Young kitten blocked bladder

Re: Young kitten blocked bladder

Hanna Bennett — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 16:47:28 GMT

i had a foster kitten many years ago who was similar, we sedated him and passed a urinary catheter, no obstruction so assumed it was inflammatory. don't remember any discharge. give him lo dose metacam and he recovered fine. the other kitten in the litter never had problems.

Re: Young kitten blocked bladder

Anthony Todd — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:00:35 GMT

[quote user="Kara Gibson"] a little whitish material [/quote]

I don't suppose this could be our old friend "struvite"? Wouldn't it have been sucked off if suckling was the cause? The description and the blocked bladder seems to fit....

And what sort of infection gives a "whitish material"?

Has there ever been a primary bacterial cystitis in the cat; plenty are secondary but primary?

At least "stress", interstitial or boredom hasn't been suggested yet.

Re: Young kitten blocked bladder

David Mills — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:20:59 GMT

Yes. We've seen this in kittens infrequently especially when we were seeing about 20 stray kittens a week.

The main pathology seems to be suckling --> inflammation/infection --> functional blockage due to inflammation/pain/spasm.

We didn't do any imaging or culture/sens but a little sedation (gas/some dom) and cleaning of the area - sometimes they form a scab over the end of the prepuce which appears to be enough to stop flow - with bladder expression, followed by a shot of metacam a decent course of abx - amox or amoxiclav (oral solution) +/- fuciderm on the area - solved all of the cases. Passing an eye irrgating catheter into the terminal urethra will demonstrate no distal blockage.

In fact in a couple, cysto showed no bacturia, so I suspect if you catch them early enough you're not dealing with a cystitis but rather a terminal urethritis/periurethral dermatitis so was one of the reasons other than cost that we didn't image. I would say that antibiotics are essential in these cases.

Separating the kittens for a few days or having only supervised interactions will help settle things down. They seem to grow out of it when they discover play hunting and toys - always thought it was a bit like tail biting in pigs.

Re: Young kitten blocked bladder

Michael Woodhouse — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:48:52 GMT

Having them in for a day or two and judicious use of s/c fluids might give you a chance to see what is happening, ensure lots of fluids going in (safely) and be able to intervene if things went south.

Re: Young kitten blocked bladder

Kate Richardson — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:19:36 GMT

No not seen this before. But would guess that there may be inflammation/infection from the suckling on the prepuce causing narrowing of the urethra thus making it difficult and possibly painful to pass urine and maybe the bladder wall doesn't have enough strength at this age to produce enough pressure to void urine?

So...if you have ultrasound no reason why you can't image the bladder and collect a urine sample for analysis including culture, cysto if you need to probably using a 25g needle. One off anti-inflam such as metacam- after discussion re off licence etc with owners and making sure they are well hydrated. If nec you could ga with gas and try to catheterise, you may need to use a really narrow gauge iv catheter? just to assess the patency of the urethra, but if you can express urine and they have been urinating ok up till now, then one would assume no congenital defect there.

Will keep thinking!