Poor Little Luci!

Our poor little baby Lucienne, our youngest cat, has just had another trip to the vet for a urinary tract infection. For any of you ladies that have ever had the unfortunate occurrence of one of these, you know how uncomfortable they are. We recently had her on antibiotics for a UTI (note, Luci does not like have fluid shot down her throat). Last week, she was having litter box trouble yet again, so it was back to the vet.

While there, she donated a "sample" for them, got an x-ray that showed no obstruction, received a cortisone shot and came home with another dose of antibiotics. The culture came back negative for UTI! The explanation? The poor dear has what's called Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease. What this means is that she will sometimes get inflammations that will have the same symptoms of a UTI but is not an infection.

To prevent flare ups, we're supposed to "encourage" her to drink water....IE there's not much we can do. For those of you that don't have cats, making them do anything outside of their will is near impossible. For those of you that do have cats, you know exactly what I mean. We will try to "encourage" her by leaving more drinking spots around the house and giving her "treats" (wet food) more often. For the most part, though, this just means that we'll need to keep an eye on her litter box habits and take her to the vet for a cortisone shot if we see any of her symptoms. Hopefully, these flare ups will be few and far between. I hate to see her so uncomfortable!