The purpose of this study was to examine effects of dietary fat content on daily food intake, apparent digestibility and water balance in cats. Using healthy intact male cats (n=12), three dry diets with low, medium or high tallow content were allotted to three groups of four cats each in 3x3Latin square design with 15 d per period. The cats were allowed free access to diets and water, and the feeding trial was repeated twice. Daily food intake was lowest in the high-fat group, and did not significantly differ between low-fat group and medium-fat group in trial 1. In contrast, it tended to increase with increasing dietary fat content, in trial 2. As the result, daily ME intake was not comparable among groups in each trial. In both trials, the high fat intake increased apparent digestibility of CP and AEE, but decreased that of NFE. In addition, increasing fat content in the diet resulted in an increase in urine volume and a decrease in fecal moisture content and the excretion rate of water into feces. Dietary fat content reproducibly affected both apparent digestibility of nutrients and water balance, but not daily food intake in cats.

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Tamm-Horsfall glycoprotein (THP) has been suggested to cause crystallization of struvite in cat urine. The present study examined how to prepare urine sample to determine THP concentrations by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and following results were obtained: 1) THP-like protein was detected in urine samples stored at -20°C immediately after the preparation of centrifugation sediment,2) band intensity and band pattern of THP-like protein did not differ between freshly voided urine and urine kept or 24h at room temperature, and 3) urine samples collected under acidic conditions were inadequate to analyses by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Thus, for measurement of urinary THP concentration, these results suggest that 24h-urine needs to be collected into bottle without adding urine acidifier such as H₂SO₄, and the sediment should be prepared by centrifugation before the storage at -20°C.

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