9/26 OT - Wellness/urinary blockage issues!!

I was at they vetty this morning with my civvie, Mario. It came up that I feed all 6 of my kitties various forms of Wellness, and the vet's eyes got big. They've recently been having huge problems with ALL FORMS of Wellness causing urinary blockages. She said just about every cat who comes in with blockages have been on Wellness. She said they even had a female with a partial blockage, and a male who was on 100% canned Wellness with a full blockage. When that one came it, it REALLY caught their attention. They tried to contact/notify the company, but Wellness basically didn't want to hear it.

Needless to say, I'll be transitioning everyone off Wellness. I just wanted to let you guys know, too....

 

Oh noooo Amy! What is up with that?

There is a girl on the FB feline acro group whose cat was just dx with a UTI as well and everyone was baffled because the kitty has been on a canned diet forever! Makes me wonder if kitty is being fed wellness

Thanks for passing this along.

 

Hi Amy, yikes on the Wellness! Maggie eats a lot of Wellness Turkey, and you know the problems she's had lately, but her has been the Megacolon, still a blockage. I wonder if anyone on Health would have additional info.

So what did the Wellness people say! I need to make a stop at Petco, and I'll check with them and see if they have any updates. Thanks.

 

Oh, no! Are you sure it was Wellness canned, not dry for ALL those cats? Could you ask the vet please?

 

Dale's point is well taken. I wonder if it's dry-food related or if they were feeding fish flavors. A diet high in fish is related to urinary blockages.

 

No, it was NOT just dry. This is what sent the red flag up for the vet. They had one male cat who was eating 100% Wellness Canned, and he was completely blocked - this one particularly freaked the vet out, and they had NEVER had a cat on 100% canned become blocked. They had a female eating Wellness who was partially blocked.

I wouldn't be surprised if some dry food was involved with some of the cats, but definitely not ALL the cats. When I asked what flavors and varieties, she said she has concerns about ALL of them.

So YES...she said it seems to be ALL varieties of Wellness that are an issue - CANNED and DRY! They've seen so many cats with this issue with Wellness that they are now keeping a running (and growing) list to gather data.

Wellness was NOT responsive when the vets tried contacting them to report/discuss the issue. To me, this is yet another red flag. She also said she's been involved in an online discussion group for vets only, and they've all noticed the trend of urinary issues in cats eating Wellness.

Because of all this, she is telling everyone that they are noticing this with Wellness, and she did note that it seems to be a recent issue - it's not something that has been going on for a long time.

For me, it was was enough information to be concerned about it - IMO, better safe than sorry, so I'm taking Wellness of the menu at my house. My vet is very thorough, and I know she wouldn't bring this up if she didn't feel it was necessary.

Fortunatley, Dr Lisa just put out that fabulous new list, so selecting new fuds should be easy!

 

When a pet food company doesn't respond to a vet's inquiry this is a huge red flag for me. I've got a couple of Wellness cans in the cupboard and they will soon find their way into the trash.

There's other food to feed my Pirate and I just as soon move on to those.

Thank you for the head's up. Perhaps Wellness isn't completely to blame - but who wants to take any chances when it's not necessary?

Shai

 

This is very disappointing to say the least! Thank you so much for posting this info.

 

She felt it was enough of a concern to pass along to me, so I wanted to do the same thing here, since I know many of us feed Wellness. Obviously, feeding Wellness doesn't guarantee a blockage, but I know I personally won't take the risk, given that we do have many other food choices out there.

 

Uh oh....Muffin won't eat anything else! But vet did want her on a lower fat diet, so this is just one more reason to work on that. Thanks for the heads-up!

 

Kismet started having asthma attacks when I switched him to Wellness! As soon as I took him off, they stopped. I'm not 100% sure what he is allergic to in their food, and it may very well be that he just has a fish allergy. He had a minor asthma attack after eating FF Ocean Whitefish once so it's probably not just Wellness, but any fish that can trigger an attack. To be fair, I haven't experimented with other brands too much but I stay clear of Wellness altogether now just in case it was something else in there. He has been eating Purina DM which lists Salmon as 5th ingredient and we've had no problems. Wellness Salmon gets him coughing almost immediately after eating.

 

Thanks for the heads up Amy. I had switched over to Wellness from the Prescription foods - blah! I'll have to find something else, as Buster once had urinary crystals long ago and I don't want anything weird to be happening in that region again. Thankfully, Buster doesn't seem to be a picky eater. It will prolly make the DH happier, as I'm sure I can go a little less expensive while I'm at it.

