The Veterinary Review, April 1, 2021

We have nothing to report! Ha! April Fools!

We have two weeks of veterinary news to report.

Last week was just acupuncture with Jason and Ferrell Brown. Doctor Corona came in to the room before I had a chance to get either cat out for cuddles, and Jason was better behaved than he was the week before when he got jealous over Ferrell Brown being held. It was a pretty easy visit. Ferrell Brown is very sensitive along his left side for some reason we can’t explain, and it is not subsiding.

This week we had a bit more going on. Aries has shown signs of a bladder infection, so I gave him an antibiotic shot about two weeks ago. I wanted to take him in based on his history with bladder stones and have him x-rayed for stones and his urine checked for crystals. We went in on Monday.

X-rays showed no stones - YAY! we had a tough time getting urine from him despite a large bladder. It was hard to hit because he’s a bit fat. Once Dr. Schmitt was able to finally draw a little from him, we took what we could get and ran with it. There was no visible blood in the sample - it was yellow. The urinalysis showed that he did have both red blood cells and white blood cells in it though, so he does have an infection of some sort. When doc looked under the microscope, he did not see any crystals, though - YAY! We went home with instructions to start an antibiotic that we will repeat every 8 weeks for awhile.

Tuesday evening I noticed a rather substantial puddle of blood on the floor that I traced to Aries. It was coming from his penis. Bright red blood. And it was flowing fairly fast. It was 9 minutes after my vet closed (of course) so off to the emergency clinic we went.

After 5 hours of sitting in the parking lot, the ultimate answer was that he has interstitial cystitis. Meaning he has an irritated bladder due to stress and can we figure out what has stressed him lately. I almost laughed out loud. Poor Aries has had medications added to his daily routine - and he hates them. Then he has had those changed. One of them tastes awful if we don’t get it past his tongue. Then we just added a liquid medication, and now another one. He was just at the vet where he was held down on his side (for x-rays) and then held down more while his bladder was pressed on so the vet could poke a needle into it. Oh and then there is the bandaging of his leg to keep him from chewing it to bits while all these meds do their work. I would say he is a little stressed. Yes.

My poor baby. Now he is on yet ANOTHER medication to stop his urethra from spasming and hopefully help calm everything down while the antibiotics go to work and we try to settle him down, even while medicating him three times a day. We are spending as much cuddle time as we can, but he is a pretty independent guy, so I have a bed on the floor by my side of the bed so he can sleep independently and still be by me.

So that is the story of this week in our veterinary world. See you all next week!