Straining, nothing to show
stranguriaSquat. Push. Nothing. The most important sign on this page, and the one most often mistaken for constipation.
The sign most often misread at home.Channel 1 · Live · No commercials (yet)
Is Nigel peeing?
Present answer: Indeterminate until observed. See fig. 1.
A live camera on one cat’s litter box, all day and all night. Sign up and get a peemail every time he goes. Stay for the part that could save your cat.
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A peemail every time he goes.
One per visit, any hour. Confirm by email first. One-click unsubscribe. Your address is never sold or shared. Privacy.
The feed is dark.
Laptop trouble, not cat trouble. It comes back.
Fig. 1 · The box · IRRec
--:--:--Standby
Fig. 2. Subject (12) in tray (10). Tail (14), litter (16), eyeshine (18), dark patch (20). Pen.
How peemail works
Urine luck!
Most cats pee without an audience. A cat with FLUTD gets one. A peemail means he is in the box right now, so you can watch and check that something is actually happening.
He steps in.
Any hour. Usually while you’re asleep.
The camera notices.
A laptop watches one rectangle of floor for motion. That’s its whole job.
You get a peemail.
Peemail · 2:41 PM Nigel’s in the box. Urine luck. Watch live →
Box to inbox in about thirty seconds.
The bad news looks different. Trip after trip with nothing to show is how a blockage starts. That’s the one to act on, tonight.
Case no. 1
The case for pointing a camera at a litter box.
Not a joke. Four and a half healthy years, then one day he couldn’t pee. From the kitchen it looked like nothing much. It was a complete urethral blockage, which kills in about two days.
The timing was lucky. It is no longer left to luck. Has he been? Did anything come out? A log answers that. A memory does not.
The rest of the site is the reading list. The apparatus may be absurd. The disease is not.
Case summary
Filed by the owner · not a clinical record- Subject
- Nigel. Male, five. White, dark patch on the head.
- Presentation
- Extra trips to the box. Long visits. “Digging.” Still eating. Assessed at home as “a bit weird.” Assessment incorrect.
- Findings
- Complete urethral obstruction. BUN over 130; healthy is under about 30.
- Course
- Catheter. IV fluids. Three nights.
- Diagnosis
- FLUTD. Managed, not cured.
- Intervention
- Wet food. More water bowls. One infrared camera.
- BUN at admission
- 130+
- Nights in hospital
- 3
- Hours observed, daily
- 24
- Box to inbox
- ~30s
Healthy: under about 30.
IV fluids. Urinary catheter.
Infrared. Room lights off.
Typical delay, box to peemail.
Tractatus Litterarius
Propositions concerning the box.
Numbered in the manner of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Only the numbering is borrowed.
2.1 is the one that matters.
- 1
The box is all that is observed.
- 2
What does not happen is also information.
- 2.1
Repeated visits that produce nothing, in a male cat, are an emergency. It has a deadline.
- 2.2
Straining is not constipation until a vet says so.
- 3
The camera does not diagnose. It records.
- 3.1
The difference between a scare and a death is rarely the treatment. It is the hours before anyone looked.
- 4
The subject has not been informed of the camera.
- 5
Everything else is water.
- 6
The apparatus may be absurd. The disease is not.
- 7
What cannot be settled at home is settled by a veterinarian.
Index cards · what we wish we’d known
Six signs worth interrupting your evening for.
None proves a blockage. Any one is worth a call. In a male cat, several together are worth a car ride.
Trip after trip
pollakiuriaSix visits an hour, a few drops each. Frequency alone is a reason to call.
Count the visits. Write the number down.Crying in the box
dysuria, audibleThat’s pain. Cats hide pain, so by the time you can hear it, it’s been going a while.
Audible pain is rarely early pain.Pink, red or rust
hematuriaAny tint in a clump counts. Inflammation, crystals, stones — catch them before they become a plug.
Pale litter makes color visible.Going somewhere new
periuriaTile, tub, sink, bathmat. A cat avoiding the place that hurts. A symptom, not spite. Never punish it.
Treat it as a symptom, not behavior.Licking, hiding, not eating
late signsGrooming down there, withdrawal, a skipped meal, vomiting. With straining: stop reading. Find your keys.
With straining: go now.Here the voice stops
Plain text
If a male cat is straining and nothing is coming out, it is an emergency now.
Not in the morning. A blocked cat cannot pass urine. Potassium and waste build up in the blood within hours. Without treatment, a complete blockage can kill a cat in 24 to 48 hours, sometimes less.
- Call your vet. If they are closed, call the nearest 24-hour emergency clinic.
- Say: “I think my cat is blocked.” Those words get you seen faster.
- Do not wait to see if it passes. Do not try to fix it at home.
Why the typeface changed: at 2 a.m., with a cat in a carrier, you need instructions, not literature.
The apparatus
Three boring machines and one small database.
Lenses, wires, relays, a body reported to a distant office: Burroughs’ control machine, without the control. It watches. It reports.
Modern life offers a smart fridge, a smart doorbell and a smart toothbrush. This is a dumb camera on a dumb box. It is the only one of them anyone here would miss.
No AI. No subscription. Deliberately simple, so there is less to fail in the middle of the night.
- The eyeA Reolink E1 over the tray. Infrared, so the room stays dark.
- The brainAn always-on laptop. Pulls the feed, watches a rectangle for motion, restreams it here.
- The mouthOne peemail per visit, via Resend. It states the time. It does not diagnose.
- The memoryA list of confirmed email addresses. Each removable in one click.
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The literature · card catalog
What we learned in a waiting room, filed.
Seven guides, sourced to the veterinary literature. Written by an owner, not a vet, so each states when to stop reading and call.
Start hereSF 985 .U7 no. 1No. 1
FLUTD: Four Problems, One Name
Four problems under one name. Why male cats are the ones that die of it. The signs, in order. And the line between an appointment on Monday and the car, tonight.
Cats — Diseases. Male cats, misfortune of.
EmergencySF 985 .U7 no. 2No. 2Your Cat Is Blocked. Here Is the Night.
The call. The catheter. The numbers. The bill. The ride home.
Veterinary emergencies. Waiting rooms, fluorescent.
SF 985 .U7 no. 3No. 3The Tao of Dilution
Water is the lever. Wet food, bowls, diets, supplements.
Cats — Nutrition. Water, as policy.
SF 985 .U7 no. 4No. 4The Architecture of Calm
A stress disease that lives in the bladder. Boxes, pillars, silent standoffs.
Cats — Behavior. Corners, theory of.
SF 985 .U7 no. 5No. 5The Hermeneutics of Litter
Read the box: clumps, counts, color, location.
Litter. Interpretation, texts and otherwise.
SF 985 .U7 no. 6No. 6The Urinalysis, Annotated
The lab report, line by line, with marginalia.
Urine — Analysis. Crystals, overrated.
TK 6680 .N5No. 7The Apparatus
Camera, laptop, tunnel, email. How it works.
Surveillance, domestic. Control machines, benign.
SF 985 .U7 no. 8ForthcomingNot yet written.
Whatever you wish you had known first. Suggest it.
Subjects: by correspondence.
A note on genre
Warhol filmed a man sleeping for five hours. Fig. 1 has been running considerably longer.
— The management
Most of the time nothing happens in fig. 1. That is the intended result. The apparatus exists for the occasion when something should happen and does not.
Running time: continuous. No intermission.
Peemail
Watch a cat use a litter box. Possibly save a different one.
The peemails are about Nigel. The point is your cat. If one of them sends you to look at yours more closely, it has done its job.
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