Sometimes Frankie just wants some alone time but Chris doesn’t know what that means.

As some of you know, Puck developed a bladder issue a couple of weeks ago and started peeing at random places throughout our house. He has poopd outside the box, on and off, for over a year but he settled in on pooping in front of the litter box which was easy to deal with. Now he is pooping all over the house too.

My wife wanted to put him on Prozac a week ago but I hate the idea of giving a long-term medication to any our cats. I was pretty certain that what started as a physical problem had now morphed into a mental problem and I wanted to try every possible solution I could think of before resorting to drugs.

I mentioned a few things I tried in previous posts, like buying another litter box and putting it here, there and everywhere around the house. We bought a water fountain so he would drink more water. We bought a refill for our Feliway plug-in. I bought a calming collar. We sprayed areas with orange essential oil. I used oxy cleaner on the pee spots. I put him in the box when it looked like he had to go. I’m sure there were a few more things that I can’t remember but you get the idea.

Last week I noticed Puck put his front paw in one of the litter boxes and then run away from it like he stepped n the Lake of Fire. I then saw him squat to poop and I picked him up and put him in the box. He quickly pooped and then jumped out so quick that some of the poop came flying out of the box.

I then thought maybe he suddenly had an issue with the litter so I decided to buy something different. I tried World’s Bes Cat litter several months ago but our cats rarely used it, if ever. This time I bought Blue Buffalo Naturally Fresh Cat Litter. It is made from walnuts and it seemed like a great idea for litter so I bought a bag and put it in the middle litter box. If it was our brand of litter that was an issue, Puck would have another option.

After a week of zero usage, I had to throw it out and replace it with our normal brand.

We saw some progress with Puck this last week. A couple of times he went more than a day without pooping or peeing outside the box and then he would do both.

Rose wanted to bring him back to the vet to make sure his bladder was no longer the problem. If it wasn’t, that would open the door to a Prozac prescription. Since I had done everything I could think of, I could not argue with her. I did say that if he returned to litter box use, I wanted to reduce his dosage and then take hm off of it to see if he continued to be good.

I made an appointment for Puck at the vet for 8:00 Saturday morning. We were packing that morning for an overnight trip to Anna Maria Island for my birthday. Rose wanted to use her girly, designer suitcase because it is pretty and because it has two sides, one for her and one for me.

I packed my side that morning while Rose was getting ready. I talked to her about how Puck was better this last week than the week before and he may be on the road to recovery. A few minutes later he jumped on the bed and started exploring the suitcase. Then he squatted on Rose’s side of the suitcase and started peeing. I immediately pushed him off but now the lining of the suitcase was wet with pee. He couldn’t pee on my side where I could have just washed the top layer of clothes. Rose was very upset because now she had to throw away her good piece of luggage and buy another.

Waiting for trash day

I took out the other suitcase which is a perfect claw sharpener.

After bringing Rose’s suitcase outside I brought the cat carrier inside. Of course, Chris had to get inside.

We brought Puck to the vet which he wasn’t too happy about. Chris or Frankie would have been our exploring the exam room but Puck was content to stay in his carrier.

Eventually, the vet tech came in and put him on the table. She held him while she waited for the vet who was taking longer than she had anticipated.

I told her she didn’t need to hold Puck, he wasn’t going anywhere, so she let him go and he stayed put.

They didn’t do any tests and the vet agreed with my wife and gave us a prescription for Prozac. She said she wanted to start him at a low dose and told us to give him a half of a 10-milligram pill once a day. Considering that the10-miligram pill is considered a low dose for a human, wouldn’t a low dose for a cat be something like one tenth of a human pill? Perhaps someone can explain how that works.

I gave Puck the first half of a pill Sunday evening. I crushed it and put it in his food. Unfortunately, he only ate half his food and I had to throw the other half away before our other cats ate it. The same thing happened Monday evening.

Monday morning Puck peed on the living room floor after I went to work so Rose had to clean it and was not very happy with him. We have tried just about everything so if the pills don’t help I don’t know what we will do about Puck.

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What are we going to do about Puck

We still don’t know what to do about Puck

When I took the cat carrier out for Puck’s vet visit, I had little doubt that Chris would end up inside of it.

My wife and I were talking on Monday about how both Frankie and Floki have suffered from bladder problems but Chris has not. In fact, Chris has only visited a vet for a medical problem once in the almost eight years we have had him. That happened after we adopted Floki last year and he spread his eye infection to everyone in the house. What makes that amazing is that Chris is our resident dry food addict and dry food is a major cause of bladder issues.

To understand why dry food is an issue, consider where our domestic cats came from. They evolved from the African Wild Cat which is a desert animal. Since water is scarce in the desert, this cat has adapted to get most of its water from the food it eats. Selective breeding has changed the domestic cat from its wild ancestors but they are still very similar.

Since cats who eat dry kibble can’t get moisture from their food, they must make up the shortfall by drinking more water than their instinct tells them to. If they don’t, they become dehydrated and develop bladder issues.

Of course, just like humans, every cat is different. Some cats drink more water than others, which brings me back to my conversation with my wife, Rose. I mentioned that Chris was probably spared bladder issues because he drinks more water than our other cats. I would even say I see him drinking at least as ofter as the other three cats combined. That’s when we decided to go to Petco and buy a water fountain. The general consensus is that water fountains get cats to drink more and we needed Puck to drink more.

We bought the most expensive fountain they had, which cost $100. It’s a Petsafe Drinkwell Stoneware Pagoda Water Fountain. We liked that it was porcelain and that it looked easy to clean. I found out today I could have got it from Amazon for $60. I even saw it for $60 on the Petco website, which made me feel foolish for not researching it first.

Putting it together was relatively easy. It seemed easy looking at the parts and I almost started without reading the directions but I’m glad I didn’t.

Mounting the pump was pretty straight forward.

The rubber plug was a bit more hard to understand without direction.

It had slots cut out that lined up with the wire. It then folded over the tube to keep water out.

I then put the carbon filter in its housing and put that on top the pump.

That is when I attracted the attention of Frankie.

Puck showed up as finished putting it together.

They were interested in it dry but what about after I put water in it?

As you can see from the video below, Chris was more interested in eating his dry food but our other three cats showed a mild interest. Floki even spent some time drinking but it was not the hit I was hoping for.

Now, almost three days later, I don’t notice any more water drinking than I did before. My hope is that it just takes a little time to get used to it. We did have one several years ago and I seem to remember it wasn’t very popular at first either.