Sometimes surgery really is the best option if the food and other preventive measures aren’t working for cats with this condition.
My parents had to do it with a previous cat. The surgery worked and he went back to being his happy self. In our situation, he was the only cat, so we could monitor his output and try to stop him from getting blocked if his output was getting low or the pH changed, but it never worked. He still needed to be monitored for a while after the surgery, but never had the painful blockages he did previously. They kept him on anti-inflammatory drugs and the special diet as well.
Wile E, I knew that was technically possible, but I’ve never actually seen it, and neither have any the people I’ve worked with. That’s pretty cool that you’ve seen it not just once, but multiple times. Unfortunate for the kitties involved, but still cool. Is it much different trying to pass a urinary cath on a pu’d kitty?
My Luna had a urinary tract infection this past winter. I found out about it when she peed bloody urine on my down coat. Female cats are much less likely to get blockages than males, so her condition was much less serious. 10 days of antibiotics cleared it up.
I’m sorry to hear about this, Antigen.
My father and step-mother’s cat had the same issue several years ago and the winkie-ectomy worked just fine. He’s a happy fat cat with no other health issues now.
Poor guy. I once had a cat who blocked up; he didn’t need the surgery, at least then, but he was on the expensive food from there on out. It was scary! He was fine afterwards, but he was in the hospital for a few days. I would have had the surgery done on him if I’d had to. He looked absolutely miserable when I took him in.
Scritches from me and purrs from my Siamese overlady.
He was so miserable when we picked him up at the emergency vet. Catheter strapped to him, cone on his head, and whining very quietly. He responded well to my touch, which was reassuring! We got him to the vet who’s doing the surgery, and they checked him out and took blood and said he was looking pretty good considering what he’s been through.
He’s out of surgery now and they said it was “routine”. Isn’t that a great word? We won’t get to bring him home till tomorrow afternoon at the earliest because they want to watch him for a while and let him recover. They’ll give us a bunch of post-op care info when we pick him up. I know his diet will change and we’ll have to keep him cooped up in a room for a little while to keep him from doing too much too quickly (and he will, he’s like that). We also need the special litter while he’s recovering, and we’re picking up one of those drinking fountain things to entice him to drink more.
We have two other cats - any advice on how to monitor Horton’s input/output and make sure things are working right, after we let him out of confinement? Also, all three of them have been “grazers” when it comes to food and we don’t have a set schedule. With Horton’s need for special food, I’m thinking it would make sense to put them on a schedule and keep Horton apart at feeding time - is that realistic? How would I change them all onto a schedule without them killing me in my sleep? I’ll be asking the vet all this too, but it doesn’t hurt to get some inside info from people who’ve been there.
The exact same thing happened to my [Joey](<a href=“http://s439.photobucket.com/albums/qq111/lesschatmorehat/?action=view¤t=DSC00003.jpg” target=“_blank”><img src=“http://i439.photobucket.com/albums/qq111/lesschatmorehat/DSC00003.jpg” border=“0” alt=“Joey”></a>) late last year, minus the penis cutting. I rushed him to the emergency vet and he stayed at the hospital for 3 days, spent weeks on antibiotics, and ended up costing me somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000 for the whole thing during the only 3 months in the last 10 years that I have been unemployed. He is currently snuggled up against me as I type this and was worth every single penny of it.
You could get all the cats on wet food - that would increase liquids to all of them. As far as I know, that is never a bad idea with kitties. Mix enough water into it, and you have a weight-loss plan if they need it!
Hugs to you and your kitty - he’s just becoming sleeker and more streamlined - more aerodynamic, if you will!
sigh. This is pretty much what Cat #1 (aka Daniel the Terrible) is going through. He’s on his third UTI attack, and reading this thread is bringing back the panics I’ve had over him. Especially because it’s always on a Sunday.
The big lug is currently on the crystal-dissolving diet, natch. And he’s going to be brought back to the usual vet when I’m out of the food as prescribed by the ER vet.
