Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: Peeing Woes

Despite being on a limited income, we try to do the very best we can for our critters. I'm just tellin ya that right up front.

This is Callie. She's one of the ones that I call my wild girls, but she's not wild anymore. In fact, she's very affectionate and loves to have her belly rubbed.

Callie was born at a time when we had a feline virus running rampant around here. Every kitten, in every litter, was born with the virus or contracted it soon after birth. Our cats have been building an immunity to it and litter after litter the virus was losing its hold until none of the kittens in the last two litters got it. Now all of our cats are fixed so there won't be any more kittens.

When they have the virus, like Callie does, they never seem to get completely over it. It stays in their body and pops up from time to time. Such was the case this past week.

In the mornings, when I go out to feed the cats, I always spend some time giving love to anyone who wants it. Usually it's Callie and Sugar but sometimes Anon too is more interested in being petted than eating. Tuesday, as I was loving on Callie, she started purring and I could hear the phlegm rumbling around in her lungs, she was that congested. Then she rolled onto her back and I saw blood on her belly.

Where did that come from, I wondered and started looking for a wound. That was no easy feat, let me tell you! When I was trying to look through the bloody fur, she wouldn't stay still. After a few seconds of belly rubbing, she'd get up and butt her head against my hands. Then I'd have to start all over again. I rub her head and ears and the side of her face and down her body until she flops over onto her side and I rub her belly for a minute, then she's up on her feet again. She constantly twists and turns and rolls while you pet her. But as near as I could tell, she didn't have a wound. That means the blood probably came from her eyes or nose.

I was worried about her.

I went back into the house. "Mike, I think Callie's sick. Can I bring her in the house for a while?"

"You mean let her run in here?" he asked.

"No, in the kennel."

"Where are you going to put that?"

"In the half bath. It'll be out of the way there."

"I guess," he reluctantly agreed.

I started to walk away when another question occurred to him. "Is it going to scratch the floor?"

"I'll put something under it," I called over my shoulder.

I got it all set up and brought Callie in. That's when I realized it was colder down on the floor. What can I put it on? I wondered but couldn't think of anything. I took my problem to Mike.

"We can use some buckets," he suggested then he helped me get the kennel up off the floor.

The girls, Itsy and Ginger, were napping while I was busy with this job. It wasn't until hours later that they realized we had a visitor in the house. Itsy didn't much care one way or the other but Ginger did. She sat and watched Callie for several hours.

I didn't think Callie would bother our cats Macchiato and Molly at all. They'd have to go down the hallway past her to get to their litter boxes but Callie was in the bathroom and in a kennel. No problem, right?

I had a rude awakening the next morning. I'd shifted position and gotten my feet wet. I snapped on the light and threw the covers back.

"What's the matter?" Mike asked through the fog and haze of sleep.

"Someone peed on the bed!" I looked at the clock. "It's twenty after six. Might just as well get up anyway." Climbing out of bed, I stripped my brand new electric blanket from the bed. "It probably went the whole way through to the mattress," I grumbled as Mike headed for the bathroom. Off came the sheets, joining the blanket on the floor, then I pulled the mattress protector from the corner and peeked under. "Nope! It didn't!" Thank goodness I had the rubber-backed mattress protector on the bed.

"Peg, it seems funny that you didn't know a thing like that," you say.

I know, right! If it didn't happen yesterday, I might not remember it. We moved from Missouri to Pennsylvania, changing from a king size to a queen bed. Spent more than a year renovating, then moved in here late last fall, changing from a queen back to a king bed. In all the changes I've lost track of what is where. Be that as it may, I did put the rubber-backed mattress protector on our bed and it saved my expensive Tempur-Pedic mattress from a pee stain.

I tossed the mattress protector into the washing machine with a healthy dose of white vinegar and got that going. "Mike, we'll have to take the blanket to the Laundromat."

"Why?"

"Because it doesn't fit in my washer very well. It's too big to agitate." Mike didn't just get me a king size electric blanket, he got me a super-king size blanket. The instructions said to wash before use and had very specific instructions. After the fifteen-minute presoak, I checked on it and the top of the blanket wasn't even wet. I pushed it down, added the soap and got it gently agitating. When I went to take it out the soap was still sitting on top of the blanket and I had to do a little hand agitating if you know what I mean. But since the blanket wasn't really dirty, I went with it anyway and called it good enough. It wouldn't be good enough now though. I needed the blanket to be thoroughly agitated.

"Who do you think peed on the bed?" I asked on one of my many trips through the living room that morning.

"I don't know," was Mike's first reaction. But then he thought about it. "Maybe it was Ginger. Maybe one of the cats was in the way and she couldn't get off the bed."

I immediately dismissed that idea. "Naw. Ginger's never peed on the bed before."

"No, I guess not. She'd have woken you up."

