Bulk buying veterinary cat food

MoonDancer256

Hi guys,

I'm currently trying to find somewhere to bulk-buy Royal Canin S/O urinary food for cats. Vets have such a huge markup on it; I'm going through €50 every 8-10 days which is a lot, and I'd save a lot of money if I could find somewhere to order it in large amounts at a time without the vet's markup (largest bag the vets do is 7kg).

Any one know of any companies / websites offering this?

Thanks!

mymo

Hope you don't mind me asking but What's the problem with cat?
Had some issues with one of ours tried a few of those urinary foods and best one was from local vet cost about €25 for enough for 2 weeks for 2 cats.
I can't remember the name, but cat went about 12 months with no probs on it.(longest of all brands i tried)

MoonDancer256

As I said above, he's on Royal Canin S/O urinary food. He gets crystals and the latest vet (I only recently moved to Cork, and am trying out vets at the moment to find one I like) thinks he has Feline Urologic Syndrome (FUS) so he's still pissing on stuff even when he's on prescription food, but it does help at least. I have to use Feliway all the time, and he's on Metacam to alleviate any pain, which was the only other suggestion the vet had.

If it was just him on his own it wouldnt cost us too much, but I have 5 cats and they're free fed, so all of them are currently pigging on the expensive prescription food. Apparently it does them no harm to eat it, but it hurts my wallet.

I do intend to start doing scheduled feeding for them all in different rooms to avoid this in the future, but it's not really an option at the moment so I'm trying to find a cheaper way to get this prescription food.

Vet practises have a big markup on their prescription foods, so I'm trying to find somewhere that doesn't do that.

mymo

Had same problem, didn't try royal canin but few others.
Mark up varies from vet to vet, my small vet charges less than some big pet stores. He also was very good and looked up best foods for me, The one i had was also prescription, it did come in several sizes. As I found out most expensive is not always best, took me 2 years to find food that worked.
Have you tried online stores or suppliers?
Hope cat is ok, not good outlook with this. Ours had op to clean out bladder, as he had blockage from larger crystals and did quite well after that. But sadly passed away last summer.
Think the website medicanimal.com does good variety of urinary supplements and food, you might find it there. It's a uk site but may deliver to Ireland.

MoonDancer256

mymo wrote: »

Hope cat is ok, not good outlook with this. Ours had op to clean out bladder, as he had blockage from larger crystals and did quite well after that. But sadly passed away last summer.
Think the website medicanimal.com does good variety of urinary supplements and food, you might find it there. It's a uk site but may deliver to Ireland.

That website seems more expensive than my vets for the same food, but thanks anyway I tried googling for a supplier but not having much luck so far.

Sorry to hear about your kitty Mine is about 3-4 years old at the moment, and thankfully his problems dont seem to be TOO serious; he gets crystals and pees on my stuff periodically, but he's never been blocked. So far he's only needed prescription food, painkillers and antibiotics - no invasive treatments. I don't appreciate him pissing on my stuff, but I love him too much to be angry with him. He's been better lately as well, less pissing on important stuff like sofas/beds. I don't mind so much when he victimises towels/rugs.

MoonDancer256

Munster Gal wrote: »

This might be of interest to you:
http://www.sunbeamvets.com/PetHealthPlan.html
There's a 10% discount on food if you join.

Unfortunately that's the vet practise I've been going to, and wasn't impressed with so far. I've also been recommended against them by someone this week I expect I'll be looking around to try another vet in the area for future treatments of my animals.

comongethappy

I had problems with my male constantly getting UTI's. One vet gave him antibiotics for the first time, but she didn't want to give out any antibiotics after that as she felt it would be too much for him, so she recommended Feliway as his seemed to be triggered by any stress (didn't really help that much in my case). I felt so bad about him being in pain all the time despite the Feliway and natural supplements (it would go away for a couple weeks, then come back), I took him to another vet, who said he should be on wet food only, but he's very prone to gingivitis so that wasn't really a good option.

So, after much searching and trying, I'm on Orijen now, and he hasn't had a UTI since, even when we've been off on holidays! You can buy it on www.zooplus.co.uk (it's cheaper than zooplus.ie). It has a very high protein level though, so if it's a problem in the kidneys I wouldn't feed it, but if it's in the lower urinary tract it may just do the trick! I give them dry in the morning, dry / wet in the evening, and a little bit more dry before bed just to clean their teeth a bit.

This is just my experience. If you're finding the vet's food is helping, I wouldn't take him off of it. You can buy it online at http://www.vetmeduk.com/royal-canin-urinary-feline-4312-0.html , 6kgs for about £35 once you're able to get them your perscription. Not sure how much delivery would be, you may want to email them to find out.

