I think I can confidently say this last month was one of the most stressful months of my life. I noticed Ollie (pictured above) had some mild redness in his genital area at the beginning of last month and immediately thought it was a UTI. I made a vet appointment and they gave me the option of doing radiographs to rule out bladder sludge or bring him in the next day and leave him there to see if they can collect a urine sample. I opted for the latter, but he never peed for them (????) but the vet wanted to avoid getting a sample through cystocentesis. However they said we can start with antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory for 7 days for the suspected UTI infection. We finish the course of medication and a little less than a week later the inflammation/swelling comes back not only faster but even more inflamed than before. I take him back in, and we opt to do the radiographs to rule out bladder sludge and they get a culture of the inflamed region to determine if the bacteria present is resisting the antibiotics (both culture and radiographs come back clear) so we do ANOTHER course of antibiotics but for 10 days just in case the last course was too short for the given infection. And after completing the medicine again the inflammation came back on Thursday so I made an appointment for the next day but I noticed there was something poking out from his genital region and I rush him to the emergency hospital. Upon arriving there they palpate his bladder and he passed a decent sized bladder stone, finally providing the answer to the issue because even though he could still pee around the stone, the stone itself harbored a lot of bacteria leading to the inflammation of his genital region. Followed up with a different vet the next day and they checked for bladder stones and found nothing, but Ollie is now going to be on potassium citrate for the rest of his life to prevent the formation of any other stones. They took a urine sample through cystocentesis for a urinalysis/urine culture so hopefully we will get the results to those next week sometime. Just glad to finally have some answers and a long-term solution ????