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Old April 1st, 2009, 09:17 PM
CaseyCat CaseyCat is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 6
Having some success! (knock on wood) :)

Thanks to everyone for their replies...Puffngib - it's a relief to hear we're not the only ones with this problem! I'm happy to say that things are looking up on our end - since my last post, we discontinued the amitriptyline, which had not made a difference at all. We took her to a new vet, who suggested trying lactulose, still thinking it was a constipation problem. She was on that for a couple of weeks, with no change, when I went away on vacation for a week. Casey stayed with my mom, and was clearly upset that I was away - my mom lost count how many times she peed (and contined to poop!) outside of the litter box. She got better with the peeing when I returned, although still the occasional time outside of the box. By this point - early March, she hadn't pooped in the litter box since Dec 31...we made another appt. with the new vet, since the next step was an xray. We wondered about megacolon...the xray was done, and didn't show anything other than some mild degeneration in her lumbar sacral area. The vet thought that maybe she was having some pain in that area when she tried to poop, so she prescribed metacam in addition to continuing with the lactulose. After four days on the metacam/lactulose combo with no change, we talked to the vet again. The only thing else she could suggest was that it had become a learned behaviour and she needed to be retrained on the litter box. I was very skeptical, since I was so convinced it was a physical problem. Anyways, I bought her a brand new litter box, filled it with new litter, set up a little area for her in the basement (about 4x3 feet) with her bed, water, food, and litter box all right together. Kitty jail, basically. I cried my eyes out when I put her in there, because I knew it was our last hope, and that she was staying there until she was retrained. The first day she pooped on her bed, and peed on the floor - but since last Wed evening (a week now) she has consistently pooped and peed in the litter box, and has even taken to covering it up, which she has not done for a long time. We continue to give her the metacam and lactulose. Her BMs have become more frequent, and she is no longer running around. She has graduated out of her little cage to the full basement, but she is still caged in the basement until Sunday. We'll let her out then and see how she does. Hard to say whether it was the new litter box, the metacam, or the confinement with the litter box so close by, but whatever it was, it's a relief that it seems to be working. Good luck Puffngib with whatever you try next, and please keep us posted
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