MoonDancer256

comongethappy wrote: »

So, after much searching and trying, I'm on Orijen now, and he hasn't had a UTI since, even when we've been off on holidays! You can buy it on www.zooplus.co.uk (it's cheaper than zooplus.ie).

I had all my animals on Orijen prior to these issues starting. Sadly it doesn't seem to fix his urinary issues, though they loved the flavour and had nice glossy coats.

Thats part of the reason I really need to try get into a seperated feeding routine so that my other 4 cats are back on Orijen and not this Royal Canin rubbish

Blueprint

Zooplus do some spcialist cat food, including some Urinary, they have a whole lot of different wet and dry foods UTI foods on the German site, but it's hard to read up on as it's all in German!

I was of the impression that if cats were having urinary problems they'd be better off on a wet food diet?

My younger female had some UTI issues in the past, she started weeing on stuff right after she was spayed, i took her to the vets, vet couldn't find anything wrong with her, but gave her antibiotics just in case; she stopped weeing on stuff directly, but started scent marking in the house instead. Last December she came down with a really bad dose of UTI (I suspect caused by her going out and sitting on walls in sub-zero temperatures!) and was pretty miserable for a week, she was on antibiotics and steroids and we sent her urine off to be sampled, which luckily came back clear. So I decided to feed her more wet food in the future and she's not been sick since and also stopped her marking behaviour. I also give her some cranberry extract.

Since she's started getting better, she's like a new cat and much more outgoing and friendly than she was before, it's like having her kitten self back!

comongethappy

so sorry to hear that it didn't work for your cat OP, I know how frustrating it can be when they're in pain! I really hope that the RC works for your cat in the end, or that you can find a solution to help him.

I just found this article - not sure if it helps but may be worth a try http://en.allexperts.com/q/Cat-Food-3490/food-cat-recurrent-urinary.htm

Best of luck

MoonDancer256

Blueprint wrote: »

Zooplus do some spcialist cat food, including some Urinary

I've been told "urinary" isn't enough, it needs to say S/O on it in order to be the right stuff. Sadly zooplus is just selling generic "urinary" which I guess is good for some but wouldn't work for my guy.

Blueprint wrote: »

I was of the impression that if cats were having urinary problems they'd be better off on a wet food diet?

It can help because wet food means their water intake is higher, but in the case of this particular cat, he loves his dried food and I already have problems trying to make him keep the weight on (he's pretty slim) so I don't want to switch him to wet food and risk him not eating enough.

One thing I am doing this month is buying a drinkwell water fountain. I've already put out more water bowls, which seems to have encouraged drinking, but a fountain will be that bit better since all my cats love running water.

Blueprint

I definitely reccommend the fountain, I got a really cheap one from Dunnes (on sale for a tenner) for my cats last year and they all abandoned the water bowl in favour of it, including the dog and do drink much more.

My cats prefer wet to dry, they're on Orijen as well, of which they have a bowl out for them all the time, but they get excited when they hear me putting out the wet. They don't like the crap stuff you buy in the shops and won't eat it, but love the Bozita tetra packs, they get one a day between the three of them and could quite happily eat 2!

I tried soaking the dry food in water before, but it wasn't popular!

My female who had the UTI is pretty skinny as well, I wonder is there a connection? Mind you, she eats as much as the other two cats, but is twice as active, which is why she's thin!

MoonDancer256

My cats get excited if they hear me opening a cat or sachet of wet food as well, but there's so much howling if they ever run out of dried food!

I haven't tried Bozita yet - I've tried almost every OTHER brand in an effort to find one that my picky Bengal will eat. She doesnt like dried food (except Royal Canin prescription, go figure!) and will only pick at canned food; it has to be sachets, and she adores cheap and nasty food like Whiskas (like feeding your kids McD all the time ). She's getting some sachets of Hills at the moment but I don't really like that much.

I'll give Bozita a shot when I do my next zooplus order

As to the skinniness of the ill cat, he's also very active which I guess is part of the reason for his issues. I think a combination of being active, eating dried food, not drinking enough and being easily stressed helps cause his urine problems.

Blueprint

The Bozita might not be the best wet food, but it's not the worst and the cats are doing well on it.

The Porta 21 tins look like something you'd eat yourself and they've got a lot of Aloe Vera jelly in them, which is good for hydration, my lot loved them, but I wasn't too happy that all the fish came from Thailand. Plus they're a bit too pricey for me to buy regularly.

Your UTI cat sounds a lot like my Lily, I wonder if there's a personality type that gets UTI's!? What really makes me happy is that she seems so much more relaxed than she used to be, which hopefully means we've broken the cycle.