 

I believe that someone has a call in to Dr. Lisa to follow up on this. She clearly had a good experience with their providing her with information for her food charts. She also uses the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) as a means of communicating on-line with other vets. Before we all pitch our Wellness, I'd like to hear what she has to say. Both of my cats eat Wellness so I'm as eager to hear more about this as the rest of you.

 

I rarely have time to post from work but this came to my attention and I'd like to throw my two cents worth in.

I agree with Sienne that I'd very much like to see Dr. Lisa's input on this before we all throw the baby out with the bath water. I have also dealt extensively with WellPet (and before when they were Old Mother Hubbard) and they have always been cooperative and happy to help. ETA: I just had a bunch of cans from the Canadian factory that I got through an online store and they were so different that Gracie and Tobey wouldn't eat them. I called Wellness and they said all their formulas are the same at every plant but because they buy locally as much as possible, sometimes food from different plants may taste different. They refunded me every single penny and then told me I could donate the cans to a shelter.

I am not in any way trying to discredit Amy's vet here but stop and consider.....the fact that the cats had blockages and ate Wellness could be entirely coincidental because we do not know if ALL the cats who ate Wellness and had blockages were on the same "playing field". Did they ONLY eat canned? Were they outdoor cats or indoor? What was their water consumption like? How about their general health? Genetics? Predisposition to urinary problems? In order to draw conclusions, first you must eliminate variables that can affect those conclusions. You must compare apples to apples.

The vet made these observations. Other vets she converses with might have made observations. But that's all they are. An analogy, in my mind, would be the doctor who sees 10 patients with GI upsets but who all eat a certain kind of bread and he makes the assumption that they have a gluten allergy caused by that bread. Maybe...maybe not. What else do they eat?

In scientific studies, you must have several things. You must have a hypothesis; you must have controls; you must have a decent sample size (which would need to be more than 10 or 20 cats); you must ensure you are actually making comparisons where as many things are similar as can be done so variables which can affect the outcome, but have nothing to do with the hypothesis, are eliminated.

I think we should all take a "collective" breath ;-) and let's let Dr. Lisa weigh in not only because of her knowledge on nutrition, but her access to WellPet, AND her participation in the VIN. Could be Amy's vet is right....and I don't want to stick my head in the sand....but I'd like to see something more scientific. IMHO

ETA: I have a very close friend who worked with a feline nutritionist (not Dr. Lisa) to develop a raw diet for cats. One of her cats became blocked to the extent that he had to have the surgery to have his "plumbing" redone (which is a very difficult surgery). So even cats on homemade raw diets can develop blockages. I don't think genetic predispositions should be tossed out the window. JMO

 

I'm definitley curious to hear what Dr Lisa has to say as well, but for me personally, I'm still no longer comfortable with Wellness. I fully trust my vet, plus I had a few odd/not great experiences with them in the past (years ago, I had a VERY funky batch of jumbo cans, and I wrote a letter of concern. Their response was that all their facilities use the same recipe. No apology, no further questions, etc. I stopped using it for years after that.), and it strikes me as odd that Trix's BG runs all over the map when she eats Wellness chicken.

 

I'm just relaying what my vet had to say...I don't have her data in front of me, but she did say that she saw enough of a trend for it to be a concern - I don't think she was talking about one or two cats, but rather many - THAT is why red flags went up for her. She IS tracking data on this, she has all of her info, and she is a scientist, and she is conferring with other vets on it. It doesn' really matter if they were all on the same playing field - chances are they weren't. But the one thing they DID have in common was that they were all eating Wellness, and this is a recent trend. I thought it was important enough for everyone here to take into consideration. She wouldn't be telling me this info willy nilly...she has nothing to gain from sharing it.

 

Awww man...now I have to put my patience pants back on.. :lol:

 

Great thinking. I would love to hear her input on this as well.

 

I'd like to hear as well. Jean Luc eats the turkey from time to time.

 

Ditto, I sure don't want to change foods unless it is absolutely necessary!

Rusty eats Wellness all the time (Turkey; Chicken-- from the Canadian plant, 3 oz. cans). He eats other foods from time to time, but tires of them quickly and always comes back to Wellness. (But, of course, Fancy Feast Turkey & Giblets is his absolute favorite!). We started using the 3-oz cans ("product of Canada") because the 5.5 oz. cans ("made in the USA") began to have a mushy consistency.

Rusty has a fish allergy and I have to read labels carefully to make sure that foods that purport to be "chicken" don't list "fish" as one of the ingredients (e.g., FF Chicken Classic pate). The Wellness foods that are fish-free are really fish-free.

