Help! Urine sample needed from cat…

[FlyingFlamingo]

Any tips?!
I think dcat has cystitis (going back and forth to the tray and producing tiny drops, plus it was pinkish last night, she has done one good wee this morning and then she’s been back to the tray about 10 times since) so I have a vets appointment this afternoon. Except they want a urine sample. They suggested putting a Tupperware underneath her but I can’t see her accepting that somehow .
Does anyone have any other suggestions?

you can get plastic pellets to put in the tray - which wont soak it up - our vet sells them i think - you could phone around and try to find that, or maybe use something like that in the tray....trying to think what....rice??

When my cat had a similar issue, they talked about special litter which I could buy from them.

In the end they just prescribed antibiotics without testing (although that would have been best practice), as other factors led them to believe it was a UTI. These solved the problem.

The plastic litter as PP said is best.

Yup, this is the stuff you want. It comes with a little pipette and a test tube to collect it in.

One word of advice though, use it on a day when you're around and can get to the litter tray fairly quickly. Although the plastic pellets don't absorb urine, obviously, if it's left for too long the plastic will get coated with the it and you won't have much to collect.

(sorry, ignore the random "the" in my last sentence.)

Actually, reading back your OP, your vet might be happy to prescribe antibiotics on what you're saying.

I have a similar problem in that a) my cats share a litter tray (their choice, they have more available), b) will only use wood pellet litter and c) Boycat is terrified of anything unusual or new. So putting plastic pellets down and collecting the pee from a specific cat just won't happen here!

So - (thank goodness for insurance!) the vet is going to extract the urine at the surgery, not sure of the method but hopefully it won't traumatise him too much. So if a urine sample is really needed & you can't get one at home, they do have ways and means for it.

Mine always refuse to 'perform' with the special plastic litter.
So I resort to watching them like a hawk and slipping a shallow plastic tray (usually a takeaway tray) under the required cat's bum mid-pee. Seems to work 🙀.

Can't help with urine collection ( we had the pellets and failed) but to encourage our cat to drink more we got some soup style cat food which he loved and switched to kidney friendly cat food ( ordered from Zooplus).
The vet said it was rare for a cat to get cystitis and was reluctant to prescribe antibiotics without the sample but they I grovelled and did the tablets did the trick.

Thanks everyone.
I will ask for the special litter but we are also a 2 cat house and they both use both trays so I will have to be on Cat Pee Watch
I watered down her food this morning and she was most unimpressed, she only gave in after the other cat had snuck in and drank most of the gravy, leaving the meat

We’re home with cystitis treatment and metacam, no mention was made of a sample so I didn’t even go there! If she doesn’t respond we can go back for antibiotics but the vet doesn’t think it’s an infection

That's good news @FlyingFlamingo . Is it Nutracys that you got? One of my cats had that and it was absolutely brilliant.

Hope she's more comfortable soon.

In case you do need a tip another time, try an upside down puppy training pad in the litter tray (ie, absorbent side face down, plastic side face up). Then use a pipette/syringe to syphon into pot. I had to get a urine sample from a rabbit once, you can imagine how 'easy' that was!

They have given us Cystese, not sure if that’s the same thing?

Thanks for the puppy pad tip. Stupid question though - why does it need to be upside down?

Sorry, cystaid not cystese. They all look like the same thing though (and readily available if I need to continue it. She’s already on gabapentin, she’s an expensive cat!)

Does your cat use a litter tray? I emptied the litter tray and my cat just peed in the tray, I tilted it into a corner and used a calpol syringe to collect the pee and squeeze it into the container. I did of course chuck the syringe afterwards😂

Depending on your litter tray you may be able to tip it out the corner and skip the syringe. Ours is one of those big, deep sided rounded ones so pee would have gone everywhere! Good luck, hope your cat feels better soon.

Ooh, I don't think we've had that one (yet!), there seems to be quite a variety of options.

Hope she's feeling better.

Thanks for the puppy pad tip. Stupid question though - why does it need to be upside down?

If it were the proper way up, the wee would just be absorbed (as per its normal function) and you wouldn't be able to syringe it up. Upside down means the wee just forms a pool on the plastic = easy to syringe.

Obviously you can skip the pad if your cat will just wee in an empty litter tray as PP has said.