MoonDancer256

Most recently, I tried my guys on Cosma and that wasn't a big hit. And god it stinks.. Great ingredients though I guess. Grain free etc.

Bozita looks ok; all named meats, not "byproducts", and no soy protein/grains. Looks really cheap considering what I normally end up spending on wet food as well.

I think UTIs are just really common in cats. Current vet thinks my cat has FUS, hence stress affecting whether or not he starts getting infections and pissing on my stuff. Sadly both him and his brother (I got 2 from the same litter) are nervous. They've improved a lot, and I've tried very hard to socialise them, but they're still much less confident than my other 3, and I think a big country move recently didn't help that. That said, they do love being in a big house with stairs

Blueprint

I tried Cosma for my lot a few months back, they ate the lamb ok, but hated the chicken and wouldn't eat it. And my lot aren't all that fussy, especially my big male, who will usually eat anything.

The added advantage with the Bozita is that the dog has a great time licking out the packets when they're empty!

The Sweeper

Try looking into a raw food diet.

It's a decision you have to make for yourself, because your vet may not support you in the decision to switch your cat to raw meat, organs and bone, and I can't guarantee it will work.

However, raw food converts swear by raw diets for helping with FUS, IBS and, in my case, increased bone in my cat's diet is fixing his problem with anal gland blockage. The more raw bone he gets, the less scooting I see.

There is information ALL OVER the web regarding raw feeding for cats, and there's a Yahoo group with information.

The unfortunate part is the groups and boards and chat rooms are full of evangelical americans with little tolerance for unsure newbies who aren't convinced they're doing the right thing for their cat, so it can be offputting.

I've switched mostly to raw with my five cats, and I can tell you they look better on it, eat less (though have pigged a bit and need to diet!), have great coats, I have absolutely zero hairball puking and as I said, this anal gland issue seems to be clearing up. The other plus is it's far, FAR cheaper than any commercial petfood diet.

If you have a bunch of cats, it's worth looking into it even just for the financial aspect!

PinkTulips

MAJD... what sort of meat do you buy them, do you ask the butcher for the same sort of meat a dog would get or are there specific types of meat and offal that suit cats best?

mine love when i give them raw meat, which i do whenever i'm cooking meat for us. the only downside is if i give bones they have an annoying tendancy to drag them all over the house to gnaw on them, i find them for days afterwards!

The Sweeper

Cats need taurine and arginine - especially taurine - and they get that from muscle meat. The harder a muscle works during life, the more taurine.

The ratio for raw feeding is 80% muscle meat to 10% bone to 10% organ meat (usually half and half liver and kidney).

The muscle meat I feed includes kangaroo steak, cheap beef steaks, any meat on one-day special, lambs hearts, lamb kidney and lamb liver, raw chicken and ground chicken carcasses for the bone - or chicken necks, but mine aren't crazy about those. In terms of muscle meat, you could feed an ox tongue, for instance, as the 80% - and I can buy one of those for $4.

You can also supplement if you wish as long as you don't upset the balance - I add pure taurine because taurine can be lost through freezing meat. I add kelp powder because it's full of marvellous trace elements and helps make their coats shiny. If they're not getting enough bone, I add powdered eggshell for calcium. (Just keep and dry your own eggshells from organic, free range eggs, and then crush them up to a fine powder). If my cats have watery eyes or sneezies, I add L-Lysine amino acid, which is excellent for feline herpes.

The more used they get to eating chunks of raw meat, the less work it is for you. I can cut a lamb heart in half and leave it down for them these days and they gnaw their way through it - the problem is that kibble is so easy to eat they lose the knack of holding down meat with paws and claws to tear at it. Halving a lamb heart is basically even less effort than opening a can and emptying it onto a plate.

The most important thing about feeding raw is keeping a balance and the 80/10/10 ratio is important to keep in mind. You don't have to feed that precise ratio at every meal, but you do need to balance it out over a week, for instance.

I wouldn't feed petfood grade raw meat, just because the balance isn't there - there's a lot of offal so the proportion of kidney and liver may be too high. If it's designed for dogs, there can also be grains and fillers inappropriate for cats.

Cats need vitamin A in its pure form, e.g. liver. They can't synthesise vitamin A from beta carotene the way dogs can (carrots, for instance). Too much vitamin A can cause problems with your cat, so you shouldn't give them too much liver, but the need some. Again, you can adjust the balance over a week or a fortnight.

Because I have a mob of pussycats, feeding raw is working out very cheap for me and the local supply of offal and cheap cuts is plentiful. Plus my younger three cats love their raw and have no problems chowing down on raw food. The two older ones are pickier but still better than a lot of cats I've heard about who'll eat one single brand of kibble and that's it.

