• Housing search continues to progress slowly.  Made final offer to seller of the house we wanted before, gave them 2 days to respond.
• Checked out a fixer-upper house that is very cheap, but requires vast renovations.  Too bad that would require a lot of cash up front, unless we could somehow get additional financing (which apparently is harder to come by now).
• Came back from seeing houses to find that hard drive had completely died.  Had not been backing up at night for the last few weeks because Bunky wanted to see if turning the computer off at night lowered the electricity bill.  Have to wait to see if I can recover any of the data from the dead hard drive (ordered a cheap SATA to USB adapter, since the other SATA clips are all broken from shoddy shipping).
• Brother got in bad car accident, although he seems to be ok.  Car is in bad shape.
• While on the phone talking about car accident, Sydney started puking.  Usually I toss him off the carpet towards the tile (I know, not ideal), but he was too far away from tile this time.  I made the mistake of trying to pick him up and carry him to the tiled area, which resulted in him spewing chunks of food in a wide fan pattern all over the carpet as Kiwi cried bloody murder.

Reminds me of Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Sydney is a big 19 lb cat, and for the last few years, I’ve been searching for a litter box that would fit him.  The biggest ones on the market were never long enough, and so he would go in and think his whole giant cat body was in the box… and then he would pee just outside the box right in front of the litter box.  The intent was there, but the execution was off.  Plus, Sydney likes to pee standing up, so he needs an enclosed box.  There was nothing big enough out there, and I knew that I needed a custom solution.  So ever since reading about making litter boxes, I dreamed of making my own.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure how to cut the box.  At one point I bought a storage bin to start the project, but eventually ended up using the bin for storage since I never got around to cutting it.  It’s just as well, though, since I later learned that that bin was still too small.  However, when I heard that my father-in-law had a Dremel rotary tool, I finally got things started for real.

First I had to assemble my supplies:

• 30-gallon Sterilite storage bin: I got an opaque bin, since I don’t really want to see what’s going on in there. They were on sale at Target for $7 I think.  The dimensions are listed as 32 3/8″L x 19 7/8″W x 17 1/8″H, and it’s enough for my bigger cat to go all the way in and also turn around comfortably.  I think both my cats could probably fit in at the same time, actually.
• Dremel: Use a low speed so you don’t melt the plastic too badly.  Some guides suggest you could use a utility knife, but the plastic is thick and it would be hard to make the cuts.  If you don’t have a Dremel, I think drilling the corners and using heavy-duty scissors/shears to cut the four sides would probably get you good results (and probably straighter lines).
• Sandpaper: Just so kitty doesn’t snag a ton of hair on the sharp edges.
• Flexible Plastic (optional): I just used the existing flap door from my old litter box, but you could probably cut out some heavy duty plastic for a flap.  Alternatively, you could just reuse the plastic piece you cut out, like this person did.
• 3m Mini Hooks (optional): Since I used the old flap door, it already had holes at the top.  The mini hooks hold the flap very securely.

I’ve never used a dremel before, and my father-in-law likes doing projects, so I let him do the cutting.  I took the old litter box lid as a stencil, and traced out the shape on a piece of paper (so that the old flap would fit in the new door).  Then I used painter’s tape to tape under the guide, and then taped the guide to the storage bin (5″ from the bottom).  I don’t know if the painter’s tape was necessary, but I figured it might prevent any splintering, and reduce a little of the dust.

After the hole was cut out, we sanded the edges down.  I took the old door flap, put the hooks in, and then stuck the hooks on the inside of the storage bin (as seen in the gallery above).  The hooks hold the flap better than just tape.  I didn’t drill any ventilation holes, although perhaps I will at a later date.

Both cats figured the litter box out pretty quickly, especially since it had the old door there.  The bin fits in the nook in my bathroom fairly tightly, which forces the cats to turn into the litter box rather than going straight in (and possibly leaving their butts poking out the door).

So far I’m very pleased with how the project went, and it was much cheaper than buying a new litter box!  Also the storage bin is easier to scoop, since the lid is thinner.  Many factory-made litter boxes have seams on the side which are hard to open if you have the length of the litter box parallel to the wall, and generally pee gets in those seams.  The storage bin avoids both those problems!

Eventually we decided that we had to take him to the emergency room.  We were both so worried about him, because he is a big energetic cat and yet he was basically looking like he’d thrown in the towel.  We got priority into triage, and it’s a good thing we took him in.  FLUTD works very fast, and the vet told us that his potassium levels were dangerously high and had practically stopped his heart.   Sydney is the first real pet I’ve had, so the thought of losing him really hit me hard.

