How to Handle Feline Lower Urinary Disease

"Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic and I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk to you about cat first aid and administration of medications. This is a very common problem in cats and so I saved it for last on this part. Feline lower urinary tract disease is a syndrome in cats of which there is very little known. We know that we can manage it, but we do not know how to cure it and nor do we know what causes it. There are many, many theories. If you culture it, it rarely causes any kind of a bacterial growth, so it is not believed in most cases to be a bladder infection. Now that changes with older cats, but this is really a young cat problem in most cases, but if you get an older cat with the symptoms then a bladder infection gets on the list, but most of the time it is a young cat and it is not an infection as far as bacteria goes. There are some theories that it is an inflammatory condition compared to one in women called interstitial cystitis. There is one camp of people who believe that it is viral and that may be it is caused by that same herpes virus that cats carry from birth and part of the reason for that is it seems to come and go with stressful situations and so many, many people have different views on it and we have been working, trying to figure out what the best treatment is and you have to almost individualize it to every cat. So the number one, the symptoms are urinating blood and urinating places outside the box and may be painful urination and then the very worse thing that can happen is male cats can get plugged because in this condition they make crystals and the crystals turn into plugs with the mucus and plug up the urethra, so they cannot urinate and that is a condition that leads to death within a few days and if you see your cat lying around and meowing in pain, take him to the vet if it is a male because that is a very, very common cause of death."