DaddyOSphynx

It is very important to try and feed a cat with urinary problems on canned or raw food. My vet also repeatedly suggested RC S/O dry for my boy who had massive urinary problems. Not the best solution! There is masses of info online about this tricky problem and wet food is always always recommended by those who have been through this (not always by vets though)

Advantages of canned food - higher moisture levels so it does the VITAL job of upping the cat's water intake which equals dilute urine expressed in greater quantities. It isn't sitting in concentrated form in the bladder, crystalising. You can buy Urinary fomula wet food (including RC S/O).


Find out if your cat has struvite (alkaline, more common) or oxalite (acidic) crystals and what the pH of the urine is. It is very important to know if you need to acidify or alkinise (sorry, i made that word up!) the urine. Get your vet to show you how to do a simple dipstick test on the urine or get a pack of dipsticks and start taking readings yourself. True, this isn't lab standard but whatever 'flaws' there are in checking a sample at home will be consistent so even if the reading you take is somewhat off, it should always be off by a similar amount, enabling you to spot important variations. Cat pee should be around 6 to 6.5 pH, my cat's was consistently around 8 to 8.5 so we needed to acidify his urine for example.

With vet support discuss trialing a canned food diet. You can try ordinary canned food, urinary formula canned food or ordinary canned food with an commercial additive you put in yourself to affect the urine pH. Keep checking the urine pH as you try this to monitor the effect on the cat. You might find feeding canned food alone is a simple, effective and cheap way of managing this. Urinary problems tend to be chronic and life threatening, it is so important to try and get a good grip on things as fast as possible.

There is no reason why a cat on canned food should struggle to maintain weight unless there is another issue. Canned food usually sees a cat hit optimum weight and condition better than dry. You can try things like Zyklene tablets, feliway, Cystaid or Cystease tablets, homeopathic supports, cranberry powder etc, there is a mine of info out there.

I hope I don't sound like I am lecturing you, this is a subject very close to my heart. We struggled for years with our boy's problems and lost him to it last October. Please try all the alternatives to a dry food diet, at least soak the dry food in water if nothing else.

The Sweeper

+1 on the achieveable weight thing on wet or raw food. I find that on kibble my cats turned into carb addicts and would overeat if given the chance. I'm trying to phase kibble out completely. The convenience aspect of it is useful, obviously, but the more into raw the cats get the bigger pieces I can put down and the less food prep I require.

One of my cats, Eric, goes bananas for kangaroo meat. If you've never encountered it, the closest thing is venison. Fillet pieces are dark, dark red with a soft consistency almost like turkish delight. It smells strongly gamey. In September 2007, Eric was about nine months old and still went outdoors because he stayed near the house. One day he didn't stay near the house, went onto the road and was smacked by a car. He broke his bottom jaw.

His jaw was wired in surgery on Thursday evening, and the vets kept him overnight, but the vet nurse wasn't happy on Friday because he wouldn't eat. I begged her to let me take him home and promised I could get him to eat and I would drop him back in if I couldn't.

Got him home, gave him a dish of kangaroo fillet that I'd chopped into a mince. Now, eating is one of the biggest hurdles for a cat with a broken jaw. Eric was hit Wednesday evening, the woman who hit him stopped and picked him up; she brought him to the vet Thursday morning, they did his jaw Thursday afternoon, so by now it's Friday afternoon and he hasn't eaten since Wednesday morning.

He practically inhaled the plate. The meat was so soft he didn't have to chew, just licked it up. He wolfed it so hard I was afraid he'd spew, but nope, just had huge feed followed by huge sleep. I reckon if he'd gone at canned food or kibble that quickly I would have had spewing cat.

The biggest problem with feeding only canned food is the build up of plaque on a cat's teeth. Kibble is not the answer to this. Raw food is.

The cat's digestive tract is very short compared to an omnivorous animal. In its natural state, that tract should be quite acidic, allowing the cat to get maximum benefit from what it eats. The introduction of plant-based protein into a cat's diet can upset the acidity of its digestive tract. (Cats aren't designed to have to work at digesting plant proteins.)

Acidic digestive tract leads to acidic urine (no crystals) and acidic saliva (cleaner teeth). The act of gnawing on a piece of raw meat or skin or bone helps clean the teeth, as does the natural ph of the cat's saliva if its body is in balance.

The problem with the "acidic" theory is that I'm finding it hard to find resources that support it - I've read it in a few places, citing no scientific evidence. I've applied it to my own cats and tend to agree through experience - their teeth are cleaner when they're gnawing raw food and the gingivitis one of them suffers from disappears. I'd feel better if I had a study to refer to when trying to 'convert' people though!