How important is a urine test?

[terestrife]

The only reason i ask is because my cats are getting on in years. One is 9 years and the other one 12 years old.

Every single time we go for their check up one of them doesn't have urine and I'm stuck running back and forth.

We live in limited space so i can't lock them in a bathroom with the special litter that let's you collect their urine. I tried getting urine while they used the litter box but since we use the litter robot its impossible.

If they've done a blood test, is the urine test worth running back and forth to do?

 

[daftcat75]

That's really a question for your vet. A urine test is important for determining kidney function. Kidney disease is one of the most common ailments of senior cats. Your vet may be satisfied with blood numbers. But if any of those are ambiguous, urine numbers can help add context to the story the blood is telling. If your vet wants a urine sample, you could always drop your cat off in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon. If she doesn't have urine in the morning, she should by the end of the day.

Honestly, this is a big reason I recommend against those automatic litterboxes. They thieve off with any evidence. Just by monitoring those daily pee balls, you should be able to tell when something changes.

 

[daftcat75]

Urine tests can also tell if there's glucose in the urine (diabetes), white blood cells (an infection), red blood cells (infection or an injury), or sediment (crystallization.) But these usually present with noticeable symptoms too. So in the absence of symptoms, doing a yearly urine test will hopefully allow you to catch failing kidneys earlier as kidneys often need to lose a lot of function for it to show up in blood work.

 

[FeebysOwner]

I do think it is worth it to do what you can to get a urine sample, at least once a year. I have been having the same issue with Feeby. After not trusting her to use a litter box with those collection crystals, I finally bit the dust and tested if I could collect it myself. As it turns out, I was able to do so this last time. Maybe you should consider offering them another non-robotic litter box, so they get used to the idea?

Otherwise, I was going to have to do what was mentioned above, drop Feeby off at the vet's and let them 'wait her out'. I am in a position to go get her as soon as she would pee, so she would be in the vet's for as short of a timeline as possible, though.