I never thought we would be ones to have to make a GoFundMe, but we are in a tough spot right now. As I’m sure a lot of you know, we have 2 amazing cats, Toby and Winnie. They are the lights of our lives and are the most special animals to us.

On Tuesday evening, we noticed our boy cat, Toby, was excessively licking himself and just seemed very uncomfortable. We immediately took him to OSU urgent care and we were told he had FIC and was given a few pain medications. Just 12 hours later, his pain clearly increased and he was unable to pee, whining very loudly, and didn’t want his sister Winnie to come and comfort him, which is extremely out of the ordinary. I knew something was wrong and worse, so Ryan told me to go to the OSU ER. Even when picking him up to put him in his crate, he would scream in pain.

He has been admitted to the OSU hospital since Wednesday afternoon where they had placed a catheter and simply found inflammation or FIC. He has been on medication to manage his pain and hopefully allow the inflammation to go down. I got a call this morning, Friday, that they removed the catheter and if he was able to urinate, he could go home! While I was out and about putting together a little basket for him with toys, a comfy bed, treats, and more, I received a call. Toby hadn’t peed yet and was continuing to strain and become vocal while trying, which indicated he was still blocked and in pain. We were given the choice of surgery, a new diet that would hopefully break up the stones (but would most likely bring him to the ER again), or euthanasia. We never thought we would have to make this choice and we can’t bear the thought of losing our baby boy.

We are going through with surgery to remove the stones and hopefully be able to open his urethra for future stones to be passed easily. He will be on a special medicated diet as well.

We are both graduate students with only one of us working a part-time job, which doesn’t bring in a lot. We are currently using credit cards to fund his surgery and hospital stay as well as borrowing money. We both truly hate asking for money, but we feel we have no other choice. The donations would hopefully cover the entire cost of his hospital stay and surgery, which could be around $10,000.

This would be a huge help and take a weight off our shoulders as we are grasping for money from anywhere and juggling this along with other priorities as a medical and graduate student. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and possibly helping