Keeping Our Vet in Business One Animal at a Time

I'm going to talk more about Hannah the Dog's health issues in a post later next week, but for now I want to focus on Zelda the Cat who, until quite recently, I would have called a low-maintenance pet.  Sure, her long fur means that we have spent a lot of money on specialty cat combs (verdict: she hates them all, but the knock-off Furminator does the best job) and a lot of time cleaning up hairballs (note: check the top of your cat's tree - the one that's taller than you? - there's probably a hairball up there).  Sure, she was a bite-y, bite-y nightmare for a couple of years there and there was a time when I panicked because she had a reaction to a vaccine, but she has been a healthy feline.

About a month ago, I took her in because she had dark spots on her chin and she was scratching above her eyes, leading to angry looking red spots.  I was told that her weight was good (yay!) and that it wasn't dental pain, but just kitty acne. We rubbed her chin with a special cleanser every day for a week - which she didn't love, but tolerated reasonably well - and it went away.

Then, shortly after that, Zelda became even more vocal than usual. She's never been a quiet cat. She meows for food, she meows for pets, she meows because we're sitting there quietly reading. But this was different. She would just sit in the corner and stare and meow. She would come right over to our feet while we were eating at the table and YELL at us.  We tried to pet her, we'd refill her water, we'd check her private areas to make sure she was clean, we'd take out a toy and play with her, but she just kept crying.

I mentioned this briefly to our vet at a Hannah-related appointment and she was a bit puzzled. It wasn't that she was crying in the litter box. It wasn't that she was crying when she was trying to jump. She was just crying.

Vet says to bring her in if the crying intensifies.

About a week ago, I noticed a tiny spot of red on her (white) litter box in the bathroom. I asked Dr. BB to look at it and we both agreed it looked like blood, but, well, we both had bled in the bathroom recently. Maybe her box was in the splash zone. Zelda was acting normally, I cleaned it up, and we moved on with our lives.

Saturday, Dr. BB and I left for the day and Hannah stayed with our friend Eric (not even an alias - his name is Eric).  When we returned, there was a spot of blood smaller than a penny on the bathroom floor. We knew it had to come from Zelda.

I googled "blood in cat urine" and the answers ranged from UTI (annoying but treatable) to OMG crystals obstructing your cat's urethra and your cat is GOING TO DIE.  It was, of course, Saturday night, so there was nothing to do except call the emergency vet who told us that we should bring her in on Sunday morning.

Not much sleep was had Saturday night, what with one of us getting up every hour or two for a fabricated errand that really was checking to make sure the cat was still alive.

Meanwhile, we notice that if we check her litter immediately after she urinates, it's pink. Also, she's going in the box all the damn time. Also, other than that, her behavior is normal.

Sunday we take her to the vet and she's given painkillers and we're told to take her to our vet on Monday.  Thanks for a lot of nothing.  No urinalysis or ultrasound was done. Nothing beyond a perfunctory physical examination.

We take her in on Monday. Her urinalysis shows blood in her urine. Seriously.  That's all they can see. We start giving her antibiotics because the assumption is its a UTI.

Frankly, she's even more miserable now. She's hiding from us because we're constantly shoving nasty tasting medicine down her throat. The antibiotics are killing her GI system and things are getting messy in her private areas. Our normally fastidious cat can't even be bothered to clean it up.  Her litter box . . . is a thing of nightmares.

By Wednesday, she's no better. I'm NOT happy at this point. We call and our vet (who, by the way, I'm actually friends with outside of the vet clinic world) can tell that I'm upset. She asks us to bring the cat in again. Now, this is THREE trips in her cat carrier in FOUR days. The cat fights it, but we eventually get her. This time they do an ultrasound and find bladder stones. 

So my pretty kitty is in surgery RIGHT NOW as I type this. The rumor is that she's going to be fine really quickly after surgery, but I'm so angry over how long this took to diagnose. If the emergency vet had just done a quick ultrasound on Sunday, Zelda could have been treated almost a full week earlier. 

Also, the vet bills? Staggering this week.