"Yeah, she would've. The only one to ever pee on the bed was Macchiato and that was when he had a urinary tract infection."

"Maybe he's mad because Callie's in the house."

"Really?" I didn't think that was likely but I wasn't taking any chances. I did not want my bed peed on again. I took Callie back out to the cat room. She seemed better anyway. The whole time I was running around the house, changing loads of laundry, I'm thinking about it. "Okay, maybe he was mad. But if he has an infection we need to have him treated. Should I call the vet?"

Mike thought about it for a minute. "Go ahead."

I called the vet. "How do I get a urine sample?"

"We have this stuff called Nosorb that you put in the box. It won't absorb the urine and once he pees you can pour the urine off into the container," Mark, the vet-tech told me.

I made a fast trip into town. I couldn't believe the little cup of stuff they were selling me. I bet it wasn't more than half a cup of these little rubber pellets. "That's it?" I asked.

"It just gives them something to scratch in."

When I got home I had to wash the litter box out —fun! — and put this little bit of Nosorb into the bottom, then I confined Macchiato until he peed. And trust me, he was NOT happy about being in the kennel.

A few hours later I had to run the pee sample back to the vet's office.

Less than an hour later they called. "There's no sign of infection but Dr. Jan would like to see him anyway. There're other things that could cause him to pee on the bed. We can see him tomorrow at 3:30," Morgan, another vet-tech told me.

"Alright. Let me talk to my husband and I'll let you know." I hung up and turned to Mike. "Macchiato does not have an infection but the vet would like to have fifty-three dollars anyway," I reported.

"Huh?"

"Oh, uh, they want to see Macchiato anyway. Tomorrow. At 3:30. What do you think?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

I called the vet back and made the appointment. In the meantime, this little noggin of mine was mulling things over. "If it wasn't Macchiato, then it was Molly," I told Mike.

"How do you know it wasn't one of the dogs?"

"I just don't think it was." But thinking and knowing are two different things, right? What could I do but give it the smell test. I went into the bedroom, picked up the still wet blanket, and sniffed it. Whoa! I'd know that smell anywhere! "It was a cat!" I called before I ever got back out to the living room. "Mike, what if I kennel Molly and get a urine sample from her? We could take it to the vet with us tomorrow and have it tested."

"Good idea," he said.

Do I put her in the kennel and let her pee in the same box Macchiato did? I wondered. He doesn't have a urinary tract infection so it shouldn't affect Molly's test — will it? All this stuff was rattling around in my head. In the end, I decided to rinse the rubber pellet Nosorb, wash the box, and start fresh.

"How did you do that?" you wonder.

I know, right! Mike wondered the same thing. "I used my sieve," I told him. "I have one I use for that kind of stuff."

Mike was disgusted. "Yeah, but I don't know which one it is! What if I get the wrong one when I'm straining something!"

It's a good question, but I couldn't help but smile. "I don't keep it with my kitchen stuff. I keep it under the sink with the cleaning stuff."

Molly spent that night in the kennel and when I checked on her the next morning, there was no pee in the litter box.

Uh-oh. If she's not peeing, that's a bad thing.

I let her out for a bit to freshen her food and water and discovered she'd peed on the towel I'd given her to lay on. I took the towel out, cleaned stuff up and put her back in with nothing but the plastic bottom of the kennel to lay on. Now when she pees I'll be able to get it, I thought.

She was not any happier about being in the kennel than Macchiato was and she let me know about it too!

Instead of taking a picture of Molly for this letter blog, I went back through my old photos and found this one of our grandson holding Molly. It was taken in August of 2015 and Molly looks like she's having a good time, doesn't she! Andrew didn't hurt her though and she tolerated his love.

Gosh, I miss Andrew.

But I digress.

So Molly is in the kennel with nothing but a food dish, a water dish, and a litter box with Nosorb pellets in the bottom. All day I watched for her to pee and she didn't. I went to Mike. "If she's not peeing then she does have a problem. What if we take Molly to the vet and not Macchiato?"

"Can you do that?"

"I don't see why not."

Molly is fifteen this year and at a little over seven pounds, she's skinny. The vet, Dr. Laura, looked her over and didn't find anything overtly wrong with her.

"How can you check her urine?" I asked.

"If I can find her bladder I'll insert a needle and take it that way." Dr. Laura was feeling Molly's belly as she spoke. "Yep. There it is. And it's pretty full too."

"Well she hasn't peed since last night sometime."

We spent a couple of hours at the vet but Molly is fine. No infection. And that can only mean one thing.

"What's that, Peg?" you ask.

That Mike was right.

"What! I can't hear you," Mike says and cups his ear whenever I tell him he's right about something.

"You were right," I'll repeat louder so his old ego can hear me. Molly must have been afraid to go past Callie to use the litter box even though Callie was in a kennel and in a different room.

All those trips into town took us past the train cars.