Its been a rough two days... Grainger, my 1 year old neutered male bob has been hospitalized since yesterday with a urinary obstruction. I've never posted about him in the cat forum, although I did introduce him here: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=13066 in the raccoon forum.
So here's what happened...
Wednesday night I got home a little late, and the SO mentioned that Grainger had an accident in the the bedroom (something he's NEVER done before). Not long after, we see him squatting and straining near the litter box, leaving a little dribble trail as he goes. He screamed bloody murder when picked up. At this point I'm thinking... "nasty UTI, but no biggie, we'll get him to the vet in the morning and all will be well"
The SO drops him of at the vet yesterday morning, and I get a call from the doctor not long after saying we have an emergency situation, that he is fully obstructed, and they need to do something NOW if we want to save him. She explains that this is extremely serious, and it will not be cheap. We talk things over for a while and come up with a care plan that I can almost afford. (Don't worry, he was already drugged to the gills before we even started talking about the financial end of things... this is apparently an extremely painful condition.)

So they put him under and get a catheter in, get him flushed, and break up some of the crystalline sediment causing the issue. The doc says she wants to keep him hospitalized over night with the catheter in place to give the swelling a chance to go down and get him going on his own again. One major problem though: because he is a bob, they have no tail to tape the cath tube to, and after he wakes up it keeps getting snagged and kinked causing him even more discomfort. I get off work a little early and go by to see him since I can't take him home... he doesn't even look like my Grainger-cat. He's slumped in the corner of the kennel with glazed eyes looking utterly heartbreaking, with cath and IV tubes every which-a-way, and hardly acknowledging my voice. I burst into tears, this was so much more than I had ever thought might be going on the night before.
So jump to this morning... Doc calls and says they've had a rough morning. He's got his feist back, but because he was feeling better, get managed to get out of his e-collar and pull out the cath. He is fully blocked again. Somehow, she managed to get the cath back in without knocking him out again, but because of this turn of events, he will have to stay in the hospital all day and over night again. She did mention though, that it was much easier to put in this time, and there were far fewer crystals, so (fingers crossed) with just one more day, he should be able to go home.
We've talked a lot about long term prognosis, and usually, its not great. If this has happened once, its much more likely to happen again. The doc wants to try totally re-working his diet, and hopefully, that will do the trick. We have also discussed surgery, but its not a minor surgery by any means, and from what I have read, the recovery is really really rough road.
Thank you to anyone who has read all of this novel. I guess I was hoping if anyone has gone through this (I'm terribly terribly sorry if you have!) they might be willing to share their experience and outcome. I found one post: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=11858&hilit=obstruction by Crafty, but there were no post-procedure updates and it was quite old.
Anyways, thanks again for "listening" guys. Here are of few pics of the little man...