PU surgery

[00deed1988]

Hi all.

I have 2 male tuxedo cats (litter mates) who are 4 years old.

6 weeks ago one showed signs of a bladder obstruction. Trip to the vets and managed to clear with a medication. £300.

2 weeks ago it happened again but he had to go under GA and have his bladder flushed as medication did not work. £1700.

Last night it happened again. We were at wits end as quoted us £2000 again. We were broken and asked to just do the medication to try and bring him home and bring him to our regular vets in the morning. They ended up trying the bladder flush not under a GA just some medication and local anesthetic gel and it worked (he is a very gentle, chilled cat that tolerated it). Urine sample is sent and waiting results (£700 total).

We are maxed out on our annual insurance premium. There was mention of putting him down as this is likely to reoccur. Most cases are due to stress, best case scenario is a bladder infection that can be treated.

The 'stress' yesterday was a hoover. The 1st time was someone coming to install a carbon monoxide alarm. Can't think of one for the 2nd occasion.

We are thinking if PU surgery. It is expensive but some vets offer finance. It was even suggested by someone to 'gift' him to someone on benefits to try and get this through PDSA. Obviously I can't up his insurance maximum now. Feel stupid for not having a higher pay out. I kind of just assumed they were young indoor cats so the risk was low and planned to make it higher when they got a little older. Foolish of me.

Anyone any experience with this?

We have a feloway plug in, 4 litter trays between the 2 cats through the house, plenty of wet food. Multiple water sources including a fountain, currently taking cystaid twice a day to help and in the process of trying to switch to a urinary diet which in its self is a fortune.

We don't want to put him down. He is our baby. But in 6 weeks this has cost nearly £3000 plus some sick days. If it keeps happening at this rate, then we won't have any other choice. We are all devastated and just don't know what to do for the best. We don't want him to keep going through this as well as he is in so much pain when it happens.

Don't know what I am looking for to be honest...Just a bit lost.

Picture of the beautiful fluffiness!

Oh gosh, poor fella and poor you. If he’s a good candidate for the surgery could you get a 0% credit card and then pay it off over time? What does your own vet think? The problem with shopping around vets for one that offers finance would be racking up consultation fees. We had our boy in for his boosters a few weeks ago and walked out £165 down because he was due his regular flea and worm stuff, plus we got ear drops because he had an itchy ear. So expensive! I think we were in for about five minutes, including the vet swabbing his ear and looking at it under a microscope.

I totally understand being desperate to treat him, but personally I think getting PDSA treatment under false pretences seems off as they are a charity with limited funds. I wouldn’t want to go down that road myself.

I feel the same about the PDSA thing, but it was said to my husband and now it is in his head and he thinks that is the way to go. I think we can afford it on finance so should go down that route but my credit history isn't great so would need my husband to be the one to do it. Looks anywhere between 3-4.5k for the surgery. If it happens before we managed to get it scheduled then I genuinely don't know what we will do.

It’s a horrible situation. Our cat is young (three) and our insurance is up for renewal next month. I actually increased his coverage massively for the next year based on how expensive that brief vet visit was (not because we claimed for it, it was just a stark reminder of the costs and how quickly they mount up for even tiny things). We had to have our beautiful girl pts with intestinal lymphoma two years ago, and it cost over £3k - covered by insurance thankfully - just to get to that awful (terminal) diagnosis.

I really hope you can find a solution that works for you and your lovely cat.

As soon as this year is us, I will 100% be increasing his brothers (sooner if I can ammend the policy). It just didn't even cross my mind to be something that could happen. Very naive of me. I always had girl cats growing up, didn't even know the problems lots of boys get till it happened!

He had all the same symptoms this morning, ended up having to cancel my overtime shift to bring him to the vets. Really thought the worst. They managed to get him to wee with just palpation, said he had cystitis and wasn't blocked and gave some pain relief to bring home. Still not himself all day. Passed huge mucous plugs with a few drops of wee. Not eating, drinking or weeing properly. Brought him again this evening before they closed and managed to get him to empty his bladder. Showed me his wee and it is totally blood stained bless him. Have him an additional pain relief and brought him home. He has eaten since but still not himself. We have booked him in for the surgery on the 11th May with our regular vets and managed to get a 0% finance. Our vet has a 100% success rate with the surgery. Praying we can get to surgery day. Just over a week to get him through but has happened twice in 48 hours. 3 times in 2 weeks. Hopefully once this is done we can finally relax. Just feel constantly tense and watching him for anything that is out of the ordinary.

Oh poor lad - really will keep getting crossed you get to the surgery date with no further incidents.

He’s so handsome! I also have a gorgeous boy cat, who gets stress triggered bladder issues (always when DH goes away!).

You really need the vet to tell you whether he has crystals causing the blockage or whether it’s stress related (the mucus usually indicates this) OR it’s cystitis. I understand that cystitis can still occur post surgery.

We have decided that the surgery sounds brutal and would like to avoid at all costs HOWEVER, each time he’s triggered we’ve managed to resolve it and have a strict protocol that we follow religiously. Ours is also stress triggered and the trigger is separation so anytime DH goes away or we are out for a long day he gets given gabapentin, chills
him right out! He has cystease on his wet food twice a day and urinary biscuits. If DH is away longer than a couple of nights, he goes to the cattery where he is happy as larry 🤔 even if I’m home! We strictly control his weight as that can he a risk factor.

We had over a month of back and forward to the vets last year. Our protocol is to try medication (massive shot of buprenorphine) and high dose gabapentin first. We allow 12 hours on this to do a wee. If not, Next step is one off catheter, under GA, though we will escalate to this if we don’t have evidence of a wee within the last 18 hours. If that doesn’t work, he gets a catheter again and this time he stays in the vets with the catheter in for 36-48 hours until they are confident everything is flowing well. He then comes home on a regime of bupe, gapa, antibiotics and cystease and we monitor the litter tray 24/7. Luckily we’ve only been here once before and we found it took over a month for his wees to gradually increase in size and reduce in frequency back to normal. £5k in vet bills over a month, possibly the most stressful month of my life. The surgery would have been the next step, so we came very close.

The magic bullet seems to be the cystease, keeping his weight down and anticipating stress and using gabapentin. Luckily we don’t have kids and flexible jobs so round the clock care can be managed but it is so so stressful!

Sending your boy all the weeing wishes!