(I wrote earlier about my kitten being aggressive with his playing.)
I’d like to ask opinions about some excessive licking that my kitten is having lately with his back abdomen/hip area. I recently had to take him in Tuesday Sept. 16th after he had a couple of days of blood in his urine. It was very bright red when I got the sample for vet. He also was urinating about 7x/day (always uses the cat box). She felt that he had a UTI & sent me home with antibiotics. I was also worried what if he has PKD being an American Shorthair breed but she doesn’t feel at this time that he does, to be so young. He will have another urinalysis after antibiotics.
But now my (6 month old) kitten has been very bothered and licking (mainly his back abdomen area), will whip his tail a bit, then will take off running. He’s obviously very bothered by something. The vet tech and I have looked for fleas but we don’t see any ever. I wonder if he could have something going on internally? He seems to have had this for at least a few weeks now.
After 1 day of antibiotics, his urine has gone back to normal color. Glad to see that. The vet said his ‘number’ on urinalysis for kidney function was normal, his temp. was fine and his heart sounded good. I have also in the last couple of days noticed that when he drinks water sometimes, he’s drinking for a long time.
(This is our only pet in household.)
NEW UPDATE: today, his second urinalysis is still not normal. (I made sure he was on distilled water with a very clean bowl since he started first round of antibiotic.) Vet said he has an infection and crystals. He is starting a new diet of ‘UR’ food and needs more antibiotic. Next week, the kitten will start more tests - possibly xray (to look for stones),bloodwork & ultrasound (to check kidneys).
UPDATE: after today’s tests, his bloodwork & xray were normal but the ultrasound is showing the signs of PKD. We are now having a gene test done to confirm. This is all so hard to go thru and waiting and worrying, as it does not look good so far and the heartache is setting in. I will update later what the gene test reveals. After the breeder, who I’ve kept updated so far, tells me our vet is wrong, that the kitten’s father & mother were gene tested and are negative, could there be a chance our kitten could be positive? The breeder said we need to find out why our kitten has cysts on his kidneys. I asked a second vet his opinion. He said getting a gene test is the right thing to do now. If this kitten has cysts on his kidneys, had uti & 3 urinalysises showing bacteria, blood, crystals, an infection & bladder stone (on last urinalysis), could it have gone to his kidneys? This seems like a severe problem. Could he have had a poor environment/immune system where he grew up to cause this? UPDATE: still waiting on gene results…… cat can still have that strange licking. Cat did urinate on a piece of our furniture, which prompted the vet to want to do the last/third (needle draw) urinalysis asap. Cat had still been on antibiotics at that time.Cat did not have anything/bacteria in the sample. I worried - what if it was a false negative bc he had still been on antibiotics. Currently no more blood in urine lately.
