I can't even count how many times he's been to the vet in his life, and certainly can't count how many times he's been in the past 7 months alone.

The issue in question has been escalating for a few years now, or at least since 2018. At first, it was him getting these constant urinary tract infections (uti) and everything under the sun was being blamed: dirty litter box, him being too fat to bathe his privates, and most notably, his food. We have two cats who eat the same food, same dry food, same wet food. But the food he was eating was being targeted by the vet as causing the urinary problems, and so he was started on his own personal medicated dry food. He liked it at first but it was still difficult to keep him out of the other cat's food so we had to stay on top of his care and preventing him from getting the bad food. While this is going on, he was allowed to continue eating the normal wet food.

But then he started rejecting his dry food. And this has happened at least 3 times now, he has rejected it suddenly and refused to eat until we take it back and get another flavor of this special food. It got to a point where he was refusing to eat anything but his wet food. And we started getting special medicated wet food from the vet and he liked it at first, until he didn't and refused to eat any of it again.

His constant uti problems and going to the litterbox repeatedly was very noticably out of control because he would kick a bunch of litter out onto the floor as he went in and out. Back in june was the start of his major medical attention with x-rays and bloodwork and... not finding anything?! Not finding a single damn thing wrong with him. The vets shrugged their shoulders and were kinda like "alright fine we believe you he's got these problems you say he has, take this medicine for the uti" and we would give him this medicine, the whole bottle of pills over the course of how many days it took to get through them. And Bitty would seem to improve for a while but then get these uti problems again and the vets would handwave it away and prescribe more medicine and the cycle would go on.

Over the course of the next several months he would be taking this medicine repeatedly, continue to worsen his trips to the litterbox, until it was deemed that the medicine was no longer effective because I guess he built a tolerance or ... something. He had several trips to the vet during all this where they continued to say there were NO problems they could find. There was never any pee inside him, they couldn't actually get to his you-know-what because of how fat he was, they didn't detect any ANY thing that was abnormal. They checked. They said no cancer, no tumors, nothing's wrong with him.

And then he started peeing blood. A few drips at first, and we first wondered if he had a kidney stone, but the blood kept getting worse, and then we wondered if he had bladder crystals and with recalling a family friend's cat who had bladder crystals and what could possibly cause it, we made the decision to change their normal wet food from fish flavors to non-fish, since apparently too much fish could cause crystals. We phoned the vet and mentioned the blood and the vets handwaved it away.

Through this, Bitty was behaving fairly normal apart from his bathroom breaks, blood, and bathing of his nether region. He was active, very active! For christmas I bought him and the other cat a new pack of toys and he loved this blue rat toy, he played with it so much. But he was seemingly too active, and this was nothing new that he would chase and harass the other cat during the night and meow a lot and wake my dad up at 4 am, then 3, then 2... And at his wit's end, the next time Bitty was at the vet for his BLADDER issues, my dad asked the vet if there was anything we could do to keep Bitty from doing all this in the night. So the bladder issues were kicked onto the back burner in favor of... diagnosing Bitty with anxiety and putting him on prozac, a depression medication. O...kay. Yeah, sure, the medicine stopped him from doing what he was doing, but he became traumatized by the daily capture to give him his pill and the medicine zombified him and completely changed his personality. No longer active, no longer friendly and attention seeking, no longer... hungry?

His appetite got less and less while on these meds. He continued his habit of rejecting his special dry food and special wet food, only now he was starting to reject the normal wet food, the only food he had been eating at the time. We tried so hard to coax him to eat anything, saving his dinner from the other cat and reserving it, trying special feedings in the night and other odd hours but eventually he stopped taking 99% of food, and in great fear and concern we asked the vet if he could go back to the old dry food that he was banned from because it was Bad, hoping that he would just eat SOMETHING, but it was no use, he wasn't interested in it as much as we hoped. And then the vet did something astounding. He acted as though somehow this was his first time hearing about the blood. He was supposed to call and check in before this point but the lousy receptionist wrote down the wrong number, and why it was being written and recorded wrongly was beyond me since we're a longtime customer with all our info in the system already. An ultrasound was scheduled for the next tuesday, which was today.

The days leading up to it, my parents practically already had him in the grave but I refused to believe it. I just wanted it to be the prozac leaving his system and when it was gone he'd be back to normal and the vet would say he has bladder crystals and get him on a treatment and new food plan and.... ..

And then they said he has a 1.5 inch cancerous tumor in his bladder and has only a few months left to live. There was implications of putting him down the same day but nobody wanted that, especially so soon and suddenly. Especially after all the torture lately, the traumatizing pill administration, the no food (he wasn't allowed to have anything since 8pm last night, not that he was eating much anyway), the withholding of his favored food for months, just so much pathetic torture for nothing. He was given a steroid that would hopefully try to reduce the size of the tumor and increase his appetite and he's being given whatever food he damn well pleases in the time that he has left, but eventually the tumor would grow to a point where he can no longer pee and he'll lose the ability to walk and will need to be put out of his misery.

I hate it so much. I'm sad and furious and how was he so active and normal a month ago and how did they never detect a single problem with him despite being told everything that was going on and how did a tumor this large just spring up out of no where. We've only had to put down one other cat that I have memory of and it was because he had a tumor as well and of course I would never ever ever want a cat being put down, I wanted to take care of him for another 7-8 years when he was so old and then he'd pass naturally and I just feel like - and it may be in my irrational anger and sadness or it may be real - that the vet continuously misdiagnosed him and ignored his problems until it was too late. He had literal bloody bladder issues and they diagnosed him with freaking anxiety.

