I’m a bad kitty momma. Well, maybe not bad, but just not as proactive as I should be. Our bigger fur girls, Millie and Dolly, are regularly at the vet, but our smaller fur girls, Mama Kitty and Baby Kitty, not so much. I’ve always felt that since they don’t leave the house and rarely (if ever, if it is Baby Kitty) go out in our fenced backyard, I’ve never felt it necessary to get them rabies or other shots from contracted diseases.

I’ve had both cats since October of 2020 when Mama Kitty was one year old and Baby Kitty was just twelve weeks old.  And this is where the bad kitty momma comes in. Neither of them has ever been treated by a veterinarian…until yesterday.

Both kitties are big kitties. They eat and sleep, especially Baby Kitty. I decided a couple weeks ago that I needed to take Baby Kitty (she really does have a real name…Olivia) for a checkup, so I made an appointment with the veterinary clinic we use for the dogs.

After I made the appointment, I began fretting over it. Baby Kitty, for some reason, is extremely skiddish. She will disappear as soon as someone other than the Great Hunter and I are in the house and on rare occasions when she isn’t hiding, she definitely doesn’t want someone else to pet her. Our youngest son has tried on several occasions, but she’s hissed at him. And, the idea of trying to get her into the cat carrier was very daunting.

I knew my cat carrier was old and I wasn’t really confident it would hold up trying to carry an almost 20 lb cat in it, so I ordered a soft-sided wagon to put the carrier in. That turned out to be a very good idea!

As I’ve said, Baby Kitty is a large kitty. She tends to use her covered litter box by just stepping into it, but never going all the way in and she ends up with her rear end hanging over the edge and peeing on the floor. I’ve started keeping human bed pads on the floor in front of the box and that works well. When I went to clean the box the other day, I was alarmed when I saw that the urine on the pad was pink with blood, and not just a little blood but a lot.

I called the vet we use for the dogs and made an appointment for the next day (gone are the days when you could get a same-day appointment). I explained to the receptionist that she was large and skiddish and asked if it would be possible to get a sedation medication to give her before the visit. I was told that since she hadn’t been seen by the vet before, she would need to be seen first. If, when I brought her in to see the vet, and he was unable to treat her, he would give me a prescription for sedation and I could make another appointment for her. I reluctantly agreed and made the appointment.

I didn’t sleep at all well the night before. I was fretting over what I knew would be a problem getting her into the carrier and she didn’t disappoint me. Baby Kitty always sleeps on the end corner of our bed, so I put the carrier on the bed with the doors open and sprinkled some catnip in it with the hopes that she would not be so afraid of it. I watched her sniff it, but not go inside.

About a half hour before her appointment, I started trying to get her into the carrier. She fought me and I was grabbing any part of her that I could get a hold of. I finally got her in the carrier and as I went to latch the top hatch, she darted out the front hatch. I had forgotten to latch it!

I had previously closed off most of the basement while I was chasing her the first time, so when I began looking for her, I knew her hiding places down there would be limited. I looked all over the upstairs for fifteen minutes before I finally found her hiding beneath the couch in the basement. (I didn’t think she could even get under it.) The Great Hunter had to turn the couch over so I could catch her and get her in the carrier.

By then it was 15 minutes past my appointment time, but I had called earlier and told them I was having trouble getting her into the crate. I called them back and told them I had finally corralled her and although it was 15 minutes past her appointment time, I asked if I could still bring her in. Writing this, I sound so calm, but trust me, I was beside myself, especially when I was told that the vet would not see her because he said it sounded like she wouldn’t let him treat her. This was just the opposite of what I’d been told the day before when I was told he had to see her first to determine if he would be able to treat her. The receptionist said that the veterinarian told her I needed to take Baby Kitty to an emergency veterinary clinic where she could be sedated for treatment. So, guess what veterinary office won’t be getting any more of my vet dollars? (And we’ve spent thousands of dollars there.)

I was so frustrated. The Great Hunter and I immediately got in the car and took her to a new emergency veterinary practice, “VEG Pet,” and I have to say, they were awesome. The vet, Dr. Colleen Neale, didn’t make me feel bad for Baby Kitty not being seen by a vet previously and was gentle and caring. It turned out that Baby Kitty was much more compliant than I ever thought she would be and she even allowed the Vet to take a blood sample and attempt to extract some urine from her bladder.

An ultrasound of her bladder showed she possibly had a stone or a blood clot, but without an X-ray (an additional cost of $400), it couldn’t be definitively diagnosed. The final bill was still just a little over $900. Thank goodness for Care Credit.

Her preliminary diagnosis is Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease (FLUTD), which “is an umbrella term used to describe a group of problems associated with the lower urinary tract (bladder and urethra) of cats.” She was given an antibiotic and pain medication and I’ll need to follow up with a regular vet (not looking forward to that). And, I’ll need to try and actually get some of the antibiotic into her.

Needless to say, I’ll be making an appointment for Momma Kitty too, but I have to pay off Baby Kitty’s bill first.

**An update to when I originally wrote this…I’ve been able to get Baby Kitty to take her medications by mixing it with her wet food. The Vet gave me sample cans of prescription wet food. It is a lot more moist than her normal Friskies, so mixing the liquid antibiotic with the “gravy” in the food made it much easier. And lucky Baby Kitty now gets wet food twice a day. 😉