1501. A 5-month-old cat has difficulty peeing. Why?

Sep 15, 2014

Cat, M, Not neutered, 5 m. Cannot pee normally.

"Did he try to mate with the female cat?" I asked the young lady who had adopted this cat 4 months ago and noted that he was peeing outside the litter box last month.
"No," she said. "But the 5-month-old female always lick his private parts."

A tense round swelling in which the centre is a preputial opening and in which urine would shoot out once I expressed the anaethesized cat's bladder.

My assistant aspirated over 15 ml of urine and some blood and we showed the container of urine to the lady. The swelling had shrank to a normal size.

When we showed the area to the owner, it swelled again back to its original size of 3 cm x 3 cm x 2 cm. It was as if there was a leak from the bladder deep inside the swelling. Aspiration by needle was not a solution to this problem. Could there be a hole in the penile urethra?  Hard to tell without more costly imaging.

I anaesthesized the cat with isoflurane and gas again. I incised 6mm midline from the preputial opening. Thick red granulomatous tissue under the skin. Red blood oozed out from the thickened tissues. Urine also seeped out. The swelling now shrank.

Hospitalised the cat overnight and gave anti-inflam and antibiotics. A rare case of possible urethral rupture juding by the hardened granulomatous tissue under the big preputial swelling. The female cat could have bitten him during mating. The owner may say no mating but she could not be around 24 hours a day to monitor this cat.  Female cats bite when mated, as part of the stimulus for ovulation and so this male cat could have got badly injured in his prepuce. There was infection and a some drops of pus oozing out during incision.  

On Day 3 of in-patient treatment, the cat's preputial swelling has gone down by 60%. He could pee inside his litter box and was very active and very playful. He went home to a happy owner. Mating does have hazards for the feline male as the female may bite when mated. In this case, the female cat had continually licked the injured male's preputial area.