Thanks! I think he is doing pretty good. I just hope there aren't any relapses. We've been dealing with this issue all year, but it hadn't become an emergency until last week. :\

When I lived in Calif. any ER visit never cost less than $2K.......really ridiculous. You must have taken your cat in on a Friday evening, otherwise, why did they keep him 2 1/5 days? Here in Oregon the ER will keep animals over the weekend but all pets have to go to their regular vet Monday morning. The ER is open 5pm-9am weekdays.

Yes, the ER here is more expensive than the regular vet but nowhere near what I had to pay in Calif.

It's a 24 hour ER. Their procedure is to keep the catheter in them for 48 hours then remove it and watch them for 12 hours.

That sounds pretty typical… I work ER in So Cal, and sometimes clients just can't afford that, so we just unblock the cats, give them a dose of fluids and send them home with pain meds.. .sometimes that works (and WAY cheaper)… but sometimes it doesn't, and the kitty's are back in less than 12 hours. Even though I do all the work (actually, my technicians do most of it), I have little say in the pricing… we are a 'mid-range' clinic… if you happen to go to a specialty practice, the whole adventure could end up costing you almost double that (or even more if you let them talk you into every test they want to do on your cat).

I think next time I'll see if the vet can do it. He's a young kitty, very resilient and I've had a lot of experience dealing with sick cats. Nursed an elderly old kitty with failing kidneys for the better part of a year, giving him IV fluids twice a day, so I'm pretty good at these things.

Turns out he had a UTI as well. Poor baby!

What is he eating? It would definitely help to prevent future incidents if he is eating good quality canned food or raw.

Years ago I had to take my female cat to the urgent care vet (thankfully we have a vet that is open 7 days a week but not nights) because she was peeing blood every 30 minutes and it was a weekend. They did x-rays and found some crystals, send us home with prescription food and meds.

Took her to the our reg. vet for follow up and because she wouldn't eat the prescription food. My vet told me to throw the junk away and feed her raw or at least grain free canned. In addition she had to take an herbal supplement that dissolved the crystals. She has been fine ever since.

Unfortunately this vet retired 3 years ago.

He's the pickiest cat ever. I've finally got him eating canned food, Fancy Feast with gravy, and I just now introduced a low magnesium food (good for struvite-makers). I always add extra water to his food. I think his latest episode was caused by Instinct Raw Boost. I looked at the ingredients and they contain pumpkin seeds which are VERY high in magnesium. I was crumbling them on his wet-food to get him to eat it. Mistake!

I've switched to crumbling plain freeze dried chicken or turkey bits with nothing added. That seems to work fine.

Now that my kitchen is remodeled I intend to start trying to migrate him to a homemade diet. I've been following catinfo.org. It isn't raw, but it is lightly cooked food without grains. Transitioning him should be fun... NOT! Meanwhile, we'll stick with the Purina Chicken low mag. canned with extra water.

I'd love to get all three cats eating the same homemade diet!