To pee or not to pee. That is the question.

Something I read in Blogworld stirred up the memory of when I had to take one of our cats to the vet. He seemed to have kidney problems. Not the vet, the cat. The vet said we had to catch some of his pee; the cat’s, not the vet’s (that would have been even weirder) and bring it to him so he could analyse it. I asked the vet if he could give any tips as to how exactly I could catch the cat’s pee and he said that I could follow the cat to the litter box and hold a shallow dish underneath the cat’s bottom.

I felt there were a couple of problems in his plan:

1. our litter boxes have lids so I would have insert my arm, holding the shallow dish, carefully into the opening in the lid and manoeuvre the dish in the right spot to catch the pee without being able to see what I was doing,

2. the cat would no doubt be highly surprised to see an arm, holding a dish, appear in this normally so private litter box and would probably close his urinal ways until further notice,

3. I’d have to follow the cat’s every move until he’d be going to the litter box. That could take a while.

So I asked the vet if he had a better idea.

“You can bring the cat to the surgery, so we can keep an eye on him and catch his pee ourselves”, vet said optimistically.

So I brought the cat to the surgery, where he got his own comfortable cage with a nice, soft bed and his own private litter box. Without litter. So the pee would stay clean.

That afternoon I telephoned the vet. “And?”, I asked. “Did Fleetwood (the cat) pee?”

“No, not yet”, vet said. “But you can collect him tonight. He must have done something by then.”

But Fleetwood saw the litter box without the litter and without the lid and thought: “I’m not going to pee into that thing. I’ll just wait till I get home again and pee in my own litter box.”

So when I came to collect Fleetwood that night, the vet saw me sitting in the waiting room, amongst some other people with their poorly pets, and said: “Oh, wait, he hasn’t peed yet, but I’ll try and massage something out of him. I’ll be just a moment.” And he disappeared into his surgery again to perform the delicate procedure of pee-massaging.

The other people in the waiting room looked at me, eyebrows raised in question marks. What kind of animal was this about, they seemed to wonder. And what was this intriguing story about pee-massaging?

“It’s a cat”, I said. “They need to catch some pee.”

“Ahh”, the other people said, collectively nodding. They understood.

Then we heard the hair raising sound of a cat screaming and growling, coming from the surgery.

The other people in the waiting room looked at me, eyebrows raised again, but this time I felt it was more of an accusatory look. As if I could help it that the vet’s procedure had turned Fleetwood into a malicious tiger. “He’s never made sounds like that before”, I defended Fleetwood truthfully. “He really is a very sweet cat.”

We all looked anxiously at the surgery door, expecting to see the vet turn up in the door opening, covered in bloody scratches, clothes shredded and a red&white cat clinging to his head. But the door opened and the vet turned up with a big smile on his face, holding a travel box with my usually very sweet Fleetwood in it. “Judging from the sounds coming from there, it all went smoothly?”, I asked. Vet laughed out loud. “Not really. He really really didn’t want to pee. But I could feel that his bladder was full, so I laid him on the table, with Paulien (his assistant) standing at the other end, holding a cup to catch the urine and I was massaging his bladder to get him to pee.
He did. Right in Paulien’s face hahahaha! But… marvellous assistant she is, she did also manage to catch something in the cup, so finally we can analyse it to see what’s wrong with him. He didn’t really like the procedure. But he took his sweet revenge hahaha.

Paulien appeared, drying her face with a towel. “I really did think he was a sweet cat, until just now”, she giggled. “He peed right into my face. Bloody cat!”

(Fleetwood did have kidney problems and needed to go on a diet for the rest of his life. Sadly he died about 6 years ago. He had a malignant tumour in his mouth and when the vet operated on him, it became clear that he couldn’t save him, so… that was the end of Fleetwood. Famous for peeing in the assistant’s face.)