Ashley - Crystals in Pee

Ashley has been battling with peeing/spraying outside the litter box now for a long time as you will see in this thread that gives you some more insight on the situation I've been dealing with.

http://www.petoftheday.com/talk/showthread.php?t=149072

I noticed about a week or so ago my husband told me that there was pee in the tub and I thought maybe it was Claudia peeing outside the box and having problems with crystals. So last Monday night there was pee in the tub again and I got a sample of the pee and took it to the vets Tuesday morning to have it tested. The vet called back and said there were alot of crystals in the pee and I needed to figured out who was pee that was.

I figured it was probably Claudia because of this history with her doing it in the kitchen and Ashley's been more of the sprayer in the house but according to the test they did Claudia's peed showed a few crystals but not a lot, not as much as the first test did.

I got Ashley to finally pee yesterday and she did it in the tub and I called the vets this morning and they said it looked like we had a match.

They might send her pee away but I have to wait to hear back from the vet and ask her a couple of questions.

I kinda wonder if this whole time that Ashley's been spraying is because she has crystals but yet back in Feb. 09, I took a sample of pee from Ashley right as she was using the litter box and they said she didn't have anything so can you have crystals in one sample and then the next sample their could be no crystals?

I'm going to ask the vet this but I'm confused as to why Ashley has them now and she didn't have any back in Feb. or maybe she did and their test they did wasn't good enough to test it.

I'll keep everyone posted.

Melissa

A lot of different situations can cause urinary crystals. The only way to know for sure is to have her urine checked by a laboratory, although sometimes cats who have crystals will meow while urinating or "dig to China" in the litterbox. Definitely get a sample to a lab and find out, not only whether there are crystals, but what kind, as there are two kinds that are treated differently. The pee sent to the lab needs to be fresh, as crystals can break down over time.

Good luck! Please keep us posted.

Love, Columbine

We had a few cats that had crystals in their urine. They did well and ate a special diet for the crystals....Good luck with your kitty...

also make sure you give kitty only filtered water, one of my cats had crystals in her urine and vet said it was probably caused from tap water.

I used to give my boys only filtered water, but my vet said while that was good for crystals, my cats would not get the flouride found in tap water and that they may develop dental problems as a result. So, now they get tap water but are on special diets for urinary tract health. Sometimes it gets so confusing, doesn't it?