Deuce's check-up

If you remember this post, you'll know the problems that we had with Deuce earlier this year.

We took him to the vet on Sunday because he missed the litterbox at some point overnight on Friday. Now that normally wouldn't be a big deal, but since we were told at his last checkup that he had stage one kidney disease, we wanted this checked out. He was eating and acting his normal self, but still it was very unlike him to miss the box. One thing that Deuce has *always* done, even as a kitten, he gets very hyper when he uses his box and tears out of there like a bat out of hell when he's finished. Josh thought that he might have missed the box because he got hyper and jumped out before he was done. :P

When we took him in, the vet did her examination downstairs, since he's always less than thrilled to be there. When she came back, she told us that Deuce was very good during the examination, almost to the point of being cuddly. At this point, I thought for sure he was sick, I mean, he doesn't let them touch him without trying to tear their faces off let his opinion be known.

She told us that they couldn't do the urinalysis on him, apparently he was 'empty', and they also didn't want to collect it in case they nick him...they wouldn't know if he had blood in his urine or if they had nicked him. It makes sense, but we got 'stuck' with the job of collecting it. YAY! ;)

When we got home we Josh had to wash out the litter box, dry it and we were given plastic beads to put at the bottom of the box. Apparently these beads mimic the feel of litter and are supposed to fool the cat. Sorry, but he's smarter than that. I put him in the box, rubbed his paws on the beads and he immediately jumped out. It didn't feel the same to him, plus she didn't give us very many...he's used to a rather full box.

Over the next 24 hours I kept putting him in the box, rubbing his paws on the beads, and again he would jump out several times. He got upset at one point, and just lay down inside his box. Poor kitty. :(

I ended up staying up until 4:00am Monday morning, waiting for Deuce to pee, with no luck. Yes, I know that sounds strange, but the vet told us that we had to collect the sample and run it over to them within an hour of Deuce producing it, or it wouldn't be good. I could go into details about it, but I'm not sure if you really want the history of cat pee. ;)

He *finally* decided to use the box 24 hours later - just as I was going to take a nap. I'm sure he was tired of the crazy lady me constantly putting him in there.

Long story short, we got the results of all his tests Tuesday evening. Apparently all his bloodwork and urinalysis came back 'normal', and now they're questioning if he really has kidney disease after all. He has to go back in six months for a complete blood workup, but for now, he seems to be in great health!