My baby boy. I would do anything to save him but it's too late. I love him so much. I hate that he had to go through all this and what he still has to go through. I have NEVER had a cat pass away this young. They freaking cut him off before his time... Yes I know this is the issues & advice forum but I'm not looking for advice and certainly not judgement for the hard enough decision about where and when he'll go. I just want him to be at home and be comfortable as possible and eat his favorite food and sleep in his favorite spots while he still can. I just wanted somewhere I could write all this.

Bitty is a very large (both tall, long and fat), fluffy gray cat. He was born to a stray/feral mom and we were able to adopt out all of his siblings but no one wanted him despite him being the CUTEST baby. We thought he was the cutest and when no one else took him well we just had to. He was the runt but we've always thought he was some part Mainecoon due to how large he ended up growing. I always compared him to Clifford the Big Red Dog for being the runt and with love ended up growing larger than the average cat. His legal name is actually Blue, thanks to my dad being put on the spot. We didn't have him for that long and never named him properly, and his first trip to the vet he had to get a name so with his bright blue eyes my dad named him Blue. But that name has never been used on him at home, and I started calling him Bitty because he was just a itty bitty baby and that's the name that stuck. And of course his eyes turned green as he got older so you've got this very, very large (he finally just got under 20 pounds) cat with green eyes whose legal name is Blue and is nicknamed Bitty....

I was in middle school when we got him in 2006. I grew up with him, we both grew into awkward teenagers together. His first favorite toy was a little stuffed monkey toy from like, mcdonalds of all things. He was always a strange cat. I would throw the monkey and he would actually get it and bring it back like he was a dog. He always loved plastic, laying on plastic bags or licking plastic... we thought he had pica because he'd do that and try to eat cobwebs and other weird stuff. For a while his favorite toy was this tiny black rat which was so old and raggedy, half the fur was gone, the leather that wrapped the wooden piece was almost falling off and it had no tail and barely any ears. So that's why this christmas I bought him a new pack of toys that had 5 new rats in it and he got one and I planned to give him a new one each christmas but.....

When we first adopted him, he was raised in the small bathroom next to my room. We had other cats and didn't want him getting hurt. I remember him being carried around the house and being shown where he lived now before being taken back to the bathroom, and he'd cry all night. My mom would sit on the floor and hold him to calm him. He was so small that you could hold him in one hand and he'd love to get a "neck treatment" which was a massage until he fell asleep. He broke out of the bathroom one night and another of our cats bit him on the neck and that was his harsh introduction to the other cats.

He was such a baby. He loved to be picked up and held like one. He would go up to my mom and stand on his hind legs, putting his front paws on her and she'd lift him up like a toddler and hold him in her arms. But he started getting bigger and bigger, and my mom would have to sit down with him and eventually lost the ability to pick him up due to his girth. So he took to just laying down on her torso on the couch until he was too large for even that. These days even my dad struggles to carry him in the carrier when he's gone to the vet. I know Bitty has missed being baby coddled for so long, and I feel bad when I think about that.

I don't know what else to say, I've just been rambling. I was never prepared for this so soon. I guess I was being too optimistic thinking I had so many years left with him. I just lost my previous cat in 2018 (the 21 year old cat). Everyone give your pets some love for me.

[spoiler=Some pics of Bitty]

The steroid to reduce the size of the tumor the vet says to replace the litter in the litterbox in 2 days and then another 2 days after that to monitor if the amount of blood is being reduced.

We've been brushing him a lot with his favorite brush.

He liked his fancy feast at first but he started rejecting it and refusing to eat, and then started rejecting the normal dinner as well... As far as we know he's been eating dry food still.

He's not that responsive to people anymore. He spends 99% of his time laying down now and we try to pet him and talk to him but he doesn't turn to look at people or react to things around him. His body physically feels sick, his skin elasticity is gone and his fur feels old and sick...

He started losing his balance and last night he apparently couldn't make it to the litterbox a few times. The comfort is coming to an end, he's got towels to lay on set up and is confined to the hard floor for his peeing. That combined with the refusal of special food I just don't know how comforted he is anymore.

He was a normal interactive cat at the end of December. I just can't believe how fast this all happened. Sometimes at night I lay on the floor next to him crying and petting him. He isn't supposed to go yet. It does not feel real.

The next morning, this morning, he lost the ability to walk and we tended to him in his bed all day. I was by his side for hours. I was crying almost all day because I could look at him and see he couldn't make it much longer. We had him in his bed on the couch with us petting his head for a long time.

He passed away at home around 8:20 pm on Feb 8 with me and my parents petting him the whole time. I cannot believe he's gone. My eyes burn.

I wish we could have helped him more.

[spoiler=Bitty, August 25 2006 - February 8 2020] "A runt that was so well-loved that he grew larger than the average cat."

The steroid to reduce the size of the tumor the vet says to replace the litter in the litterbox in 2 days and then another 2 days after that to monitor if the amount of blood is being reduced.

We've been brushing him a lot with his favorite brush.

He liked his fancy feast at first but he started rejecting it and refusing to eat, and then started rejecting the normal dinner as well... As far as we know he's been eating dry food still.

He's not that responsive to people anymore. He spends 99% of his time laying down now and we try to pet him and talk to him but he doesn't turn to look at people or react to things around him. His body physically feels sick, his skin elasticity is gone and his fur feels old and sick...

He started losing his balance and last night he apparently couldn't make it to the litterbox a few times. The comfort is coming to an end, he's got towels to lay on set up and is confined to the hard floor for his peeing. That combined with the refusal of special food I just don't know how comforted he is anymore.

He was a normal interactive cat at the end of December. I just can't believe how fast this all happened. Sometimes at night I lay on the floor next to him crying and petting him. He isn't supposed to go yet. It does not feel real.