the things I do for my cat

We took Isobelle to the vet this week. Poor dear has developed a recurring problem that means we take her every 3-4 months for what we humans might call a colonic.

So our vet asks how old Isobelle is, and we say she's just turned 8. The doc explains that now that she's a "senior", we should consider an annual blood and urine test for those old-age diseases that cats get. Well, according to this handy chart, I'd say she's middle-aged. But whatever. We're the kind of idiotic pet owners that treats our cat as though she's our child, so our response is a wide-eyed "of course, let's do the test."

Now, just from feeling around Isobelle's nether regions, the vet tells us that she's got a lot of poop in her, but no pee. This means they can still do the blood test, but we'll have to collect urine at home. We're given a small container with crystals, told to empty Isobelle's litter box, put the crystals in so she thinks there's something like litter in there, wait for her to pee, collect the urine, fridge it, and bring to the vet's office within 24 hours.

I figure, Saturday morning is the best time to take care of this. At 7am today (no, I did not get up early just to do this -- I'm just an early riser), I empty her box, pour in the crystals (and let me tell ya, there ain't many!) and hope that Isobelle needs to pee before she needs to take a dump.

I could kiss my little girl because just as I'm finishing, she strolls in and heads for her box, gets in and pees! BUT... she's all confused by the crystals, so she makes a mess of it. There's pee on and outside of the box. Great.

Now I've got to figure out how to get the limited amount of urine back into the container, without getting all the crystals in there, too. Let's just say I had to thoroughly scrub the sink, counter and floor after I finished. The pee's in the fridge and I'm hoping there's enough for this old-age test, because I'm in no hurry to do this again.