My cat recently has had trouble urinating. Recently I thought he started peeing blood. I thought it was a run of the mill UTI, but now upon closer examination, the litter is colored orange, not red. A bit of reading suggests he has crystals from a kidney infection or crystals in the bladder and/or urethra. Some more reading suggests the very first thing to do is to take him to a veterinarian. Sadly that is simply not an option. I have no money for that. (No, not a small amount I think is inadequate, I mean zero.) I read up on UTIs and kidney troubles and crystals and kidney stones. He has a one in three chance of it being a type that can be broken up by forcing him to eat/drink a slightly more acidic diet for a while. In the other two thirds of the cases, he would only have complications from this treatment. Giving him more basic foods would *NOT* break up those acidic crystals in those two thirds of the possibilities. And would be problematic in other ways as well. (Basic meaning higher PH) He is still drinking water, and eating food. And there is no obvious signs of an enlarged or hardened bladder, so I am hopeful he will get over this on his own. I did however check his diet for elevated magnesium and potassium. Only his treats have magnesium even listed, but they do not list how much. So I threw them out. I have no more than $20 USD left for the month, but I already plan to buy some soft food after carefully reading the labels for possible problem ingredients. He only drinks distilled water out of a water fountain that recycles the water through a sump-pump and passes a carbon filter. (The tap water here is undrinkable.) If he does not get better in the next few days and I cannot find a solution that is a real option for my meager finances, I will have no other humane choice but to take him out back and shoot him. I will not watch him die a slow lingering death. So please, let me know if you have any advice. Thank you in advance. My spoiled rotten pet and I would be grateful for any attempt to help him. Before I forget it, he is a neutered male of five or six years age. He is a Sphynx. (Mostly hairless cat.) He is also borderline retarded. No jokes, he really is. But he is my only companion besides my elderly mother. He has little understanding of how to properly clean himself. But he does attempt to anyway.
Well, he seems better today. I have been following him to the litterbox and noticed he has stopped peeing anything other than "normal" ammonia smelling yellow urine. I still cannot find my litmus strips that I bought ages ago, and have no idea how to even check PH of cat urine without isolating him from the litterbox until he gives up and pees wherever he decides is best. And that is a very bad idea in general anyway. But either way he seems better now. Thank you for reading. Hopefully this means whatever was wrong has passed and he will recover. (And although I am Agnostic, I know some of you who read this may believe in a Deity and may have prayed over this. Thanks if you did, and thanks to those who just wished the best.)
I'm glad for you that your cat is doing better. Some problems simply need time and maybe a little extra attention to diet and so forth. It was a scare, one that I can empathize with. Pets are members of our family, who are not generally capable of telling us exactly what's wrong when there's a problem. So when you notice something, wrong,it can be extra frustrating. So thanks for letting us know.
In theory, you could probably rinse some unused cat litter with a fixed amount of water and test the resulting pH, then repeat that with the exact same amount of water for used litter. You can calculate the difference then. On writing this down, I noticed that that's not very helpful, since pH only measures the concentration, and since you don't know how much cat pee you have... We can solve that problem by weighting the unused litter and the used litter, you need to use the same amounts both time, you could then calculate how much urine was in there.But I think that might be a little too complicated all in all, and I'd have to look up how to properly calculate all that. Well, this is what happens when you put me into a chemistry class for two semestres and I pay attention with up to half an ear. Glad to hear he's better, I hope he stays that way
He is purring up a storm and cuddling while being annoying, so he most certainly is feeling better. I use silica gel litter, and I honestly have no idea what the PH of it by itself is. I found my litmus strips. So I guess if he starts exhibiting signs of sickness I will do the chemistry work and see what I can learn. Thanks everyone.
Hell. I spoke too soon. He is again peeing orange liquid and only a few drops. He is crying constantly and doing everything he can to get my attention. If I cannot find a solution in the next two days he will be offered to a wealthy friend of the family who can afford to get him to a vet for proper care, and if she declines, he will be put out of his misery.
It's possible to pee out kidney stones if they're not too large... But yeah the humane thing to do if you can't afford the vet is to put him down. Kidney stones is one of those things that are excruciatingly painful, the type that rates 10/10 on the pain meter, almost on par with stepping on a stonefish.
oh god I once very slightly stuck my foot while walking along a beach. It was buried in the sand, we dug it up because I was worried it was a needle or something. It was worse. For reference: It's so painful I'd rather have both my arms broken (in terms of pain, not inconvenience) than have to be stung slightly by a stonefish then be dosed up on painkillers.
I wear sandals at the beach in areas with stonefish... I worked as a dive instructor on Koh Chang, Thailand, there was stonefish there, but I never managed to see one, I always wore my sandals at the beach though. Didn't hear about any incidents there either, though I did hear a story about someone who'd been placed on the sand 3 feet away from a stonefish on a course dive while the instructor corrected a bouyancy issue in another student.
I was wearing thongs NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO AREN'T AUSTRALIAN THONGS = . It just barely stuck through the (admittedly very worn thin) plastic.
I will try to remember that one thong is a garment worn on the lower body that leaves your rear exposed, plural thongs means those flip-flop things people wear on their feet. I learned something today!
We call them thongs also -- later, the same word was adopted for thong bikinis -- because of the straps. People today forget that because, as was pointed out, flip-flop replaced that in the vernacular. But before they were called flip-flops, they were actually called thongs. Technically, thong refers to a narrow strip of leather, which before they turned to plastic, is what the casual warm-weather footwear was made from. /edit btw, I've never called them anything other than thongs or (if they are leather) sandals. A thong is merely a specific style of sandal with the piece of leather (plastic in this case) that goes between your large toe and the one next to it.
Having had far too many awkward conversations regarding slipping on thongs then going to the beach... yeah, it's definitely worth disclaimering, lol.
