Our cat, Tater, has been acting strange for a couple of months. He spends a fair amount of time yowling as though he wants food, and has been engaging in "inappropriate urination," in spite of a decade of being well house broken. I saw that this is often a symptom of a urinary tract infection (UTI), which causes bladder irritation, and voiding when in locations remote from the cat box. The night before we took him in, my wife noticed some bloody saliva.
The vet found an infection is his lip which probably explains the yowling: not a food demand, but pain or discomfort. (During the exam, Tater hissed at the vet. I have only heard him hiss before when our neighbor's husky followed her up for Bible study, and Tonka would look in the window while Tater defended his territory from behind the safety of glass.) To check for a UTI she needed a urine sample. I wondered how they were going to get that. "Here, Tater, take this incredibly tiny bottle to the cat box." She explained that they use a needle to extract it from the bladder. I was picturing Tater's reaction afterwards, all claws and teeth. It gets worse. "Tater has a very small bladder, so we were not successful." Imagine all the attempts to find that out. Instead they put him a room with a cat box filled not with an absorbent litter, but plastic beads.
Indeed, a UTI, likely caused by a spread of the lip infection. The vet gave him an antibiotic injection, and an anti-inflammatory to put in his wet food. In spite of the whole game of, "Where's the bladder?" he seems in good spirits although sleepier than usual.
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