Neither Boris or Bellis suffer from this disease, but so many indoor cats do...

What is Feline idiopathic cystitis?

 

Feline idiopathic cystitis is a modern lifestyle disease of the young cat. It probably encompasses most of the diseases of the lower urinary tracts of young cats, including crystalluria, and bladder stones. It is extremely painful and one of the biggest challenges for veterinarians and owners of felines today. Many cats are euthanased because of this serious illness.

 

Symptoms include periuria (urinating outside the catbox), dysuria (difficulty in urinating), pollakuria (increase in frequency) and haematuria (the presence of blood in the urine). An acute episode usually lasts 3-7 days, leading most people to assume that treatment with antibiotics at this point cured the problem, (when they most likely have had no effect at all - only 2% of cats under 10 years have positive urine cultures to bacteria).
Perhaps the only sign could be alopecia (loss of hair) in the inguinal area (caudal ventral belly), an afflicted cat will often lick down here because of bladder pain.

 

Well idiopathic means we are not really sure, but certain factors have been identified

 

 F.I.C.(feline idiopathic cystitis) has appeared in the last 30 years as more cats have switched to predominantly dry foods and as cats have begun living inside with other cats.

 

This is a very unnatural situation for our little friends.

 
 Cats originated from arid areas with little standing water. They do not possess a strong drive to drink as most of their water requirements were traditionally obtained from their food. Mice are made up of approximately 75% water. Dry foods are about 8% water.
Cats with F.I.C. do not drink enough. Urine specific gravity is a measurment of how concentrated urine is. Cats with F.I.C. usually have a USG of over 1.050. This means that they have very concentrated urine, which is a sign of chronic dehydration (cats fed on soley canned food may have a USG of 1.030). Overly concentrated urine can lead to direct irritation of the bladder, the formation of crystals and possible degradation of the bladders surface coating. Chronic dehydration is not a good idea for the cat as they are the species of animal most likely to suffer from kidney disease in their old age.
 
 However the majority of cats with chronic dehydration will not get this disease. Cats with F.I.C. have an abnormal response to stress. Most owners do not believe their cat is stressed, but in a cat with F.I.C. small things lead to an imbalance between the sympathetic nervous system and the cat's stress hormones. Cats living indoors have lost direct control of their resources. They have not chosen their living space, and are dependent on you, the owner, to provide them what they need. Cats are not small dogs, (which are quite happy to be dependent on their owners), and certainly find it stressful if they have to compete for resources, or if their resources fall below their fastidious standards (e.g. a dirty litter box) or if they simply don't get to choose what they prefer (e.g. food type, cat litter, size of cat litter box, etc).


Being inside in a multicat household is stressful to most cats as they are forced to socialise and compete with another cat that they haven't chosen to live with - and cats enjoy teasing each other. Even siblings don't always get along. Human culture is based on the family group as apposed to the individual lifestyles of our cats; despite this could you live with your brother or sister the rest of your life in the same apartment, without the possibility of leaving?

 

 

This usually involves a veterinarian and some lifestyle changes. It definitely involves us changing our thinking from our living space reflecting the needs of our lifestyle, to it reflecting the needs of our cat.

 

 We need to identify and avoid things that stress our cats. There is no cure to the way an affected cat deals with stress, but successful management of this disease is achievable.

As trips to the veterinarian are very stressful to cats it is probably best to spend some money and have most of the diagnostic tests performed early on at the same visit, if your cat fits the profile of F.I.C. This may be the vet taking a urine sample directly from the abdomen for analysis and culture, an xray and possibly ultrasound or cystoscopy. Stress can be reduced on the day of travel by the use of zylkene.

Answers to the following questions can be obtained by the veterinarian:

Are there bacteria present in the bladder, and are antibiotics warrented? (Unlikely in cats <10 years, with overconcentrated urine)

How concentrated is my cats urine i.e. does he/her drink enough?
Are there kidney or bladder stones present?
Is there thickening/fibrosis/other defects of the bladder wall?

If your cat has this disease you will probably have the following questions:

1/ How can I avoid the everyday things that stress my cat?
2/ How can I get my cat to drink more, what should I feed and what is the best way to change my cat over to wet food?
3/ What about medicine?

 

Lets look at these individually.

 

Avoiding stress is often about giving your cat a choice and letting it feel that it is in control of its environment. Enriching a cat's environment, and providing a cat with vital resources will give control back to your cat.

Following the advice present on the website http://indoorpet.osu.edu/cats/ has found to help dramatically with this condition. Click on basic needs on the menu to the left.
At the bottom of this page is a document on cats' needs from the above website that you can download. There is a lot of other information on their website that you will need to go through that will help to avoid stressors and create 'Kitty Heaven'.

 

 Many important things need to be considered, including:
How many cats do you have and are there specific situations where they can stress each other? - a classic example would be one cat thinking it was fun to spring onto the other cat as it exits the litter box.


Is your cats litter box big enough(1.5 x size of cat), cleaned regularly enough, in a very quiet low traffic area??
What type of cat litter do you use( should be a clumping clay based type that resembles sand) - is it scented(not a good idea)? - try to let your cat choose what it can like best.
Do you have enough litter trays (one for every cat plus one)?
Do you use a plastic liner under the cat litter (bad idea as it inhibits their scratching behaviour)?

 You can also visit the feliway website to read more and take their cat stress test.

 

Why is water so important again?

 Water has a cleaning and diluting effect on the bladder. Dilute urine is less irritating to the bladder wall and less likely to crystalise out.

We know that cats with this disease usually have superconcentrated urine and eat a lot of dry food.

 

Dry food is convenient for us, but the most important ingredient for urinary health will always be water.  Veterinary diets are available to help with the dissolution of crystals and to stabilise the pH of the cats urine, Some also encourage the cat to drink more; you will want to change your cat over to a quality diet of predominately wet food, and to be adding water to any dry food fed.
  

Changing the diet suddenly can be stressful for your cat, offering new food next to the old is recommended to keep the cat in control, it may take up to a month before your cat will accept a new diet. Warming food slightly can increase palatability.

 Royal Canin's urinary diet is commonly prescribed for this problem. It helps prevent crystals, dissolve struvite and has glycosaminoglycans to help the bladder's mucosa. Without a change of diet 90% of cats with F.I.C: will have a recurrence of the problem within a year. If the diet is changed to the dry form of the Royal Canin's urinary s/o 39% of cats will have a recurrence within a year, compared to only 11% of those cats which are exclusively fed the wet form. This illustrates again the benefits of water.

 Hills make a diet called c/d that dissolves struvite crystals, prevents oxalate and has extra essential fatty acids that reduce inflammation of the bladder wall. This is also a good choice for these patients.  

 Medicine in the form of painkillers is very important in the acute stages of this disease. Always seek veterinary advice - paracetamol is toxic to cats and is likely to be lethal even at small doses.