How to Treat Feline Urinary Infections in Kittens

"Hi! I’m Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic and I am here on behalf of Expert Village.com to talk to you today about caring for kittens. Okay, this is a very common problem in cats and so I’ve saved it for last on this part. Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease is a syndrome in cats of which there are very little known. We know that we can manage it but we don’t know how to cure it nor do we know what causes it. There are many theories. If you culture it, it rarely causes any kind of bacterial growth so it is not believed in most cases to be a bladder infection. Those 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 yes 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 it is viral and it is caused by that same herpes virus that cat’s carry from birth and part of the reason for that is that it seems to come and go with stressful situations and so many people have different views on it and we have been working in trying to figure out what the best treatment is. You almost have to individualize it to every cat. So the symptoms are urinating blood and urinating places outside the box and maybe painful urination and the very worst 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. That is a condition that leads to death within a few days. If you see your cat laying around and meowing in pain, take him to the vet if it’s a male because that is a very common cause of death."