Patches seemed all better before she peed blood on the carpet. This time we saw a different vet at the same facility. He's actually our vet from when we lived in L.A. last time. It'd been a few years since we've seen him, and it was good to see him again. He's a good vet. He explained that because Patches is female, there was not a huge rush to do a million tests and and an ultrasound, etc. Male cats can get obstructed more easily than females to the point where they can't pee at all, and apparently, that is what makes UTIs much more scary/severe/dangerous for males.

Dr. S. suggested we do an x-ray on Patches. "Because, if she does have stones in there, there'll always be blood in her urine until we get them out," he said. So for about twenty minutes, I was facing the prospect of surgery to remove Patches's potential kidney stones. Luckily, the vet tech returned and put the x-ray up on the monitor - no stones! No surgery! Woohoo!

They gave her a prednisone shot to reduce any inflammation she has. They also gave her 2 pill bottles. Two antibiotic pills twice a day. PILLS! Pilling a cat is tough stuff. Even Patches, the most easy going cat known to man, thought they were vile. She refused to swallow them when I tried the old tilting the head back trick. She spat it right out. Twice!

Then I crushed them and mixed them with water and stuck the solution in a syringe. Patches would have none of that! Actually, I got her to swallow some. Then when I attempted to get the rest down her, all hell broke loose. There was nasty brownish water all over her chest, my shoulder, and the bathroom sink by the end of it. Patches 1, Pills 0.

Today I gave her her regular dry food with the UTI Prevention tablet crushed in. I decided to break up her pills and put them in there too. Maybe I can trick her, I thought! We'll see if she ate it when I get home tonight (I'm at school). I'm not holding my breath.

Because of the peeing on the carpet episode, we had returned Patches to the large cat cage in the livingroom. Then Joe and I thought maybe she had peed on the carpet because we'd gotten rid of the litterbox in the cage. We decided to try letting her out again with open access to the cage-litterbox as well as her regular one. She was great for most of the night. Then sometime after midnight, she peed in the bathtub. No blood, which is good. But she's peeing outside the box! I was freaking out. I couldn't help thinking, what am I going to do if it turns out she heals, is perfectly healthy, but still won't use a litterbox?? I can't have an incontinent cat. I don't think it's right for people or the pets themselves to live like that. But I don't want to think about losing her either!

Anyway, I don't know why such morbid thoughts run around in my brain, or why I'm making mountains out of molehills (especially since I said last time that I was going to stop doing that!). I know logically that cats are perfectly trainable. Even better, they're very situational learners. For example, if you teach cats not to jump on the counter in one home, you have to re-teach them if you move. They don't carry those lessons from home to home. So, if Patches does in fact learn she can pee anywhere she wants, we could potentially just move and re-train her to use the litterbox in our next home and hope it sticks. God willing, we won't have to deal with anything like that. With any luck, she'll heal, she'll feel better, and she'll decide peeing in the litterbox is the coolest!

Speaking of morbid thoughts and my weird brain (I know, that was a whole paragraph ago, but bear with me!)... When Patches was having her temperature taken, she turned her head and just stared at the vet tech like she could not BELIEVE what she was doing to her. The vet tech made me laugh when she said, "Oooh, what a dirty look. She's like, 'What the hell do you think you're doing?'" That's exactly what it looked like Patches was thinking!

So I'm standing there thinking what it must be like for a cat, these large overbearing humans taking them to cold sterile rooms with metal tables and sticking things up their butts. And that's when I came up with my latest theory. What if people who think they've been abducted by aliens are really people who are having dreams about their past lives... AS CATS? I think it's brilliant, personally. If I do say so myself! Ha!

Anyway, hopefully this time, Patches is truly on the mend and will stop peeing blood and stop peeing around the house, and overall, stop scaring the hell out of me. That'd be really nice, actually.