I called Mully’s veterinarian yesterday to discuss what’s been going on and his only suggestion was putting him on a different type of medication - he said a culture and blood work were not necessary since his urinalysis was clear. So, I ditched that vet.
Called another office and made an appointment for today. I showed the new vet the urinalysis results from last time and he decided to forego doing that again and skipped straight to the culture. We should have results in 5-7 days. As he was palpating his abdomen, Mully peed on the table so the vet also did an ultrasound (free of charge!) to check for stones and all was clear.
Although we’ll see what the culture says, new vet is thinking it’s FIC. He suggested larger litter boxes, all uncovered, wet food diet, trying different litters - all things I have already implemented or am planning to (new, larger litter boxes when we move this weekend!). Said to keep him on the Amytriptiline for 2-3 more weeks, if behavior continues to split the dosage to half a pill am & half pm (instead of whole pill pm). If that still doesn’t work, we’ll put him on either fluoxetine or buspirone.
AND, (what I think is the best thing he did!) he gave Mull some pain med. He gave us a week’s worth of buprenorphine to hopefully break the cycle of UTI symptoms and take some stress out of Mull’s life.
I’m looking forward to the culture results (although the vet thinks they’ll be normal - but at least sickness would be ruled out) and am SO happy to have found a vet that really investigated rather than throwing more anxiety meds at Mulligan. It’s a shame we won’t be able to stay with him after moving
Mully is not a happy camper tonight after being poked and prodded, but hopefully we can start getting him back on track! He said the key is to be proactive in managing him and that as cats age they tend to have less FIC episodes (hope he’s right about that one!).