Just did a victory dance with Jan. We had a cat come in Saturday for a urinary blockage. This is a relatively common problem, especially in young male cats. Treatment involves anesthetizing the pet and passing a urinary catheter to empty and flush out the bladder. Left untreated, this can be fatal. Luckily, our astute owner noticed the signs (yowling, straining to urinate) early and brought his boy in to the hospital.
As is usually the case, cats don't cooperate and after the procedure he pulled out his urinary catheter. This almost always means we will be repeating the placement of the catheter, but in this case he urinated a large amount overnight and went home feeling great this morning. Yea!! Although we aren't out of the woods yet, the fat lady has not yet sung, we're not counting our chickens yet...we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, or in veterinary terms, the pee is in the box.
Now we start the long road of diet change and monitoring, but we can hope that he continues to do well without recurrence.
Dr. Paige Maasen