I just brought my 4 year old male cat home from a very very expensive trip to the ER. 6k expensive. He was blocked and in extreme distress and the ER I went to was down the street. They unblocked him the first night and it went well, inserting a catheter. They kept him a second night to monitor his creatine levels and the output of urine, which was high. The following day they suggested a bladder flush and I agreed to it since they saw a lot of grit in his bladder from the ultra sound. They said it went smoothly and a lot of that material came out with some blood clots. They told me not to worry about the blood clots as those wouldn’t block him. And in the third night they removed the catheter and monitored his ability to pee. Gave me a run down this morning on everything and what to look out for. I’m just worried about him reblocking. Is that something I should lose sleep over? I’m my mind I am thinking that since his bladder is flushed out, he should be good to go with a much lower risk for blocking, right? I’m be heading to the store with his prescription to buy the hills urinary wet food shortly. That’s about all I will be feeding him going forward.

And reassurance would be much appreciated as I’m just freaking out because I can’t afford more of this! 🙁

UPDATE: 31 hour update since we left the vet. He urinated on his own around 2pm on Sunday Sept 14th, the day I got him home. He has a little trouble but interestingly enough, a struvite crystal popped out of his penis! About the size of the head of a needle. I think that’s the crystal that the vet saw on the X-ray the first day he got in, near the penis. He bled in his pee right after this. He isn’t urinating a ton each time he pees, it’s about 4ml to about 6-8mls of urine each time. The blood pretty much dissipated after about the 3rd pee. After that I have him 1ml of Gabapentin. Vet told me that it is used not only to calm them but provide pain relief and allow them to accumulate pee. I was so exhausted, I think emotionally more than anything, that I laid down around 7pm. He woke me up so that he could get under the covers and go between my legs. He hasn’t done that in a long time so I really was enjoying that. I woke up around 11 so that I could give him another half dose of the gabapentin to last through the night. Again, he climbed under the covers with me and slept their through the night with me. I was surprised that I didn’t move at all throughout the night. I think subconsciously I needed him next to me like that and he knew that.

I woke up around 5:30-6am the next morning. This is when he got up and ventured over to the litterbox. His first attempt, nothing came out. And then I came to the realization that he preferred to pee on the pee pads I had laid around the room. At this point, IDC where he pees, just that he’s doing it. So the next 8-10 times, he urinated the same amount that I noted above. I did Google how much a cat’s bladder can hold and it said anywhere between 25-50 ml. And by how much he was peeing, I felt confident that he emptied his bladder this morning. I have him a decent dose of the gabapentin around 7, so now I’m just waiting for him to try to urinate again. It’s just so anxiety inducing because I’m worried about reblocking. The vet has given me direction to give the gaba starting at 10 on Sunday but he fell asleep around that time and I opted not to give it to him. When I called the vet to get some reassurance, they told me what the purpose of the gaba was, as noted above, so I have come to realize that the gaba is more than likely helping with the inflammation caused by the catheterization being in him for 2 and a half days. At this point I’m just waiting to see how he does this evening, mostly because I need to return to work tomorrow. So I’m just praying that he’ll be fine tomorrow and the next coming days. Praying….