So hello and welcome back to the Small Animal Clinical podcast brought to you from the Royal Veterinary College in London. My name is Shailen Gisani. And to remind you then, today is part two of our two-part series on feline lower unitary tract disease and block cats. We're joined by Dr. Roseanne Jepson, who's a lecturer in internal medicine,

and by Don Barfield, who's a lecturer in emergency and critical care.

And we also have some comments made by Nicola Coulendro,

who's a lecturer in small animal surgery,

and who's taking part in these podcasts in Absentia.

So let's kickstart part two of these podcasts by me asking you this question, Roseanne.

Whenever I'm presented with a block cat, I always like to give them intravenous antibiotics

pretty soon after presentation.

What do you think about that?

Shailon, I'd say you were a bad man.

Clearly I don't do that.

But let's see my deed.

What would you tell me about that position in life?

I think the bottom line, Shailen, is that...

I feel like I'm a little.

That only about 2% of young cats that are showing lower urinary tract signs.

So these are cats under the age of

sort of seven or six or seven are going to have a urinary tract infection. And so antibiotics

are not necessary in the vast majority of these patients. Getting a urine sample and submitting

it for culture, fine. The chances of you getting a positive culture at the point when you're unblocking the cat are very, very low.

If I was going to do a culture at any point, it would be at the point where I was removing said urinary catheter after it had been in for a period of time.

And again, I wouldn't necessarily be starting antibiotics, but I'd just

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