Friends are traveling with a cat that recently had an episode of blood in the urine (hematuria) and we’re covering one cause of this problem: feline urinary stones and crystals.
First, what’s normal for a cat?--never mind that there are no normal cats.
A 12-lb cat should be:
· ingesting about 12 ounces of water,
· using the litter box 2/day, and
· urinating up to 1 cup a day, but
· never passing blood-tinged urine.
Because our friends’ cat has blood in the urine, it could have several health problems. We’ve chosen to cover one of these problems: feline stones and crystals.
Stones & urethral plugs are fairly common in cats, especially Persian and Himalayan cats. We might automatically assume that any cat with stones, crystals, or cells that aggregate around these materials and form plugs in the urethra would have bacterial infections, but this is not always the case. In fact, cats with urine or bladder stones or crystals that are less than 10 years old rarely have bacterial infections. In cats that are older than ten, about half will have bacterial infections when they have stones, crystals, or urethral plugs.
Whether cats have bacterial infections or not, penicillin based antibiotics are given because these antibiotics decreasing inflammation. If we can decrease inflammation, we make the cats more comfortable.
In tomorrow’s blog we’ll cover why it’s important to know which type of stone a cat has.
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