Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my 2 year old cat has been having problems for the past week. he started peeing outside the litter box since i got a new couch...so i thought it was just behavioral. then i started seeing him licking his genitals frequenly. last weekend i noticed him crying and meowing loudly, the deep loud moan, and saw whitish stuff come out of the little red penis. he is neutered so i ruled out that possibility. i called the vet asap and brought him in the next day. the vet said the white stuff may have been a blockage and it passed so he just gave him antibiotic injections and a take home antibiotic and wet food. my cat started to seem to get better and even started peeing in the box again. but this weekend i noticed him peeing all over the house again. he seems to be squatting but either nothing comes out or a little bit. it never seems like a normal amount of urine. i even notice the urine to be a reddish tint. so i took him to the vet this morning and we took a urinalysis and the vet says that nothing really showed from that. he also took an xray and it shows that my cat may have stones. the xray showed some area of abnormality (wasnt distinctive white, but more radiolucent) and upon palpating of the cat's bladder, the bladder seems a little harder than normal. he wants to do an ultrasound to make sure if the cat has stones, and if so he will need surgery. the ultrasound will cost $350 and the surgery will cost $800. my question is what can i do to pay for this? is there any programs to help me financially? will there be a chance for him to get a UTI again? i am a struggling college student with financial limitations is there anything i can do that won't cost me so much money?

thanks for any suggestions...starr

First, stop feeding dry food. This seems to be the main cause of urinary tract infections. You say that everrything seems normal on the urinanalysis, so it is possible that there is no infection but only interference from stones, or if there are stones and an infection, the stones act as a source of infection. While antibiotics might be indicated, keeping the cat on ABs for a long time is not a good idea. So lets try treating the infection and dissolving any stones. Give the cat a cranberry concentrate softgel twice a day, puree either canned food or raw meat with an equal amount of water and give this to the cat as the diet, along with a teaspoon ascorbic acid over the course of the day in his food, and increasing amounts of salt in the food until you reach the limits of how much salt the cat will tolerate. The dilute, acidic urine will dissolve the stones and crystals, and the cranberry concentrate will help flush out the bacteria. You will probably need to continue this for quite some time, but if he doesn't show improvement in 3-4 days, he may need an antibiotic for a short while.

Keep a close eye on your cat. I had a situation last year where my cat (which I adopted from the SPCA) started showing similar symptoms. My vet and the spca told me my cat was a female. My vet said she had a bladder infection and sent me home with antibiotics. Within a week, my cat had died.
"She" got worse and by the weekend she was not moving and could not urinate at all. I took her to the afterhours vet which quickly advised me my cat was actually a male and was in kidney failure due to an advanced UTI. We were too late and he had to be euthanized. We were in shock and had no time to consider any other options. It was completely a devastating experience. Had I known my cat was a neutered male, I would have caught it sooner (at the stage you are at now). I actually have a young cat that came to me as a stray showing similar symptoms and I am putting him on the cranberry concentrate (as the holistic vet has advised!) because I believe I am catching it early enough. Please keep a close watch on your cat to make sure the symptoms do not get worse I would hate for you to go through what we went through with our cat last year. Good luck and keep us posted! But I do agree with the holistic vet's advice with respect to dry food - we have switched ours over to wet cat food. I hope he recovers soon! I totally understand your financial situation as well - it is not easy especially when our babies get sick.