Struggling with Feline Idiopathic Cystitis
I am looking for any and all advice on managing this condition with my cat. This is a long description and I apologize in advance but I want to give some history.
She is female, around 8 years old. Her first UTI happened around 4-5 years ago after my partner at the time and I took in a kitten. He was incredibly too rough with her and my other older cat at the time and I ended up having to rehome him only a few months after taking him in. Since this point she has had recurring UTIs and bladder inflammation on and off. The household was unstable for a while, but last year that partner and I split up and they moved from the home. She has known this person her whole life, we had been together since she was a kitten. I knew this would bring her stress but it also brought a lot of peace to the house as well. She has been struggling almost nonstop since this point though. She would have a good month or two and then be back to the vet with another flare up. The vet will give her an antibiotic, some gabapentin and send her home. She was prescribed Prozac and has been on it for about 2 months now. She was in the midst of a flare up when just about a month ago, the other older cat in the house had to be put to sleep. He was 18 years old, she had also known him her entire life. He was diabetic and declining rapidly. I knew this would bring her a great deal of stress. I'm wondering how much stress it was bringing her if she knew how sick he was as well. She has progressively gotten worse since then. I took her to a different vet and they sent me home with the Hills C/D multi care stress diet and a steroid. She seemed sicker every time I gave it to her. I took her back to her regular vet and they seemed baffled that the other vet would give her a steroid. They gave her an antibiotic and gabapentin and sent her home again. My head feels like it's spinning. I don't know what is right and now shes been force fed medicine for almost 3 weeks straight and I feel like THAT is causing her stress.
This started with her peeing outside the box or pooping outside of the box occasionally as a flare up would begin. She is now at a point where she is just peeing on herself almost as if she doesn't know it's happening. She will pee laying down and not even get up. She will pee and turn around and look as if she didn't know what happened.
When she was at the vet last week, we did X-rays, ultrasound and urinalysis. X-ray and ultrasound look fine besides the inflammation but urinalysis shows lots of blood in the urine and some protein. No crystals this time, but she did have crystals a little over a week ago at the previous vet. No bacteria any of the times she has been this year.
I keep as regular of a schedule as possible. I clean the box morning and evening and sometimes if I see her go I'll just go scoop it immediately. I have 5 litter boxes currently because I haven't tossed out the extras from when there were two cats yet, which I kept that many before because of this issue so she had options but she only uses 1 of the boxes. I run a feliway diffuser at all times 24/7. She is on prozac, she is on the CD Diet.
I just want to provide her some relief and I don't know how I'm worried we are missing something medically that's causing her stress. I'm considering rehoming my rabbits even though they have a room to themselves but she is afraid of them and I'm worried they could be causing extra stress. I just don't know what more to do and the vet doesn't seem to either and I just want her to not be in pain anymore.