Looking forward to what Dr. Lisa comes up with,

Ella

 

I'm looking forward to hearing what Dr. Lisa has to say as well. It's interesting this post is here as today I found a small blue piece of plastic, similar to the consistency of a plastic bag, in a 12.5 oz can of Wellness. I called the company and a representative told me the plastic that the frozen chicken comes in occasionally gets stuck to the meat and makes it into the blender. She claimed it wasn't commonplace and that there weren't any other cases reported according to the production number I gave her (7wccs1 made at 11:08 best before may 21, 2015). I returned the batch to the pet store and got another but am anxiously awaiting to hear what Dr. Lisa has to say. Unfortunately, Ella is hooked on the chicken recipe and won't eat ANYTHING else :shock: Has anyone else ever found plastic in their cans? It sure does make me wonder about quality control.

 

I hate to post a joke here, but Tamara's post calls to mind a Thanksgiving Day turkey hotline I heard a few years ago. A novice cook, roasting her first Thanksgiving turkey, called in in distress to say that the turkey had strange coloring: red, blue, and yellow. Could she serve it? It turned out that she hadn't taken it out of its plastic wrapper before putting it in the oven!

I hope the Wellness thing gets straightened out.

Ella

 

Rosy's eating Wellness Core & this month Ive changed to Wellness because of its LC. I always mix my cats canned meal, not a single branded diet. I believe mixing different brands together is more safe, when one brand find "faulty". Especially when I added in fresh cooked meat to it. It is more work than just opening one can & feed but their health always come first.

 

Hi Guys,

Too tired to type much....plus my fingers are really done for the day....

I spent over an hour on VIN searching for posts on this issue....did not find anything significant. That said, I spoke with a colleague about a year ago who swears up and down that she sees more blocked cats on Wellness but I really don't know if she had pinned down canned or dry. She "thinks" some of the cats blocked even when on canned but not all vets are good at detailed history taking....so who knows.....

This is not the first time this has come up - it has been discussed on the internet for the past couple of years but I am thoroughly perplexed by it AND....there are just never enough details for me to come to any conclusions. Most of the time dry food is being fed, or they state "canned and dry" with no idea of of the proportion of each.

I have scrutinized the mineral data for all of the Wellness foods and, if anything, they are lower in struvite building blocks (magnesium and phosphorus) than a lot of other diets so I have no clue as to why cats would end up blocked when on canned Wellness.

Another very important issue that I stress on my Urinary Tract Health page is....how were the "crystals" diagnosed? Via a send-out test (worthless and inaccurate with a lot of false positives)....or....within ~20 minutes of the urine leaving the bladder?

Urine = 102 degrees when inside the cat. Urine = ~70 degrees in a vet hospital. Crystals form in cold urine.

Another issue....Wellness has been listed on my Commercial Canned Food page for 9 years yet I have not had a single person write to me about any issues with crystals. My website gets ~1.7 million visitors per year which generates ~20,000 emails per year.

Bottom line: I add a lot of water to my cats' food no matter what I feed.

Dilution is the solution to the pollution.

 

Thank you for your feedback, Dr Lisa. I truly appreciate it.

For me personally, though, just the fact that blockages have been observed by and discussed amongst vets - even without the final "scientific data" - is conclusive enough for me to remove Wellness from my cats' diets. The fact that it has been observed by my personal vet, who is active and keeps herself current, only compounds my concerns. She has no reason other than concern for my cats' health to share this information with me; she was not pushing her veterinary diets or anything like that - it just happen to come up in conversation that I feed Wellness.

While the mineral data indicates that Wellness should be a good food, it appears that something is up with it. I know that feeding Wellness certainly does not guarantee a blockage, but I'm not willing to risk adding my cats to her growing list. And, she was talking about actual blockages, not just the presence of of crystals in the urine. Simply put: she has personally seen enough blocked cats who were eating Wellness that she feels a need to inform her clients. And I think we do need to remember that we are talking about living, breathing beings, and not just a bunch of tests and numbers and data on a piece of paper.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm sure there were all sorts of food and lifestyle combinations, and I personally don't know what they were, but when I asked my vet which flavors and varieties of Wellness she was concerned about, she said "all of them." She admits she doesn't know WHY this is problem, but she feels they must be playing around with their formula, since this is a recent observation in her practice. She's used to seeing blockages with supermarket brands, but when she had a cat who was blocked on a diet of 100% canned Wellness - along with all the other Wellness blockages, she really took notice. She tried contacting them to find out about/discuss this, and they would not talk about the formula at all. And we all know that these companies do have the right to change their formulas at will.

(Side note: Many years ago - long before I had a diabetic kitty - I was very active on another pet-oriented discussion board. There were several people there who had diet-controlled diabetic cats who were eating Wellness. These cats suddenly fell out of remission, and when the owners went back and read the ingredient list, it turned out that Wellness had changed their formula to include rice! While the ingredient list had been updated, there were no other indications on the can that the formula had changed. Needless to say, this caused a huge uproar....the end results: That little "grain free" triangle that you now see on the label.)

