thick, dark yellow urine

Question
Thank You Tina your information was extremely helpful!!
I read one of the articles you recommended- on cats and thirst- Mikey, my cat, he wants to drink constantly from a faucet and not his water bowl(I wash it constantly)-he seems thirsty a lot- but don't all cats prefer faucets? (I don't allow him to drink from our faucets)Also- I will put all 3 cats on soft food- I did when they were kittens- soft and hard but was told hard food is needed for their teeth- not true? Do any of Mikey's symptoms sound like diabetes? Thanks again for answering my previous question so quickly- your very helpful!!

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-----Question-----
Hi Tina
My male cat is 4 yrs old- I have never had liter problems with him. Recently, he started urinating on my kitchen floor(same spot). I took him to the vet and he had an Xray done- which came back fine. My cat is doing this because I adopted a female cat and she is very dominate.(vet said he is stressed) My vet gave me antidepressants so my kitty can "retrain" himself to use the liter box again- the pills making him less anxious (this is only for 30 days). I am going to start this tomorrow - in the meantime- my cats urine today on the floor, was yellow and a little thick- he left almost like a small clump of fatty substance w/the urine. Have you ever heard of a "thick" type of urine? No blood was in the urine. My cat food is Iams multicat.
-----Answer-----
HI Melissa,

Thick urine and urinating outside the box is normally a sign of urinary tract problems. The "fatty stuff" is also a possible bad sign - it could be either due to an infection (glob of dead bacteria and mucous) or it could mean your cat's urinary tract is becoming blocked, which is very serious. I'd recommend you try taking your cat to another vet, because your regular vet should have checked for this the first time - not by an x-ray but by testing the urine. Please get a second opinion ASAP! It could just be that he is very dehydrated, but that is also a serious condition.

Also I would recommend switching your cats to a quality canned food. Dry food makes urinary tract problems worse and, contrary to what people always say, is actually worse for their teeth. Canned food is better for several reasons - higher in digestible protein, and increases your act's moisture intake. I frequently recommend Wellness and Nature's Variety canned foods which are free of grain and are very high quality, this is what I feed my own cats along with a home made raw food. Here are a couple of excellent websites with some information about why canned food is better for your cats:

http://www.catnutrition.org/clienthandout.html
http://www.catnutrition.org/vetletter.html
http://catinfo.org/#Cats_Need_Plenty_of_Water_With_Their_Food

Good luck, I hope your cat feels better soon.

Answer
HI Melissa,
Diabetes is fairly uncommon in a cat this young (you said 4 years old I think) but that doesn't make it out of the question. The vet should definitely do a urine test, that will show diabetes, urine crystals or other problems.

Many cats like to drink from faucets, some cats prefer fresh running water rather than water sitting in a bowl. I always use filtered or bottled water for cats because they are very sensitive to chemicals and don't like to drink chlorinated water. You can encourage them to drink more without getting on the countertop if you provide a drinking water fountain like this:
http://www.petfountain.com

Also if you switch to canned food make sure it doesn't have grains as filler, it is the grain in food that is bad for cat's teeth.

It has been recently shown that dry food does nothing to clean cat's teeth. It crumbles as soon as they bite it and it doesn't scrape teeth clean it just turns into powder. Many older vets still think about dry food cleaning cat' teeth but how come so many cats eating dry food still have terrible teeth? The same goes for "tartar control" treats and such they do nothing.

Cats can't grind grains between their teeth like we do, they have sharp pointy teeth not meant for grinding but for ripping meat. The only foods that can clean your cat's teeth are raw meat to chew, and CET dental chews which are clinically shown to clean teeth (http://www.cetdental.com).