2012年2月11日土曜日

How Long Does Kidney Infection Take To Clear Up

how long does kidney infection take to clear up

Derek and I play Wee Chess – It's all about the strategy

Today was the day I was supposed to take Derek's urine sample to the vet's.

Has this happened?

Has it 'eck as like.

We are currently in some kind of cat version of Cold War paranoia and subterfuge. At this point I am not sure who is double crossing who, but something is going on.

You need to get the cat's urine sample to the vet while it is still fresh enough to test. This meant that I could not put everything in place last night, and come down this morning to a beautifully brimming litter tray.

No. It has been much more complex than that.

Of course it has.

It is, as you can imagine, nigh on impossible to get your cat to widdle into a test tube on demand. In fact, if you can do this with your cat I suggest you drop whatever career it is you are currently pursuing and rush to the circus forthwith. Cirque du Soleil would snap you up. Or MI5.

When the vet tells you that you need to take a urine sample, they give you a kit, like so:

It is basically a load of plastic beads:

A test tube, and a pipette.

The plastic beads go in the clean, dry litter tray and sit there.

When the cat widdles on them, it fails to absorb the wee, which means you, as the urine collector, are able to tip the cat box at an angle, gather a pool of delicious wee, and pipette it up.

It is like the cat version of the Wacky Warehouse ball pool, but with less biscuit crumbs. It smells roughly the same though, I would imagine.

At this point you will have your open test tube waiting, ready to squeeze your pipette into. (top tip. You need to label your test tube. Do this before squeezing cat wee all over it. Also, put sellotape over the label, or the cat wee will eat through the ink. Just saying).

You then stick the bung into the top of the test tube and take your precious cargo straight to the vet's.

It is so simple. So very simple.

It makes you wonder why they need vets at all.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! is what I say to that.

I got downstairs this morning. Derek immediately rushed to use her tray. This was before I could fill it with small, plastic beads. I cleaned out the tray. I thought about the fact that in less than half an hour I would be zooming about the county on the school run. What if the next wee were too stale by the time I got back, and I had wasted all the little plastic balls of fake litter?

It was unlikely she would do another wee before we left for school, but even if she did, the vet's doesn't open until nine, which would mean me driving round for nearly two hours with a test tube full of warm cat wee in the car until I could make it to the vet's. This did not appeal to me. Plus, I am very accident prone, and the chances of me ending up with a coat pocket full of warm cat piss were high to certain.

I decided that this would never do.

I refilled the tray with regular litter.

Whereupon Derek did a huge catty pooh.

I cleaned the tray and replaced it with more litter.

I went out.

When I got back, she had done another wee.

I washed out the tray. This time I replaced the regular litter with fake plastic litter (whilst humming Radio Head's 'Fake Plastic Trees', much to my annoyance). Then I went away and got on with stuff, pretending not to notice Derek's activities.

All the time I was furtively craning my neck every time she rustled by on her cat business.

She sensed this, and spent large amounts of time grinning at me, rearranging her fur, filling Jason's shoes with small bits of scrunched up paper, and stealing biros.

Several times she went over to the box and climbed in it. Then she dug around, and flicked fake plastic cat litter all over. She chased a few of them about the house, flicked some more, dug some more, squeaked a great deal and even squatted a few times, tail akimbo.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch, not one drop of wee passed from her tiny, furry, urethra.

She was messing with my head.

I sat by the box.

I showed her the pipette.

She bit it.

I showed her the test tube.

She rolled it around, trying to shove it under the book shelf, which is where she hides things she does not like, along with stationary supplies, which she is fencing to the mice in exchange for cat nip.

I explained to her in my best, kindest, cat voice about how I needed a sample.

She looked at me. Her look said: 'If you think I'm giving jack shit to that evil woman who stuck a thermometer up my rectum you've got another think coming buster.'

She looked out of the window disdainfully:

I backed off.

I was beginning to get a headache by this point.

My brother rang me and invited me out for lunch.

I said: 'Take me away from this urine hell.'

He did.

Before I went I emptied out the fake, plastic cat litter into the nearest handy receptacle, which turned out to be my very expensive, enormous Emma Bridgewater glass bowl (I bet it's never been used for that before in the history of ever, by anyone).

I did not know how long I would be. It seemed clear that nothing was happening on the wee front. I did not want Derek to explode. This was not the point of the exercise, however frustrating she was being.

Nobody likes cleaning exploded cat off the skirting boards. Nobody.

At this point I was seriously mulling over the idea that this palaver was a conspiracy by the vet, in cahoots with the fake cat litter makers. They know cats won't actually use the fake litter, and that if they cross their furry little legs it will only make the infection worse, leading to kidney explosions and cat wee leaking out of the animal's eyes. They give it to you in the hope that the cat will actually do this, and you will be paying astronomical vet's bills for the rest of your natural life, thus giving the vet 2 weeks holiday in the Maldives every year and a damn good pension on retirement.

I went out for an hour and a half.

I got back to find that Derek had done an enormous wee, wiping out half the cat litter in the rather large litter tray, and another crap. I think this was an ironic 'fuck you' crap in response to my attempts to stalk her wee.

I have put the plastic litter back in the clean, dry, litter tray. I have, on Antonia's advice, mixed a little of the regular litter in, like top soil, in order to try and fool Derek into thinking it is kosher.

After I had finished what I like to think of as a Zen garden of the cat litter, wee world, Derek came over to inspect my work.

She turned to me, and I swear to God she winked.

I am doomed. Doomed I tell you.

By tomorrow it will be like that Eddie Izzard sketch about Pavlov's cat:

Day 2:

Derek rings bell

Katy climbs into litter tray, does wee.

Derek is away, laughing on a fast camel.

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