The vets took him in to insert a catheter, and we decided to stay the whole time (a very long time, nearly two hours).  It took very long because Sydney had a lot of grit in his urinary track, and the vets had to be careful not to tear him up.  They also had to use different anesthesia, because of Sydney’s weakened heart.  When they called us in to see Sydney, he was wearing a cone and had a catheter; it was really emotional for us.  We eventually went home and had no choice but to wait for news.  At least the Steelers won the Super Bowl for Sydney.  Unfortunately, he didn’t get to watch the victory because he had to stay overnight for monitoring.  I called every few hours (at all hours of the night) to check on him.  He finally passed some urine after many hours, and they had to keep hydrating him.  We wanted him to get the proper monitoring, but at the same time it is very expensive to leave your cat at the vet overnight.

When we finally brought Sydney home, he was out of it, and he still had trouble peeing.  I watched the litter box like a hawk, and Sydney looked really sad with his shaved belly and his shaved section of tail (edit: the fur on the tail took months to grow back).  The pee mostly just leaked onto his belly skin, but at least he was peeing.  He was quarantined in the bathroom because he was dripping blood and urine everywhere, and the bathroom smelled awful.  Toby really missed Sydney, but we couldn’t chance any roughhousing, and we had to be very alert for re-blockages.

Eventually I took Sydney back to the vet to get some more antibiotics and pain medicine.  Sydney hadn’t re-blocked, but his penis had gotten rather inflamed, apparently.  This was interfering with his ability to pee properly.  The medicine really helped a lot, and soon Sydney was back to peeing pain free.  We had him on the special prescription urinary track health canned food for a while, but eventually we switched over to high-quality canned food from Wellness.  Although it was a tough ordeal, I can’t imagine losing Sydney and I’m glad we got him to the vet in time.

Needless to say, I was extremely worried. I was worried that Sydney would have blockage and be unable to pee.

A cat experiencing a urethral obstruction behaves similarly to any other cat with FLUTD. However, as time passes, the bladder fills up with urine and cause painful bladder distension. Kidney failure and uremia will follow within hours. The cat becomes increasingly distressed, and may howl or cry out in pain.

I spent much of that night watching Sydney. He was quarantined in the bathroom, since the hard surface is easy to clean. This was a wise decision, because the next morning the bathroom looked like the scene of a homicide. There was bloody urine all over the floor in front of the litterbox (Sydney has a tendency to go into the box and then pee outside of the box), and large blood splotches all over the floor. It looked like a bloody Jackson Pollock painting. Did I mention that I had cleaned and mopped the bathroom just the night before this incident happened? Still, silver lining (or perhaps gold or bronze lining) was that this fresh bloody urine proved that Sydney did not have blockage. I was able to swing a vet appointment that first day in the afternoon.

After waiting an extra 2 hours to see the Vet, the Vet took a look at Sydney and started to “palpitate his bladder.” Just by stroking Sydney’s belly with his magic touch, he was able to induce a “wide” stream of bloody urine right onto the stainless steel table in front of him. I was amazed and immediately agreed to a urinalysis on the fresh urine. The Vet told me he did not do that on purpose, but got 2.5 syringes full of bloody urine to test.

The urinalysis showed some white cells, very minute crystals, and some red cells (obviously). In the end, it was considered as an idiopathic FLUTD so a variety of treatments were given. Sydney was given strictly canned food and lots of water, as well as 10 antibiotic pills (taken daily in pill pockets) and 3 days worth of painkillers (narcotics taken twice daily).

For the first two days, Sydney continued to bleed all over himself whenever he peed, and there was not much urine in the litterbox. After that, however, it looked like there was no new blood, so I cleaned him up a bit. On the fourth day, there was still no blood and plenty of urine in the litterbox, so I gave Sydney a bath and then set him free (from the bathroom).

It looks like Sydney’s back to normal and he only has a few more days of antibiotics treatment left. I’ve decided to convert him to canned food on the weekends, and dry food on weekdays, so hopefully this won’t happen again.

During the procedure, the vet mentioned that sometimes these lumps will just scab over and fall off by themselves. Well, one week later, the scab fell off, and the bump seems to be gone. I’m going to keep watching it the next few weeks, but I would be really happy if the bump was gone for good.

Sydney doesn’t know yet that we want to take him for surgery. The last time this happened, some doctor cut his testicles out =(. Interestingly, I saw an article that showed how neutering your cat keeps his face sleek.