My condo’s currently got two litterboxes, one for each cat and each half so that I can keep an eye on Daniel’s output.
Great news that Horton’s surgery was routine. You’ll have to put all the cats on a schedule, but that isn’t really hard to do.
Fetchund’s suggestion to put all your cats on wet food is a good one, provided Horton doesn’t need a special diet food that would end up making this solution very expensive to maintain for all 3 cats.
My number 3 (I have four) developed FLUTD this past winter. She’s a tortie, there seems to be some correlation between tricolors and urinary disease. She develops struviate crystals, and it took multiple rounds of antibiotics, amitryptiline, prednisone, and a prescription diet to get her back to normal. Also, she’s isolated from the other cats when I’m not here or asleep, to prevent them from fighting and making her bladder spasm. No clinical signs for months, hopefully we’re over the hump.
I’d recommend keeping your kitty away from the others, feeding and littering separately, until he’s healed. This also keeps the others out of the prescription diet and stress levels low.
In the cases where it was stones, crystals and mucous plugs it wasn’t too difficult to pass a catheter but at least a couple of them had so much scar tissue it was quite difficult. I’m pretty sure at least one was referred to a surgeon for a new PU surgery.
Because of one of those cases I make sure never to describe a PU as making them a girl cat or tell people they will never block again. These people were told both these things by their vet so they insisted to us that their cat was female and couldn’t be blocked. They got quite hostile about it to us even though we weren’t the ones that told them that but we were the bearers of bad news about their cat so they took it out on us. Their cat was one with very bad scar tissue.
One of my gf’s cats had a PU a coupla years back. When the vet needs a urine sample from “him”, they can catheterize him wide awake in the exam room. He’s a very good cat, YMMV.
Called the vet this morning and they said we can’t pick him up yet. Something about them needing to “flush” him some more with the IV to make sure his kidneys are good. The blood work pre-surgery showed his kidneys and liver were working ok, but they say they want to keep him longer “to make sure”. I’m not sure what to make of that. I haven’t been very happy with the staff at this animal hospital - we have to keep calling back for info because the people who know things aren’t available, and I don’t feel like they’re explaining stuff enough and it makes me nervous. When we dropped him off we were under the impression that the surgery would be happening almost right away, but then he didn’t actually go in for the procedure until 5 hours later.
So I’m supposed to call back at 4pm and see if I can take him home then. I’ve taken today off work so I can get him and help him get settled at home - if they tell me I need to wait till tomorrow to pick him up I can’t take a second day off. This sucks.
Your cat’s kidney function tests may have been elevated, not uncommon with this problem, usually we give fluids and recheck bloodwork in 24 to 48 hours to make sure the values are going down.
As for the surgery delay, they probably had other surgeries scheduled and as long as your cat was stable and catheterized his situation wasn’t urgent but the scheduled surgeries may have been day surgeries and needed to be up and ready to go home later in the day so needed to be done first. Your cat would be staying overnight regardless of when it would have the surgery. Or they could have had some more urgent surgeries that had to be done right away.
Unfortunately, vets can sometimes be as hard to get on the phone as your doctor bit it’s usually because they are doing surgery, treating hospital patients or seeing clients and it’s hard to catch them in between. Your best bet is to leave a message and ask to be called back by the vet. Let them know that you have questions or concerns you’d rather address to the vet. Be insistent but not bitchy, if you don’t get a call back try again after a couple hours. Make sure you leave a number where you can be reached. Vet clinic staff are rarely even trained secretaries so sometimes the message system isn’t perfect and a note to call someone back could get overlooked, it’s not intentional. As for nebulous explanations from staff, they usually do not want to give too much detail in case it’s misunderstood, if anyone is going to be misunderstood we prefer it to be the vet.
By the way, I’m not trying to scare you about potential complications mentioned before, I just believe people should be informed of any potential problems, otherwise Murphy’s Law might rear it’s ugly head.
