Why does my 5 year old female cat keep having this recurrent problem where her urine has blood in it?

Lots of times cats have bladder problems because of the food they get. I did a quick search on Google and came up with a large number of references about dry food vs. wet food and urinary problems. It says that females have more problems than males, and a lot more information. Here’s one link.
http://www.allthebestpetcare.com/urinaryproblemsincats.htm

Not all stones are radio opaque – not seeing stones on x-ray is no guarantee.

Rather than go through repeated visits and possibly repeated surgeries, I would request a referral to a veterinary internal medicine specialist to get to the bottom of the matter.

Kidney degradation maybe? It sounds like the problems you are seeing are actually symptoms of something else.

I recommend getting a few books on veterinary care for cats. I just was looking at two in a book store. This one looked like a good starting point, and I can’t remember the other one. If you search “cat veterinary” on Amazon, you get over 1000 hits. Some books are much better than others.

A cat I know has kidney problems and the vet said it was because of the diet. It sounds like dry cat food has a lot of protein in it that cats cannot digest, and that commercial cat food in general is just of such poor quality and is barely regulated. The kidney and liver process all the toxins a cat ingests and if it cannot be expelled it is stored. Over time, the accumulation of harmful toxins can lead to kidney failure and a slew of other problems.

I am looking at three sources on cat diet right now, two that agree and one who’s view slightly differs. They are:

1. Lisa Pierson, DVM, recommended by someone else on Fluther.
2. This publication, referenced by #1, although I’m not sure what her qualifications on the subject are beyond personal experience but what she says seems very logical.
3. Richard Pitcairn, DVM, which also contains brief discussion of various common ailments and holistic treatments for them, although the Cat Repair Book I talked about earlier was much more informative for providing info on causes of the ailments. Basically, I think this book’s strength is in its diet information and that you should plan on finding a separate book for ailments.

It might be FUS Female cats can get it, it’s not just a problem of male cats. What does your vet say? If it is FUS it’s extremely easy to treat. Science Diet makes a “prescription” diet to treat FUS and that’s about all you have to do. You have to get it at your vet though, you can’t get in a store.

Cats are prone to UTIs and kidney problems because cats naturally do not drink a lot of water. They get most of their daily water from the prey they eat. Some good suggestions already.. upping the amount of wet food daily might help, as well as one of those running filtered water dishes they sell, as cats are often finicky about drinking fresh water over water that’s been sitting in a bowl.

Another idea, (don’t know if it would work), is to present some home-made broth of chicken, fish, etc. (home made to make sure it’s free of herbs and salt) If it smells yummy enough, I bet she’d drink it, but you also couldn’t leave it down for very long.