Unutterably Silly So what are you doing RIGHT NOW?

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I gotta tell you, it's pretty simple. It's two pieces of rug. The bottom one is just a flat piece. The top one has holes cut in it, with the edges sewn, and velcro attached to the bottom. It's ingenious in its simplicity. My female loves it. I hope you can get one soon!

Hitch

The Ripple Rug is a hit! Pixie lives on/in/under it now -- even sleeps on it. It is bringing the kitten out in Stella again -- every time she explores it, or lies down on it, Pixie tunnels under the top piece and launches a sneak attack! I'll be uploading some 'action' shots of these felonious ambushes.

Thanks again for telling us about it -- I had never heard of it!
And I thought by now I had bought every known cat toy on the face of the earth!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

The Ripple Rug is a hit! Pixie lives on/in/under it now -- even sleeps on it. It is bringing the kitten out in Stella again -- every time she explores it, or lies down on it, Pixie tunnels under the top piece and launches a sneak attack! I'll be uploading some 'action' shots of these felonious ambushes.

Thanks again for telling us about it -- I had never heard of it!
And I thought by now I had bought every known cat toy on the face of the earth!

You are most welcome. We were early RR adopters and I exchanged emails with the guy who came up with them. My female LOVES it. :-)

Hitch

[Rumpelteazer]

Poor Luna has a UTI. Since the Canal Pride, which was too loud and upset the cats a lot, Luna has been peeing on my mother's bed. She's revenge peed before, when she didn't like the litter box filling and when she thinks the litter box is too dirty to use. So we first thought it was something similar. But to exclude everything the cats went to the vet on Monday. Since Luna has a history of peeing in places she shouldn't the vet decided to check her out first. Her bladder was empty so she had to stay until they could get urine for a sample. Maru was also checked and was allowed home. Maru was upset all afternoon.

When Luna got home she washed herself for hours and Maru was weirded out (probably because she didn't smell like Luna anymore). Since there was some blood in the urine sample the vet gave us some medicine which is a combination of pain relief and anti inflammatory.

Yesterday we got a call from the vet that Luna indeed has a UTI, but not a bacterial one. So she caused her own UTI, cats can do that when they're stressed. So we have to continue with the medicine and on the 8th Luna has to give another urine sample to see if the medicine worked.

They haven't been allowed in my parents bedroom except when they are both in bed. On Monday we're going to try if Luna won't pee anymore. We've gotten two Feliway diffusers, one for the livingroom and one for my parents' bedroom and a spray bottle. Hopefully that'll help make Luna less stressful.

[Gibbo]

getting ready for the beach, it's goner be a scorcher!!!

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Poor Luna has a UTI...

We have had many cats over the years (3 at the moment) and have had several that have suffered from urinary tract disease (usually referred to as FLUTD Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease) and so gained quite a bit of experience with resolving it. Apologies if you know most of the following but it is what we have found to always work.

Given that there is blood in your cat's urine then I would strongly suspect FLUTD rather than just some developed habit. There are a number of causes of the disease but in the main it is crystal precipitation in the urethra or stress (which can induce the precipitation; over grooming if it occurs is a reliable sign of stress). Unless it has been recurrent, infection is an unlikely cause as cat urine is very concentrated (cats are very efficient in preserving water) making it not a good habitat for bacteria, it is this concentration that leads to the precipitation of crystals which blocks and irritates, and then damages the urethra causing pain when urinating. This means that the presence of blood is almost always due to bleeding and not infection.

Affected cats will try different places to urinate as they associate the place they do it with the pain rather than the process itself, so they will try different places and often avoid their tray. All our cats soon get to know "No" and "Down" and respond to those words even when spoken at a normal voice level so if an affected cat is caught in the act away from the litter tray we find that a firm "No" and being carried to the litter tray makes them associate the new place with discomfort.

Vets used to treat it with an antibiotic and prescribe a low mineral food (usually referred to as a low struvite food). As far as I know use of antibiotics (unless there is actually bacterial infection present) is often now recognized as being a waste of time. Low struvite diets can be expensive. What vets now do for treatment (other than prescribe a low struvite diet) I do not know as we find we can resolve the problem ourselves.

Long ago we had a male cat who developed FLUTD, probably stress related, and it was recurrent resulting in episodes of trips to the vet with him. However, on one occasion our normal vet was away and he had a locum there who just said make the cat drink as much as possible. Counterintuitive, but it seems it works because it reduces the urine concentration and crystals and mucus dissolve and flush away. I asked the vet what is the best drink to give as it is impossible to get cats to drink more water to which he replied "Anything, whatever he will drink, gin if necessary but milk is fine" :-).

So what we do is give milk for the affected cat to drink at each meal as they have always liked milk (we break all our cats daily food allowance into 3 meals a day, so 3 lots of milk). It can be a problem in a multiple cat household because they will all get into it. It has always worked and that quite quickly. Once cured they seem to get into the habit of drinking and start taking in enough water but we normally keep the milk up for a week or two after the cat is back to normal.

