So, can my cat feel his bladder or not? At least right now....

Can my cat feel his bladder?
The difference between reflex and overflow urination vs ‘I can feel & I need to pee’ and what that all means.

The bladder has several systems in place to insure that it empties. The one we all know about is the pressure sensors on the inside of the bladder that signal ‘gotta pee!’, and that signal goes from the bladder to the spine, up to the brain and tells you to start looking for a bathroom, or if you are a cat, a litter box or other convenient cat pee place.

When this is working right, we all have an idea of how much is in our bladder and sorta when we need to be thinking about it. It’s a conscious thing, we KNOW when we need to pee and how long we can or can not ‘hold it’.

This system includes a send back from the brain that says “Gotta Pee!” and when there is a place to do so, it also sends a ‘contract & empty signal.

When the spine is damaged or severed, the signals from the bladder don’t go where they are supposed to go. The signals from the brain do not get to where they are supposed to go either.
This means the bladder sits, and fills, and does not notice. Neither does the brain notice the feeling of fullness. There is NO signal ‘gotta pee’, neither is their a signal that says ‘time to pee so squeeze’.

The spine however is not just a tube that signals go through. It has layers. It is like the most complex highway, with stop and go lights, intersections, detours at times and lots of cars…. Only layer upon layer of these highways all bundled into a cord.

When a cat has a lower spinal cord injury, what ‘kills’ them if they survive the initial injury is the inability to urinate combined with the difficulty of training an adult cat to allow it’s bladder to be emptied by a person.

Vets in general do not expect clients to be willing to take on the task of learning to express a bladder, so at this point most vets will say ‘euthanize’.

You don’t have to.

Now, what is important is learning to tell the difference between a bladder that a cat can not feel at all, and one that it can, but can not get to work…yet.

Guidelines

1) Cats who do NOT feel their bladder do not dig in a litter box. Exception, some cats think a clean liter box is a great toy and will dig and roll in it. Boogar does that. But it’s different, it’s play. You can tell by watching him, he’s goofing off.

2) Cats that dig a hole and squat CAN FEEL their bladder, but they may not be able to squeeze enough to get the urine to come out. This is because of several things.

a. The bladder has several sets of muscles, and push out set and a keep in set. Sometimes the keep it in set is stronger than the push it out set.

b. The nerve signals may be going from the bladder to the brain with the ‘gotta pee’ signal, but the signal from the brain to the ‘pee now’ system is not coming though enough.

c. Both systems are starting to work but are weak.

d. Both systems are working, but the muscles are weak, or there is residual pain from injury interfering.

3) NONE of this is overflow urination. Overflow urination is when the ‘gotta pee’ and ‘pee now’ signals are absent, the bladder fills up to overfull, and drips. In some cats this drip will be in combination with a stuck on ‘squeeze now’ signal and their bladder will be small, in some cats this will be with no signals, and they will have a huge, flaccid bladder. Neither of these cats will dig in a litter box and squat to pee, although a few might attempt to pass poop in this way (not typical).

4) Reflex urination is entirely different. It is when there are no ‘gotta pee’ signals going to the brain, no ‘pee now’ signals coming back from the brain but the internal pressure signals from the bladder are working partly. They send the ‘gotta pee’ signal when the bladder is hugely full (this is a failsafe & why you will pee eventually if you are unconscious, but will not leak) to the spine and the spine sends back a ‘pee now’ signal. This is a failsafe reflex. With this signal the cat will pee, but not in a box. It may pee in it’s sleep, on the floor, anywhere and anytime, or just on itself, when the bladder gets so full it sends this signal.

Basic understanding of feeling vs. no feeling is important.
Cats do not groom what they do not feel.

Cats do not dig in a litter box and squat if they do not feel their bladder.

Cats can be taught to know they are full, come to you to be squeezed, and those that do feel their bladder enough to know they are full, some of them can be put down in a litter box where they will either reflex urinate (no digging) or dig and go.

Thanks to Stick and his people for starting this question. Thats Stick up above :)

Hope to be getting EVERYBODIES stories, bios and pictures up bit by bit.

Kadeth & Boogar