Tag Archives: Cachet Village Animal Hospital

Day 1: While I was cleaning the litter box earlier today, all of a sudden Rini jumped in and started to pee in front of me.   I thought she just always loves the clean litter - in fact I was wrong, she was trying to tell me something, she was peeing blood.  As you can see in the photos, there was blood on the pine litter. Since pine is such a very good absorbent, if Rini didn’t pee in front of me there was no way  to find it out easily.

At the Vet’s place

Since that was very scary,  we took her to the our vet immediately. At the vet’s place, Rini peed on the stainless steel tray. See the syringe that sucked it back from the tray?  That was pretty horrible bloody urine from Rini.

Rini got the X-ray taken  and confirmed that there were 2 bladder stones (they aren’t showing very well here because I took those pictures with my iPhone). According to vet, there are 2 types of stones, namely Calcium Oxalate and Struvite.  If Rini got Calcium Oxalate, it has to be taken out by surgery, however for struvite, it can be dissolved by diet and medication.

Day 2: Blood test result comes back normal, calcium level is normal too. Urine test shows bacteria infection, with PH=6.5 (border line), without crystals.   Vet said that this lean more towards Struvite, so probably good news is that Rini can avoid surgery. There is one more test is to do, called “Urine Culture” basically you are growing the bacteria in the lab, that takes another 48 hours. Then, the Pathologist will tell the vet which anti-antibiotic to use.   Btw, I added several new vocabularies to my dictionary today.

Day 3: Still waiting for the results from the pathologist. In the mean time we bought a  bottle of  cranberry capsules from the vet., giving Rini half  capsule a day (mixed with water, injected into Rini’s mouth using syringe).  According to the information,  struvite crystals and stones are more likely to develop in alkaline urine, so cranberry can lower the PH value and produce more acidic urine.  But too much acid will lead to other health problem.  We also changed both cats’ diet by giving them Hill’s Prescription Diet C/D dry food and Halo wet food.

Day 4: Finally the lab result of “Urine Culture” comes back,  the bacteria is called “Enterococcus Faecalis“.  Our vet prescribed 2 weeks of antibiotics “Enrofloxacin“  (Baytril) for Rini to kill the bacteria.  To dissolve the stones, Rini has to eat a special dry food “Medi-Cal Dissolution Forumla” for a month. Apparently, this is the treatment for struvite.

Day 5-7: Rini is getting a lot better, more energy and starts to run more. This morning, Rini peed while Deb was cleaning the litter box - this time, no more blood!  Yeah!  Antibotic works! Dr.DeRose rocks again!  Right now, we are feeding them Medi-Cal Dissolution (prescription special food) + Halo wet food.  Hopefully the stones will be dissolved soon.

Day 15: Rini did a urine test and found that PH Value shot up to 9.0, Dr. said that it  was screwed up. So, we were told to isolate the problem by just feeding the Dissolution (no Halo, no wet food, no cranberry capsules) until it rearches 35 days.

Day x: We have an appointment at March 30, 2010 to do another urine test.  The result has come back, and Rini passed the test!  The number of crystals went down from “10-50″ to “0-5″, PH is at 8 (ideal is 7), and no blood in urine sample. Dr. said it is good news that Dissolution worked and we have to maintain this, so he recommends us to feed Royal Canin ‘URINARY SO’.

What causes that?

Rini is just 2 years old, it is very hard to believe she got stones in bladder in such young age.  As the vet said the same,  we have been feeding both cats with very high quality food -  Halo and Royal Canin, how come?   The reason is,  Rini does not like to drink water, and food we have been feeding is mostly dry food.  On the other hand, Mythos drinks so much water and he pees like the water tap. In the other article, I mentioned about that and we had to switch to pine litter because silica gel based couldn’t handle Mytho’s pee.

In fact, we did try to feed Halo and Wellness wet  food in the past 2 years, but they usually licked it for 1 min and went away,  that was the reason we gave up. But now we have to seriously re-introduce wet food again.

What are the action items?

• Water fountain to stimulate Rini to drink more water *
• Cut back on dry food, mixed with Hill’s Prescription Diet C/D
• More wet food **
• Cranberry Capsules (Rx Vitamins) half capsule/day to lower PH value
• Prescription antibiotics for 2 weeks
• Medi-Cal Dissolution Forumla dry food for 30 days
• Raw meat diet (suggested by Breeder and people in forum)
• Medi-cal Urinary SO for the next year at least

* We had water fountain 2 years ago for Rini, but we stopped using it because it forms white residue on the side in under just 1 week and it’s a lot of work to take it apart to clean it every week (we already had soft water, may need Reserve Osmosis or distilled water?).  Also, we have been told that water fountain can cause  teeth/gum problem if it is not properly maintained.  That was the 2 main reasons why we switched it back to regular water bowl at that time.  Now, it’s time to bring back the water fountain! According to the forums on Internet, people are saying you have to clean it 1-2 times a week!  Luckily I haven’t sold it on Craigslist yet.

** Vet recommended Medi-Cal and Hill’s prescription diet can/wet food. However, both cats seem to like Halo more for some reasons. Also, Halo contains no chicken/by-product meal, gluten free and it contains 80% water.  As you can see in the photos, we bought some Halos from Petsmart. Their favourite are lamb and salmon. However, we did a 2 week test we found that Halo wet food can cause high urine alkaline level, not sure if it is because of veggies. It is a debatable topic –  Do cats need veggies?

*** Raw meat diet is supposedly to be good, because that’s what wild cats eat (although most vet won’t recommend that).  Not only raw meat has more water content, but it can also help work out their gum and teeth to prevent gingivitis. Last time, we visited our breeder, we could tell their cats have much stronger muscle because of raw meat diet.   Indeed, we tried feeding raw meat a while ago, but Rini didn’t like it.  Yet, Mythos loved it but he got diarrhea after having just serveral pieces.   Well, we will skip raw meat for now but will keep monitoring,  this maybe an another option.

Pet Insurance

We learned the lesson from the incident that  Mythos got his legs broken and Mythos started to walk properly again after laser therapy, we started to buy pet insurance with PetSecure half a year go, it’s around $25  per cat/month. I think that makes us sleep better.

Reading

- Urine Crystals and Bladder Stones in Cats (Good and detail description)
- Good Food For Cat With Struvite Crystals? (Wellness, Hills and Medi-Cal)