Phantom Infections

[katherinerose]

I rescued my kitty Grimm about two years ago when she was very young, and intended to nurse her to health and give her away to a friend. We quickly realized there was something going on with her, and after quite a few unsatisfactory vet visits, found her to be incontinent. I have never dealt with an incontinent animal before and it took quite a few trials an errors to get down expressing her (thank goodness I found this sight, what a saving grace it was!) Even after I felt confident in expressing her and keeping up with her needs, she kept getting infections nearly every 3 months on the dot. My vet asked me to demonstrate how I express and assured me I was doing it correctly I moved to expressing 4-5 times a day and keeping her entire bottom shaved, and still the infections. We had noticed a very small amount of struvite crystals in her urine on one occasion and saw nothing for almost a year before they popped up again. No major crystals, just something that you would really have to look for to notice. Almost 2 months later, I noticed darker urine and more dribbling. Everything exactly consistent with her usual symptoms of infection that I'm all too familiar with. So I called up the vet to make another appointment, and we went in they expressed her, took a sample of urine, obvious blood present and we sent it out for testing. Usually my vet will take a blood count sample before charging me to send it out, but we were pretty convinced it was an infection. Her urine had a good amount of blood, she was lethargic, and dribbling a ton. The next day they called to tell me there was a very very low white blood cell count which was not indicative of infection, but they would wait to get the results until tomorrow to see the results before scheduling an appointment for xrays to check for crystals, which would be the next step. They thought it was strange such a young kitty would get crystals, but it could be possible. So sure enough the results came back as negative, no infections. So we went ahead and did the xrays. Afterward the vet came in with the xrays and showed, there were no crystals present. The vet was stumped, and asked to keep her updated and called every day to check on her. Sure enough within 7 days of initial symptoms, everything stopped. After her symptoms were resolved she put us on a prescription diet of Royal Canin Urinary SO, which is used to dissolve and prevent crystals. It's been almost 8 months and no infection! But I have been very curious if anyone else has experienced this or heard of this before. The vet said it's pretty rare, but can happen in any female species where their body acts as though it has an infection when it doesn't. Very strange!

[critters]

Hmm. SCI critters can be prone to UTIs. I wonder if the crystals could be irritating her bladder? Buddy, my most severe SCI boy, had a freaky problem with crystals. Have you considered getting more water into her to dilute her pee? You can do sub Q (under her skin) fluids or get her to drink more (not as precise).

[katherinerose]

Hi,

What does SCI mean? I'm thinking her crystals where having a larger effect on her than we originally thought. Grimm is a pretty picky spoiled little girl and will only drink water from a running faucet or a water fountain bowl. Even that is a bit difficult because she LOVES water and will commonly splash around a LOVES digging the water out onto the floor . So I usually have to keep a pretty limited amount of water in the bowl with a towel under because most of it ends up on the floor. I'm just curious as to why she would be having all the symptoms of a UTI without actually having an infection. Even though I've had my girl 2 years, I'm still new to this, and it seems strange she would be having issues with blood in urine and lethargy without any sign on infection! Could this be related to a lack of water?

[critters]

SCI=spinal cord injury

Yes, my Purrz only wants his water "on the hoof," too. Terribly annoying!!!

I really don't know why she'd have blood without a UTI. I wonder if an internist might help?

[drakonka]

Feline Idiopathic Cystitis often presents itself in a similar way to infections as well, which from what we've been told by our vet can be triggered by stress. Could she be getting stressed out from the frequent expression or maybe the regular shaving? Our vet recommended Cystease and Zylkene. Not sure if they are helping but he hasn't had an episode since (yet). We try to keep his life as stress-free as possible, always have a quiet area for him when the kids come over, etc. Also we get as much water in to him as possible via adding it to his wet food to help flush his system.

(I can't remember this off the top of my head but the vet we saw when he had his bout of cystitis said they actually did studies on cats prone this which showed the brains of these cats reacted to excitement or stress in a different way from 'normal' cats. I wish I had a link to the study to read more)