If you need to express your cat's bladder - what do you do when you go away?

Hi

My poor 2 year old cat is currently with the vet after being in a bad RTA just yesterday. We're currently talking over our options and obviously if she can possibly recover we will do everything we can to make that happen - her pelvis has been badly broken in several places and she is going to lose her tail.

One thing that has been mentioned is that it looks like she may need help urinating either temporarily or permanently. I'm OK with doing this, though I'm wondering for those of you who do - what do you do when you have to go away? Are cat sitters or catteries generally experienced with this kind of thing? Obviously if I only need to do this for 6 months, it shouldn't be a problem, but if this is something we have to commit to for life I can't always be with my cat every day.

Any ideas welcome.

I'm a pet sitter and I've never had to do that. It sounds like a fairly technical thing that you'd want a vet tech, vet to do, or someone who has been trained to do it. You could find a sitter and have them come visit you a few times while you're home. Then you could teach them how to do it and get the cat comfortable with this person.

Or, see if your vet or another vet does boarding. Then you'd know the cat will have proper care.

I visited a cat whose owners had to travel a lot and he needed sub-q fluids twice a week. The owners were taught by their vet how to do this, but they weren't comfortable teaching a sitter, so what we did was to take the cat into the vets when they were away. Quite costly, and luckily the cat was very co-operative otherwise it would have been quite difficult.

If you find a sitter who says they can do it, I would advise having them visit while you're there so you can see how they handle the cat etc. But I would be surprised if this was something a sitter would be comfortable with as it's not a common request (like pilling & injections).