It is said that cats cannot tolerate milk but we have never come across one that cannot, so for us cows milk has always been fine. What many cats will not like is water that does not look perfectly clean, even a small speck of food fallen into it from their face or a hair floating in the water may make them reduce their water intake. We find also that they drink more water if they have a deep wide bowl, and always kept topped up as they may not like to get their faces deep into a bowl (maybe they associate deep water with cleanliness and shallow with puddles?).

When the cat has the disease it is important to keep a lookout that the cat does not suffer a complete blockage - if the cat gets into obvious continuous pain then it needs to get to a vet quickly. Vets can normally relieve the cat by gently squeezing the bladder.

I hope you get the problem sorted quickly as it can be pretty trying for both the cat and the household.

[Hitch]

I'd like to add that I had a male Himmy that suffered from this--and I found a water additive that contained citric acid. Now the original product, you added to water; the later product, you administered directly by mouth, with an eyedropper.

The additive did the trick brilliantly. Once we started adding it, he never had another problem, for a decade. I'm sorry that I don't remember the name of it now, but he was with us nearly 15 years ago now when he passed.

Hitch

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'd like to add that I had a male Himmy that suffered from this--and I found a water additive that contained citric acid. Now the original product, you added to water; the later product, you administered directly by mouth, with an eyedropper...

It possibly contained potassium citrate which is also found in low struvite prescription diets for FLUTD. But citric acid might do the same, I don't know. It helps reduce the acidity of the urine. They often have vitamin B6 in them too which is also claimed to reduce the formation of crystals in the urine.

A cruise along the pet food shelves looking for those may be useful. I know that Hill's special cat foods have some of these additives in them (I suspect Hills will be found in Holland for the OP, certainly in many other countries, as well as the USA of course, and are prominent here in NZ in supermarkets and vet. practices). We tend to just use cheap foods ourselves after checking their analysis.

When I was a kid we used to feed our cats with raw meat and hearts, liver, etc., and fish. We never had a cat get FLUTD and I have wondered if a more natural carnivorous diet was the reason. But those things are pretty dear now and I once checked with our butcher if they have any trimmings but it all goes into mince, patties, etc. and they would have to charge the same as those prices for them so they don't sell trimmings. I saw ox tail in there the other week, not often seen here in recent years, and it was the price of decent steak despite being mostly bone .

[Rumpelteazer]

Thank you.

We'll see how the painkiller/anti inflammatory medicine of the vet works. Neither Luna nor Maru much likes dairy products. They occasionally get cat milk, and used it for her liquid medicine, but after a couple of days neither of them wanted it anymore. So now we squirt it directly in her mouth.

Luna gets stressed easily. Maru is very laid back. It's definitely stress. It occurred after the very noisy Canal Pride which passed our house. To top it off, my mother locked them in my parents' bedroom. Yes, that way the noise was a lot lower, but the cats didn't know it was best for them.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow when they're allowed back into my parents' bedroom. It might be that Luna has found another place to pee besides the litter box, we've got so many nooks and crannies in our house you just wouldn't notice it.

[Rumpelteazer]

Earlier this week I ordered a couple of art supplies that I couldn't get from my local store. Some mechanical pencils, different softness of lead fillings, fixative spray and a new T ruler because I sat on the one I had and it broke.

Today a big box came, I first thought it was the shirts I ordered, since it wasn't a very high box. But it was my art supplies. When ordering the T ruler I just ordered the cheapest one made out of plastic (there was one cheaper but it was made out of wood). I hadn't looked at the size. It is a 65cm (about 2 foot) T ruler. It's massive.

I don't mind. When I'm working on bigger project, especially 3D ones, I often use big sheets of cardstock (50cm by 70cm), which I cut to the right size, but I never had a ruler big enough to draw perfect straight lines. Now I do. But I still need a regular sized one, of about 12 inches, like my old one, because my new T ruler isn't very practical when working on regular sized paper, let alone on my sketchbook.

[binaryhermit]

Late night laundry

[Hitch]

Having had one of the sh******t weeks ever in the office, I'm wondering if the world will actually stop spinning on its axis if I take today off for a change.....

Hitch

[Dylrob]

Sitting on a stalled bullet train in the middle of Italian farm country.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

Sitting on a stalled bullet train in the middle of Italian farm country.

Well....at least lunch should be fresh?

Hitch

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Having had one of the sh******t weeks ever in the office, I'm wondering if the world will actually stop spinning on its axis if I take today off for a change.....

Hitch

Take the day off and do something fun for yourself.

Today the Tour de France has started and somehow to me that means the start of summer. I love the Tour, even if today's stage was kinda boring.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Take the day off and do something fun for yourself.

Today the Tour de France has started and somehow to me that means the start of summer. I love the Tour, even if today's stage was kinda boring.

Hi:

Yeah, but y'know...you know what it's like, pretty much, to be "owned" by a small business. Granted, it's your parents' but still. There's ALWAYS something to be done. This week, I've been plowing through our 22,000 font faces, getting them reorganized. Recreating a file repository, for the clients and the downloads we give 'em, etc. There's just no getting away with a single day off that's fine, or during which you can NOT think about everything you're NOT doing, y'know? At least, I never seem to be able to turn that off.

Hitch