Having been through a blockage with my GA, Mr Kitty, (gosh, that was 18 years ago now!), it is something I never want to experience again, and with so many food options out there, along with the fabulous new lists, there is no reason NOT to go with a different food. It's still no guarantee that I will never see a blockage, but at least I feel like I'm eliminating one known risk factor.

If we were talking about something that wasn't as life-threatening and traumatic as urinary blockages, I'm sure I would take a calmer approach to this. But I do understand that this is my vet's observations, and I certainly don't expect others to follow what she has to say. But, I did want to make sure my fellow LLer's knew that there was a concern to be considered.

 

Amy, thank you for passing along information.

Dr. Lisa, thank you for not only taking your valuable time to look into this, but attempting to put things in perspective.

Discussion is good. We all benefit. Thank you to all who have contributed to this thread.

I had a personal interest in this discussion because one of the canned foods I feed my kitties happens to be Wellness Turkey. It's a choice because of the low carb/lower phosphorus values and it's one of the canned foods Alex will eat. She's is in the early stages of CRD.

I also have a kitty (non-diabetic) who was partially blocked around 7-8 years ago. There was about a two year period of time when all he would eat was Wellness. He hasn't had any problems since I switched him to an all wet diet which has included Wellness. I firmly believe in the saying, "Dilution is the solution to pollution." Adding extra water to canned/raw food is routine around here.

Since Alex has been diabetic, there was a time when I fed a commercially prepared raw diet exclusively for a few years. I did receive a batch (4 tubs) with pieces of plastic in it. I immediately sent pictures of the plastic to the owner of the company. He identified and confirmed the pieces of plastic came from the wrapping on the chicken. Somehow it must have stuck to the chicken and went through the grinder. Pieces were as small as a piece of rice and as large as a quarter. Luckily, I caught it before feeding and the owner of the company assured me he would takes steps to insure it would never happen again.

Because there have been so many pet food recalls over the last several years, I no longer feed any particular canned/wet food exclusively. I'm currently feeding Wellness BG Turkey, Merrick's BG 96% Turkey, and Evo 95% Chicken & Turkey. All are low carb/lower phos foods. I've also been gradually re-introducing a little bit of a commercially prepared raw food.

FWIW, I'm comfortable with this selection for now...

 

Amy - I can't disagree with a word you wrote.

This is perplexing but it is hard to ignore.

One other comment....not that we want excess crystals in females any more than we want them in males....I would be far less worried about feeding Wellness to a female since they have a wide, short urethra that rarely gets blocked.

Blockages make me cry. I have always said that if only ONE part of my website is looked at, please let it be Opie's pictorial on my Urinary Tract Health page.

 

There are some posts on Catster.com that about Wellness CORE dry food causing urinary issues:

http://www.catster.com/forums/Food_and_Nutrition/thread/751577
http://www.catster.com/forums/Food_and_Nutrition/thread/684062

Here are some about the Wellness brand causing urinary issues:
http://www.catster.com/forums/Food_and_Nutrition/thread/683612/2
http://www.catster.com/forums/Food_and_Nutrition/thread/654743

It seems that Wellness causes a high urine pH?

 

I would like to ask Dr. Lisa this question.
We all know you prefer your homemade food from your website.

IF..IF.. IF you were going to feed a cat commercial canned food... Would you feed wellness or would you avoid it?

 

Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge with us Dr. Lisa. It is much appreciated

 

Thanks for the links....looks like I"ve got some exciting reading lined up for this weekend :lol: 1

 

Wellness wet food and struvite crystals.

Well, there are no guarantees, I agree, but I'm going to add Jill's non-Wellness foods to my cat's diet to lower the risk and give him Wellness BG Turkey, Merrick's BG 96% Turkey, and Evo 95% Chicken & Turkey.

He has CRF, and I don't want anymore problems in that area. He does not like to have water mixed into this food. Does anyone think I need to do that if I am also giving subQ fluids?

 

That is so hard for me to answer since I have so little trust in the pet food industry and won't feed commercial food but, yes, I would feed it with added water.

 

Thanks for sharing this information....here is a link to a small ariticle about the
Wellness recall in 2011:
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03 ... ical-signs
That had me off the Wellness bandwagon for a long time. I only recently bought a few cans to add to their revolving brands for while I was away...just for some vatiation. Makes ya wonder....
I appreciate the heads up!! :mrgreen:

 

Thank you for the tip on adding a little water. I have started doing so and Buster seems to agree with it. So many variables...good discussion everyone!