What to feed UTI prone cats?

I thought I'd ask this here just to see what everyone thought!

So I have two cats. Both have had UTI's in the past; Brody (he's a Ragdoll, he'll be 5 in June) has only had one incident. Sneak (DMH, he'll be 6 in Nov.) on the other hand went through a month or so of issues on/off last summer. They both cost me.. oh, $600+ in vet bills.

Of course, my vet put them both on prescription diets. Science Diet C/D. I am.. SO sick of feeding them this crap, and spending $57 for a 16lb. bag to boot! Granted, it works, so I can't complain too much.

2 months ago I switched them to Before Grain wet for their PM meals. They eat the C/D dry in the AM. They have both done very well on this, no issues whatsoever *knock on wood*.

I'm SO tempted to get them off the C/D now. I have maybe 10lbs. of it left at this point. I would like to keep them on some dry food, which I know many say not to do with UTI prone cats.. but it's easier for me to give them dry in the AM's before I go to work.

Of course, I can just keep doing what I'm doing currently.. but I was thinking of trying the Before Grain kibble, since they have done well on the wet formula. Anyone have any suggestions?

I, personally, would stick to wet food. Drop the prescription food and go all wet.

I do know people though who have gone on to add dry food to their UTI cat's diet and they do fine, but it's a gamble and it's up to you.

Yeah.. I know that's probably what I should do. I just know it'd end up costing me more, because they'd have to eat more wet food (since dry is higher in calories). Right now, they go through a 5.5oz. can every 2 days between them (they each get 1/4 can in the PM).

Yeah, canned food costs a ton, mine both eat all canned right now. Any chance you'd want to try raw?

That's what I was going to ask. Raw for cats is a bit of a pain the butt, but can be worth it. I've been feeling bad lately, I got lazy last summer when I was traveling a lot and put my cats back on kibble.....I keep meaning to start raw again though.

Good websites if you're interested....

http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

http://www.catnutrition.org/index.html

Well the nice thing about raw and cats is it requires like no transition. You don't have to spend this many weeks doing bone in, and this many weeks on this protein, and then that protein, and then after a couple of months add in organ. If your cat says he likes everything you can start feeding him a complete raw diet, organs and all, on day one and expect like no issues. I'm sure some cats get upset tummies but it seems like nothing compared to what I read on raw forums for dogs with all those bowel issues during transition. The hard part about cats is that they usually give you a lot of trouble about switching, they just won't touch anything. You often have to begin the transition by tricking them into eating some small pieces of raw meat and then go from there.

Well, I feed my dogs prey model raw.. so I have considered it.

But like Panzerotti said, I've read so many things about it being a royal PITA that I've been afraid to switch LOL. That and I know cats have more.. specific requirements than dogs (so it seems!), so I'm afraid of screwing them up.

I *have* tried pre-made stuff on them before, the NV Instinct stuff and Primal. The NV Instinct they did not tolerate well.. think exorcist vomit.. blah. Primal, they did see to like.

I did raw with my cat for a little under a year, so not exactly long enough to say a ton about the diet, but long enough to say that it was pretty simple. It's the same as with dogs...80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other secreting organ. You do not need to grind even though many websites do that, the only supplement you need is fish oil. As far as taurine goes, just try to feed heart and feed chicken thighs instead of breasts as the dark meat has more taurine. I couldn't really consider continuing with my cat because I couldn't get him to eat liver (I basically had to force feed it to him) and it is a requirement. I think I could have made it work with the help of a blender but I was going to college and wasn't going to make my parents continue the diet. I sort of wish they would have though, he had so much more muscle mass and wasn't constantly trying to steal food from us. The fact that your cats have been willing to eat pre made raw make me think they might not be that hard to transition. It's worth a try, if they are too difficult you can always stop. I started with teeny pieces of raw chicken breast laid out among his favorite food, pre cooked chicken from Stop and Shop. He start eating the cooked chicken but grabbed up the raw as well in all of the excitement, and we just added more and increased size of the raw pieces from there.

Here are a few more websites to check out:
http://www.rawfedcats.org/
http://catcentric.org/nutrition-and-food/raw-feeding/

FYI- the websites may talk about franken prey, which is what you think of as PMR. The author of the second website is going to start calling it PMR now. It was called franken prey because we considered prey model raw to be feeding whole prey...mice, chicks, rabbits, etc.