 11 PM or before 6 AM). We were really worried that we were spending our last couple of hours with our baby girl and it broke our hearts to know that she was obviously feeling pretty rotten and we might be faced with some difficult choices that may lead us to life and death decisions, but we did our best to keep our emotions in check. When the answering service put us through to our vet we immediately filled her in on the morning's events up to that point. I read the blood results to the vet over the phone and she agreed to meet us at the clinic immediately so that we could start treating our girl to see if her kidneys could withstand the toxins that had built up in her system.

It was difficult to watch our vet and her staff go into ER mode, placing an IV catheter, hooking up IV fluids, taking vital signs and asking us for a more complete history, especially since we didn't know whether our girl would survive this health crisis or what her future would hold if she did manage to fight through and come out the other side of the medical odds that she was facing. 24 hours after our girl was admitted to hospital her blood work was repeated and my heart stopped when I was told that her kidney function had deteriorated further, it seemed to us as though the situation was becoming more bleak by the day. The veterinary staff had to force feed our girl once she stopped vomiting which she wasn't exactly pleased with, but luckily as a rescue kitten she was hand reared from roughly a week old or so and hand feeding with a syringe wasn't totally foreign to her. After the first repeat blood tests were performed our vet decided that it was best to wait for 48 hours before repeating any blood work, but she asked us if we'd be okay with her administering homeopathic remedies that might help MC pull through her struggle with kidney failure. We immediately agreed, after all we chose our family vet largely because she was competent, experienced, pleasant to deal with and she practices veterinary medicine with a holistic approach making use of her extensive training and experience with homeopathy. I visited my baby girl in the hospital a day after we'd agreed to the use of homeopathy and I was happy to see that our girl was looking somewhat better. I even got to feed her while I was visiting and aside from her usual bit of 'cattitude' she was okay with being force fed. When I left the clinic an hour or so later I knew that the following day would ultimately decide whether my baby girl would have a good chance at surviving her bout with renal failure and all that I could do was hope and pray that she was strong and spunky enough to pull through and get better. Late the following afternoon I was more than a little tense waiting for the vet to call us with our girl's latest kidney values, in fact I most likely drove the vet staff insane because I'd called a couple of times throughout the afternoon to see whether the blood tests had been run yet - eventually the staff kindly let me know that the vet would call me when the blood tests had been done and the results were back.

After what seemed like an eternity (in reality only a couple of hours) our vet called us, when she asked if I was sitting down I braced myself for bad news but as it turned out our girl had beaten the odds and her kidney function had returned completely to normal. We were told that they wanted to keep our baby overnight just to be sure that she was still okay in the morning, but that we could come out and get her first thing the next morning. Our favorite tech let us in to the clinic and set us up in an exam room while she took our girl's last set of vitals for the chart. Afterwards the tech came in and she was laughing, apparently our girl decided that having her temperature taken just wasn't her idea of fun that morning so she swatted the thermometer out of the tech's hand. We were relieved to hear that our spunky girl was back and full of as much attitude as she normally was! While we waited for the vet to come in and perform a final exam on our girl so that she could be released we were given a complete education in terms of administering supplementary fluids at home, picked up the prescription diet for kitties with kidney failure (on the vet's recommendation), got instructions for the oral antibiotics our girl would need when she got home and paid the bill...The part time vet told us that our girl would require supplementary fluids and an expensive prescription diet for the remainder of her life but to be honest we simply didn't care, all that mattered to us was that our girl was healthy again and we could take her home with us. Now nearly 3 years after MC's kidneys failed she is a completely healthy cat that will be turning 11 shortly. She vetoed the prescription diet fairly early on so she's been eating what our other resident cats eat and she hasn't had a need for supplementary fluids in nearly 2 years - her kidney function is 100% normal and she's completely recovered...Oddly enough conventional medicine doesn't have an explanation for why our girl's story turned out the way that it did (if it does then I haven't seen anything similar during the course of my research online) and we couldn't be happier.

After that experience I'm sure that you can understand my serious doubts about the safety and quality of food that I was feeding my cats. I never wanted to feel the guilt that goes along with knowing that my pet was suffering and seriously ill as a direct result of food that I put into her bowl. Over the years I'd approached a number of veterinarians about making a high quality, well balanced cat food in my own kitchen and they've all told me that there wasn't any safe way to provide a properly balanced homemade cat food and that I'd be risking my cats' lives if I fed them a homemade diet. After MC's bout with kidney failure I spoke with our family vet in depth about whether or not it was safe for me to feed my cats a homemade diet and I was stunned when she referred me to a website that she felt would provide me with the information that I needed to make a properly balanced, nutritionally complete cat food for my fur kids at home. This is a website that covers a wide variety of issues ranging from providing pet parents with information about the health problems that the majority of commercially produced cat foods (particularly the kibble type foods) are likely to cause to helping pet parents make the best choice for their kitty whether that's choosing a high quality canned cat food or making your own cat food. I would strongly encourage you to seriously consider checking the following websites out because I believe that you'll gain the knowledge that you need to make the best possible decisions for you and your cat over the long term. Be prepared though, some vets will actually go so far as to tell you that you're endangering your cat's life by following some of these recommendations - based on my experience and the fact that I feed my cats a properly balanced homemade diet based on the recipe that you'll find on the first site listed below I can tell you in all honesty that while there may be some element of risk if you handle the ingredients just as you would if you were cooking for yourself and take the time to thoroughly clean and disinfect food prep surfaces you shouldn't have any problems. My cats are doing incredibly well on their diet!

- www.catinfo.org

This is the site my vet directed me to. Catinfo.org was actually created by a veterinarian, the information is down to earth, simply put and easy to understand. Unlike some websites about feline nutrition this one doesn't sound like it was written by activists with very little education or information to back often flawed opinions/logic up and make it sound good to most people. Dr. Pierson has provided some fantastic information on the role that proper nutrition plays in terms of your cat's overall health. There are segments that deal specifically with the medical issues caused by improper diet and the concerns surrounding crystals within a cat's urinary tract/bladder are specifically explained in detail along with advice and solutions to help the cat get well.

- www.catnutrition.org

This site is referred to on catinfo.org and there is more in depth information about feline nutrition if you're interested in learning more about providing your kitty with the best possible nutrition. If you've got a multiple cat household this website has a recipe for a homemade diet that's quite similar to the one you'll find on catinfo.org, but it yields slightly more food.

- www.felinespride.com

Feline's Pride is a small company that manufactures a high quality properly balanced raw cat food that can be shipped frozen and they guarantee that the food will arrive mostly frozen provided that you are there to sign for the package and store the food immediately. This is a great solution for pet parents who would like to have back up food in the house just in case key ingredients are temporarily unavailable from your butcher or you simply don't have time to make your own food but you'd like to do what's best for your kitty. Cost is a factor that you should be aware of.

- http://www.halopets.com/pet-education/pet-articles/pet_food_what_you_need_to_kno...

This article provides you with information that is useful when it comes to deciphering what exactly ends up in your pet's food. I've seen this article on a variety of websites and I do believe that it's reasonably accurate. I do not recommend reading this article at mealtime if you've got a sensitive tummy because some of the content is less than appetizing.

At this point my thoughts and prayers are with you and your kitty. Hopefully after you've taken some time to educate yourself a bit more you'll be able to make more informed choices about your cat's care and how you'd like to proceed. I really hope that everything turns out well for you and your little man. If you have any further cat related questions, concerns or you'd simply like an understanding ear to bounce ideas off of I'd be more than happy to help you out to the best of my ability.