Lily Goes to the Vet

I took Lily to the vet this week to have her evaluated for a possibly urinary tract infection. Lily shows no signs whatsoever of illness, but because of the two recent incidents of "urine leakage" (yes sir, right on my shorts), she needed to be examined.

As it turns out, the vet was unable to palpate Lily's bladder. Seems there was a large "fecal ball" in the way. (Given Lily's voracious appetite, I'm sure this is a normal state of affairs for her.)

Since all of her vital signs are normal, the vet was not concerned about the urine leakage but suggested I try to obtain a sample. Now, my friend Darci (not in the least bit a cat person, mind you) had predicted that the vet would want Lily to "pee in a cup". I imagined myself holding the cup with one hand and the camera in the other. "OK, Lily, NOW!" That would make for an interesting blog post, I thought. But being an experienced cat mom, I knew that there would be no cup involved. In the past, I have scooped up wet cat litter or left kitty overnight at the vet to obtain a sample. It has always been a pretty simple operation.

So imagine my surprise when the vet handed me this syringe. Boy, I thought, a cup would have been hard enough, but this?

Well, not to worry...it's not as clinical as it sounds. Here's what I need to do to obtain the sample:

1) Isolate Lily with her own litterbox. This will be easy enough, since (due to extreme naughtiness) she is now confined to a private basement apartment each night.

2) Put a small amount of litter in one end of the litterbox, leaving the other side empty. Elevate the box on the litter side. The idea here is that Lily will use the litterbox and the "sample" will trickle down to the empty end.

3) Collect the sample with the handy-dandy syringe. Place it in a sealed container and take it to the vet's office for evaluation.

It's as easy as that! Stay tuned for progress updates.

And by all means, watch out for fecal balls.