Great of you to notice this, and that you went to the vet - you already know you saved Wirt’s life.

My understanding is that dry food is not really ideal for cats. In the wild, these small carnivores, eat small prey and get the liquids they need from their food. This is why where I live, people say that cats don’t drink water. The simple urinary dry food, makes them drink more, so by peeing more the crystals don’t get formed. The medicinal food for struvite, on top of that it has also has something that dilutes the crystals.

The water fountain you got sounds like a great idea. Since you have more than one cats and if you don’t live in a tiny studio apartment, please conciser having - if you have for example 2 cats:

• 2 sources for drinking water in different places. One can easily be a bowl with fresh water in the sense to change it daily.
• 2 litter boxes, with plenty of sand in them, cleaned on daily basis
• the litter box and water not be close to each other

Currently I have only one cat and he had the same issue twice during the summertime. Both times he had to do a procedure with full anesthesia. Since he can go out almost whenever he wants and during summer whenever he wants, and because we live in a neighborhood that we feed the strays, during summer he was also eating low quality dry food. This is -most probably- why he had the second, perhaps even the first incidents. Something that worked in our case was the following: during winter he eats the simple urinary and during summer the medicinal for struvite. Several years have passed since the last incident, but it’s true that during summer I am super alert.

Of course double-check what I say with your vet, and if you are told something different, please let me know!

I don’t want to provide false hope but we had two cats in the past that had the same issue and both times, their recovery followed what you’re describing. It took some time for the passing of urine to look free of obstruction(not a dribble) and of a sufficient amount and they both recovered fully.

Stay vigilant with keeping multiple clean sources of water around(sometimes the cats like moving water, so a fountain-type water feeder that you can buy at a pet store or online). Stick with the medicine and I would bet my money on your kitteh making a full recovery.

I think this is what our one cat, Wolfgang, had a couple months back. We found he couldn’t pee one morning, and took him the emergency vet as well. Found the crystals, and our main vet recommend we do surgery (the 7k one above). In out case, we joke that Wolfie is our first trans cat, as the surgery basically reroutes the male urethra to be more female . Squiggly line to straight line, more or less. We also had to put him on a special pH balanced dry food diet, and he seemed to get accustomed pretty quickly although he still begs for food when our other cat Phil gets fed (literally a half hour apart).

It wasn’t easy to pay the bill, as that’s a tough cookie to swallow. Household of 3 adults, and we made it work.

I hope your little one passes any stones/crystals easily going forward!

Years ago, my Max had these crystals. The food acidified his urine and it was never an issue again. However, the food was also very rich and he ended up diabetic around 9 years old. Everything was able to be managed with food and meds. He was a happy and mostly healthy cat.